How to Fossilize Your Hamster: And Other Amazing Experiments for the Armchair Scientist

Outrageously entertaining and educational experiments from the team behind the phenomenal international bestseller Does Anything Eat Wasps?

How can you measure the speed of light with a bar of chocolate and a microwave oven? To keep a banana from decaying, are you better off rubbing it with lemon juice or refrigerating it? How can you figure out how much your head weighs? Mick O'Hare, who created the New Scientist's popular science sensations Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?, has the answers.

In this fascinating and irresistible new book, O'Hare and the New Scientist team guide you through one hundred intriguing experiments that show essential scientific principles (and human curiosity) in action. Explaining everything from the unusual chemical reaction between Mentos and cola that provokes a geyser to the geological conditions necessary to preserve a family pet for eternity, How to Fossilize Your Hamster is fun, hands-on science that everyone will want to try at home.

"If you've ever wondered why a dried spaghetti noodle, when bent, always breaks into three or more pieces, rest assured that none less than Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman devoted hours to the same puzzle. O'Hare, a member of the New Scientist editorial team that produced Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?, provides such entertaining tidbits and empirical knowledge, alongside hours of activities, in this volume of science experiments for adults. Perfect for home scientists, it requires only basic household supplies (cornstarch, vinegar and milk are frequent components) and approximate measurements to carry out such tasks as measuring the speed of light (using a microwave and a chocolate bar), extracting DNA at home (with dish soap and alcohol), and accounting for toothpaste's effect on orange juice. Beside fun, each provides lessons in fundamental scientific principles, logic and problem solving. O'Hare even makes complex fluid dynamics such as thixotropy easy to understand-it's what makes ketchup 'gloopy,' but able to change from 'gelatinous' to 'runny' through 'the input of energy, typically by shaking.' From food science to party tricks (complete with booze), O'Hare offers entertainment and edification for anyone who enjoyed (or missed out on) a childhood chemistry set." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In this fascinating and irresistible new book, the author of the popular science sensations "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" and "Why Don't Penguins Feet Freeze?" guides readers through 100 intriguing experiments that show essential scientific principles--and human curiosity--in action.