Best scientific experiments & projects books according to redditors

I think generally, early chemists ('alchemists') mixed completely random shit together in an attempt to make 'the elixir of life' or a process to create gold. Gunpowder might have been some dude mixing random shit together to make some magic potion.

Other stuff, like potash, lime, slaked lime, lye, soap, metals, pigments etc. followed a natural progression.

Have fire, get ash. Run water through the ash, get potash/lye. Discover that potash/lye + fats = soap. Enjoy soap.

Have honey in a pot (which keeps for a long time). Put it somewhere dark and where it accidentally gets a bunch of water in it. Go back to it and realize it went bad but eat it anyways. Realize it gets you drunk and start making more of the stuff. Booze.

Notice lime laying about. Heat it to get quicklime. Add water and get slaked lime. Now we have plaster and glass (obv. you have to add a few more random events in there, but you get the idea).

Pee. Let pee get old. Notice it smells funny, because it is now Ammonia. Mix it with things until you realize it can fix pigments into clothes. Now you have dyes.

From Caveman to Chemist

Most stoners I've known are dilettantes when it comes to astronomy, physics, chemistry, etc. There are some exceptions.

Richard Feynman was a ground breaking physicist who opened many doors. He experimented with marijuana, LSD and ketamine. He also spent some time with John Lily and his sensory deprivation tanks. I'm not sure I'd call him a stoner, though.

Rudy Rucker is a mathematician and science fiction writer. He often mentions LSD in his essays. His science fiction is often as spacey as Norman Spinrad's. A Rucker non fiction book I'd recommend is The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality

But for every drug using legit scientist or mathematician there seem to be a dozen drug addled cranks. Timothy Leary, Dan Winter, etc.

So far as I know Tyson doesn't use drugs. But he's an icon for dilettante stoners who really don't know that much about math or science. He is often saying stuff that is just wrong. Like telling Joe Rogan there's more transcendental numbers than irrationals. Or telling Fareed Zakaria that before NASA, miniaturizing electronics was a non-thought.

I believe healthy skepticism and some self discipline is needed to deeply study the universe. Which most of Tyson's fans lack. Tyson's wrong stuff sometimes makes serious scientists cringe in embarrassment for the guy.

You don't even need high school chemistry.

I had a copy of Backyard Ballistics that led a lot of my GI Joes to their doom when I was 10 years old. Estes igniters are sold in 6-packs for about $5, so detonators aren't a big issue either.

I'll just leave this here...

Edit: Also this, I guess

Caveman Chemistry! It's written by a chemistry professor and it investigates the development of real world applications of everyday chemistry. He outlines experiments you can set up to make real things, while explaining the chemistry in a very easy to understand way. It's pretty funny and really interesting, especially if you have little knowledge of chemistry but want to learn.

I suggest How to Fossilize your hamster and Caveman Chemistry. The first is more experiment based (one chapter, one experiment). Sadly, it doesn't teach you how to fossilize hamsters, despite the title. The second is more general. It has some experiments and guidance, and it's really interesting to read.

empiricism implies that we cannot trust our brains. it eventually leads to reductionism (IMO) which implies everything can be (objectively) be boiled down to numbers as a final truth. its a very toxic and very new idea. when numbers become truth it has no other option but to turn society away from God (an atheist society is weak and foundationless) if you are really interested more about my viewpoints on this heres some reading that explains some of it better than i ever could:

https://www.amazon.com/Metaphysical-Foundations-Modern-Science/dp/0486425517


https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Society-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394703901

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525

https://www.amazon.com/Libido-Dominandi-Liberation-Political-Control/dp/1587314657 (this one is slightly less relevant but does go into how often empirical science's end goal is looking at humans as machines and how that is dehumanizing and controlling)

https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Against-Modern-World-Julius/dp/089281506X

https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Slavery-Collected-Kaczynski-k/dp/1932595805/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=11DZHECERPHPBMFXWJKR

• The World of Westeros (GoT).
  
  
• The Little Prince
  
  
• And The Large Hadron Collider
  
  

I made them with my uncle when i was a little kid. He was and still is a fun pyro. it does not require all the extras in OPs video, with a little experimentation it's easy enough to do it.

I would recommend this book, it's some nice entry level stuff and most of the builds are super cheap.

