Product Description

Ordinary folks can construct 13 awesome ballistic devices in their garage or basement workshops using inexpensive household or hardware store materials and this step-by-step guide. Clear instructions, diagrams, and photographs show how to build projects ranging from the simple - a match-powered rocket - to the more complex - a scale-model, table-top catapult - to the offbeat - a tennis ball cannon. With a strong emphasis on safety, the book also gives tips on troubleshooting, explains the physics behind the projects, and profiles scientists and extraordinary experimenters such as Alfred Nobel, Robert Goddard, and Isaac Newton. This book will be indispensable for the legions of backyard toy-rocket launchers and fireworks fanatics who wish every day was the fourth of July.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2089 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Chicago Tribune
"Would-be rocketeers, take note: Engineer William Gurstelle has written a book for you."

The Plain Dealer
"To inspire kids to spend more time exploring science"

St. Paul Pioneer Press
"13 projects engineered to be safe yet exciting and able to be built with household and hardware-store supplies"

Customer Reviews

Step-by-step mad stuff to make, or, toys for the boys.
A handbook for bored, thirty-something children (like myself) on how to make potato cannons, tennis ball mortars, catapults and the like from the comfort of their garden shed.
Twelve projects from the ridiculously easy to the fairly time consuming, packed into 169 pages of juvenile playhem. Good instructions, clear pictures and photos, and all done with the emphasis on safety.
There is also a fair amount of explanation concerning the actual physics behind the projects and a look at historical figures such as Newton and Archimedes.

Unbelievably mad, incredibaly fun
Unlike most books like it this is a manual is genuinely full of easy to do projects. If you looking for something special in coimbination with this I reccommend "Home Workshop Explosives" by Uncle Fester. This combination is not for the faint of heart! Overall an excellent addition to my collection.

Wow.
A superb, but sadly probably marginally legal in my jurisdiction, introduction to the destructive delights of the hairspray powered potato gun amongst many, beautifully detailed little projects.

For all of us who watch "junkyard wars", or as we have it "Scrapheap Challenge", this book is a rallying call to visit the plumbers supply house and detonate some spuds.

The book is strong on details, suggestions for further "research" and lots of pertinent history.

Highly recommended.