Chain Reaction! Crazy Contraptions: Rube Goldberg Machines by Laura Perdew

Have you ever watched a line of dominoes fall? Have you ever played the game Mouse Trap? Do you like to think of complex ways to accomplish simple tasks?

You might love doing Rube Goldberg-like projects!

Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who became famous for his comic illustrations of how to do things the hard way through science. Falling lines of dominoes were just the beginning of his ideas for cartoon creation that used everything--from monkeys, shoes, birds, alarm clocks, and dogs' wagging tales to set off chain reactions ending in some small and silly tasks. Goldberg used concepts of force and gravity from physics to create comics that have made people laugh for over 100 years.

This is the time of late winter when science projects bloom in school gyms--the time of the SCIENCE FAIR--a time when vast quantities of blank tri-fold posters yawn emptily before middle graders, waiting to be filled. And into this vast void comes a phalanx of science project books.

And among this avalanche comes Laura Perdew's new Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel: with Hands-On Engineering Activities (Build It Yourself) (Nomad Press, 2019), with novel and arresting ideas for real physics projects that solve problems and promise fun for the creators and laughs for their viewers. Author Perdew provides the principles and demonstrates process and product for moving projects with photographs and illustrations of inclined planes (sliding boards, toy dump truck beds, water slides), levers (windshield wipers, catapults), wheels (pizza-cutters, pottery wheels, windmills), and other simple and complex machines that come in handy when combined into a Rube Goldberg contraption to claim for your own.

Along with diagrams, drawings, and cartoons from illustrator Micah Rauch, there are many project starter suggestions for young inventors and artists. Author Perdew also includes quite an appendix, with a glossary, an excellent list of resources for videos, materials (some recyclables), and handy tools and supplies, and an complete index, with which kids can construct their own crazy contraptions.

Says School Library Journal, "A delight for all budding engineers in elementary grades who, as Perdew puts it, 'like to think of complex ways to accomplish simple tasks.'"

Relatively Speaking: General Relativity for Babies by Chris Ferrie

THIS IS A BALL.

Chris Ferrie's General Relativity for Babies (Baby University) (Sourcebooks, 2016) begins this effort to explain Einstein's famous theory with the simplest of concepts, a ball, and then at warp speed goes straight to the hard stuff.

THIS BALL HAS MASS.

Whizzing right by the old distinction between weight and mass, author Ferrie goes right on to show how mass affects space.

MASS DRAGS AT SPACE.

SPACE DRAGS AT MASS.

The erudite author, who holds a degree in mathematical physics and a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Sydney, goes on to show how mass distorts space by using a flat page with a grid to show how mass can curve space, and shows how how shrinking a large mass may turn it into a black hole so dense that even light cannot escape it, and he goes on to illustrate the center of a black hole--the singularity and picture the gravitational waves that result from the convergence of two black holes.

Despite its title, the best-selling General Relativity for Babies (Baby University) is not exactly for infants, but preschoolers and elementary readers can get a good start on the vocabulary and a taste of the concepts of Einstein's theory of general relativity, appealingly illustrated by the author in simple line drawings with two colors, basic black and red, and Ferrie makes them simple and straightforward in proper board book style. School Library Journal calls this one "a stealth instruction for older students and caregivers who are a bit hazy on the basics of quantum and Newtonian physics."

Other books in the series include Quantum Physics for Babies (Baby University) Quantum Physics for Babies (Baby University), and Newtonian Physics for Babies (Baby University).

Changes, Changes: Changing States by Will Hurd

The fourth state of matter?

Will Hurd's Changing States: Solids, Liquids, and Gases (Do It Yourself) (Heinemann, 2009) takes the reader through an engaging and unusually cogent discussion of the usual three states of matter--solid, liquid, gas--which begins with marbles in a jar and amplifies the discussion with experiments demonstrating the effects of heat and agitation upon the atoms and molecules which make up matter and which cause readily observable changes in their states.

Hurd spends a good part of his text on the basics of physical change, the necessary jumping-off point for the study of elementary science and common sense activities in daily life. Particularly apropos is his example of the similarities and differences between two familiar objects:

For example, a golf ball and a ping-pong ball are about the same size. They take up about the same amount of space, so they have about the same volume. Even though the golf ball and the ping-pong ball have about the same volume, the golf ball is heavier. There is more matter in a golf ball. A golf ball's mass is greater than that of a ping-pong ball.

Concentrating upon the particular behavior of water, the author has designed activities in which the familiar processes of freezing, boiling, melting, and even sublimation, (in which ice cubes in a freezer go from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state) produce changes in physical state. Held also covers the water cycle as an everyday experience which illustrates these changing states of water.

Chemical change is a bit harder to present to elementary students, and Held offers an activity in which the mixing of vinegar and baking soda inflates a balloon with the carbon dioxide gas produced by the chemical change produced by the interaction. Another example includes oxidation in the process of rust and of burning.

And that intriguing fourth state of matter? Held points to the flame produced by combustion as an illustration of that tricky state--"the fourth state of matter called plasma, defined as "a gas that has an electrical charge" as found in flame, lightning, the sun--and the familiar plasma television set. In closing Held even introduces readers to the even greater mystery in the science of physical states--the posited existence of so-called "dark matter" throughout the universe.

Detailed instructions and illustrations for correlated activities, clear explanations, and ample color photographs make this title an interesting. engaging, and hands-on explanation of this subject for elementary science students to expand classroom activities and inspire science projects. Some other related titles in Heinemann Library's excellent Do It Yourself series include Experiments with Light (Do It Yourself), Magnets: Magnetism (Do It Yourself), Gravity (Do It Yourself), and Experiments With Sound: Explaining Sound (Do It Yourself).