Book Review: The Geek Dad Book for Aspiring Mad Scientists by Ken Denmead

The Geek Dad Book for Aspiring Mad Scientists by Ken Denmead

This book is a collection of scientific experiments and demonstrations that can be done at home with the family. The experiments range in complexity, difficulty, and duration. There's classic stuff like building a potato cannon and more mundane tasks like identifying all the flora and fauna in your back yard. Some projects are clearly safer than others. Flames and explosions make recurring appearances. But that's the sort of science that a mad scientist would do, right?

The book has an appendix listing the cost, difficulty, and time needed for each experiment. The individual experiments include a list of items needed and step-by-step instructions along with illustrations. The editing is unfortunately a little choppy, with occasional references to wrong page numbers and one or two experiments that aren't as clearly detailed as they need to be. The illustrations are more fun than technical. Every now and then I thought, "How is this supposed to go together again?" But overall, it's fun to read and we will be trying out some experiments, like extracting our own DNA and copper-plating some iron nails or steel paperclips. Those experiment will mostly likely wind up on the blog.

Slightly recommended.