Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices,   ISBN:9781556523755

Customer Rating: 

I found this book very interesting and so did my son. He plans on doing some of the projects in the book for 4H.

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I read most of this book, but didn't actually build anything yet. It seems pretty well thought out, and I believe I will make some good projects from this book.

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The most impressive book I've seen of it's type. The projects in it are mostly inexpensive to put together and require few special skills for great results. Caution is recommended when building projectile weapons of course, but if you've got a teen or a husband who loves these sort of things, they will find something they want to try in here. My favorite projects are the tennis ball mortars and the paper match rockets. The mortars because the section explains the difference between mortars and cannons and the project itself is a wonderful hands-on experiment for trajectory and how gravity effects it. The paper match rocket is minimal supplies and easy to put together and shows how a struck match creates energy in the form of heat which launches the miniature rocket.
The science behind each project is well explained, and there is a lot of history about the scientists who came up with some of the most pivotal theories about physics and how they tested them.
Recommended with adult supervision for middle school and high school children. It's not deeply technical and it's very accessible even for teens who aren't really interested in science.
Also recommended for husbands who like to build things that go boom and are interested in science.

Customer Rating: 

This book is largely limited to outdoor science projects involving adult supervision and assistance. Of course, there is some danger involved.

This work shows how to make PVC pipes into launchers through cutting, and use of PVC cement. Some of the devices featured in this book are the pipe-barrel potato cannon, the small-match rocket, the carbide cannon, the tennis-ball mortar (that uses potato-chip cans as the barrel), various pneumatic rockets (analogues to the blow darts used by natives), etc. This work also features the application of trigonometry for the study of the rocket-flight paths.

Customer Rating: 

kept my 11 yo science boy to the core busy all year. Fantastic! He did almost everything in the book on his own - I didn't do a thing but buy him things (and take him to the ER once or twice). Be careful of chemicals.