Scientific Amusements

An excerpt from the Preface: YOUNG people of both sexes, and persons of all ages who have leisure and a taste for that which is ingenious as well as instructive and amusing, may be commended to this remarkably interesting collection of experiments, nearly all of which can be readily performed by an iinskilled person who will carefully follow out the directions given. It is surprising how near we are to the most fundamental principles of science when we perform some of the...
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An excerpt from the Preface:

YOUNG people of both sexes, and persons of all ages who have leisure and a taste for that which is ingenious as well as instructive and amusing, may be commended to this remarkably interesting collection of experiments, nearly all of which can be readily performed by an iinskilled person who will carefully follow out the directions given. It is surprising how near we are to the most fundamental principles of science when we perform some of the simplest operations.

The act of balancing oneself on one foot may be made to illustrate most instructively the principle of gravitation and the centre of gravity. The musical (or unmusical, as the case may be) performance of whistling illustrates the power of air in motion, and the effects of vibrating cords (the vocal cords) in a limited space. The toasting of a piece of bread is an example of evaporation of water change of structure owing to heat, and the appearance of a black substance out of a white one by a change' in chemical combination. It is so in a multitude of the common occupations of life, and especially in the amusements in which children take so great a delight. The schoolboy's sucker exemplifies the effect of the external pressure of the atmosphere; his top, coerced to move circularly by the effect of a string wound round it in a spiral fashion, illustrates the effect of a spinning turn long after the force has been applied. A large number of experiments with coins- piercing a halfpenny with a needle, revolving a penny in a lampshade, catching coins held on the elbow in the hand, rotating a coin between two pins, and the like, show to how many amusing incidents these may give rise. Inertia, the bane of too many boys and men, is seen to prevail in the physical world in the experiment of projecting one or two draughts from a heap of them (page 18), and in removing a domino, as on page 20. The strange effects which can be produced by virtue of the principle of the centre of gravity are seen in the pencil and knife balanced on the point of the former, the match puzzle (page 30), the poising of a tumbler upon three sticks, each having one end in the air, the suspension of a bucket of water from a stick resting on a table, etc.