How to Use Tin Can Metal in Science Projects

Skibness was a classroom teacher for forty-one years having taught industrial arts, science, and for the last thirty years, physics. My guess is that a bit more than forty years ago he retired and wrote this book. It reflects his opinion that the way to motivate students was to show them how much fun it was to build significant projects from inexpensive scrap metal.

Chapters include: introduction, processes and techniques, how to make useful equipment, how to make a bending jig, how to make triangles for marking, how to make a mandrel, Hero's jet engine, the walking beam engine, crosshead engine, and a model of an internal combustion engine.

The author will show you with wall-to-wall illustrations how to cut up a tin can for metal, flatten it, bend it, form tubes and cylinders, punch it, make an alcohol lamp for soldering, and more.

In Section II he shows the student (that's you, remember?) how to make several small engines, only one of which truly "runs": Hero's engine. The other engines are moving models (maybe you're sharp enough to figure out how to make the parts tight fitting enough that engines could be run on compressed air. Don't know if it can be done).

It looks to me that this book teaches basic tin-can sheet metal basics well enough that the skills could be employed to build some really fantastic engine or kinetic sculpture. This is great material for the tinkerer, artist, or scavenger who takes pride in building something out of nothing (and who doesn't?). Great little book. Heavily illustrated. Targeted toward high school students. I'm sure you can handle it. Get a copy.