Building this stuff with kids imparts ingenuity and creativity while being really fun. Building potato cannons was a highlight on my childhood

I think this needs more help than just the ending. The reasoning at every step should be solid. Otherwise questions arise. For instance, why does the time traveler want Klaus' wife to survive? Why does he risk involving a civilian in his secret organization's plans? Why doesn't he just kill the other person himself?

The time traveler is risking everything on Klaus' moral decision. That doesn't seem to be a very effective strategy. Presumably, the time traveler could add a few drops of peanut tincture to the person's food, and have done with it.

Or maybe the rules of temporal quantum mechanics preclude simple fixes. That could be interesting, but if this is the case, you will have to devise a system of rules for your time travel.

There are a few types of time travel. Check your local library for Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible.

Kids these days just aren't trying anymore.

The Practical Pyromaniac

Badass LEGO Guns

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction

Great Experiments in Physics should have a lot of what you are looking for. Firsthand accounts of the most important physical experiments, with side notes to help the reader understand, and with passages giving historical context.

It is quite an undertaking to read through it. But very fascinating.

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Experiments-Physics-Firsthand-Accounts/dp/0486253465

In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation, Andrew Goliszek, 2003

https://www.amazon.com/Name-Science-Programs-Research-Experimentation/dp/0312303564

That's one hell of a claim. I had to look into it, and traced it back a bit. It seems to be from In The Name of Science, which seems like a pretty obscure book: 17 reviews on Amazon, and those tend to either fall into either the "wake up sheeple!!" category, or are pretty critical and sceptical of some of the claims that are made. Like: "the author describes in very specific detail this thing that happened, but doesn't say when, or where, or to whom, or provide any evidence or corroboration."

I know how the conspiratorial mindframe works: the fact that the book is obscure and poorly reviewed means it must be true! But personally, I'd need to see a bit more evidence: a simpler reason would be that it was junk journalism, making outrageous claims to sell books. Can anybody point to anything outside of that book to corroborate the claim that the CIA or MKULTRA personnel were pimping out children to government officials for blackmail?

>seems to confuse me more, but I’m very interested. Can you please elaborate or provide somewhere I can read a bit more about that?

That's a hard question, but one of my favorite experiment-friendly textbooks is Quantum Optics for Experimentalists by Ou).

To elaborate more, I would say, that using certain parallels between classical physics and quantum physics, people have worked backwards from the classical theory of electromagnetism to develop a quantum theory of electromagnetism (the complete theory is known as quantum electrodynamics, of which quantum optics is a part).

(Seriously abbreviating/oversimplifying here, but...)

For each value of momentum, polarization, and frequency, the quantum electromagnetic field has evenly spaced energy levels, not unlike the different orbitals an electron has in an atom. Each quantum of energy in this mode of the electromagnetic field counts as one photon. The full state of the field would be a superposition of different photon number states for every value of frequency and momentum of the electromagnetic field.

For example, a laser beam would be described as a superposition of many different photon number states over a narrow spread in frequency and momentum, while thermal light from blackbody radiation would instead be a statistical distribution of photon number states. You can also create nonclassical states of light like squeezed light, and beams of entangled photon pairs in spontaneous parametric down-conversion.

Edit: "One Photon" can also be a single-photon state that's a superposition over different values of frequency and momentum. This would be a single-photon wave packet.

https://www.amazon.com/Name-Science-Programs-Research-Experimentation/dp/0312303564

Great book on the topic.

Hi, I was surprised to get your reply. I assume you mean you read the Apache Constitution, itself, which is posed online.

Actually, you can express ideas in math non-ambiguously and that lasts for a long time. Most people think math is a science. It's not. Math is a language. And because you can express ideas using math so precisely, it's the preferred language of science.

I wrote the Apache constitution using ideas from Open Source Government2, which is a science (and set of technologies) that explain how to manage societies without the use of centralized coercion. Open Source Gov (OSG) is explained in my book "The End: The Fall of the Political Class by Chas Holloway (that's me).

It's here on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B68MJX5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520004479&sr=8-1&keywords=the+end+the+fall+of+the+political+class

On the other hand, you are right about "non-ambiguous" language not lasting forever. Scientific understanding always evolves. The Newtonian model turned out to be a special case of the Einstein model, which will be shown to be a special case of something even larger. So even though you use math, your ideas don't last forever.

On the third hand, the purpose of science is not to achieve a perfect description of nature. It's to have an intellectual model you can use to build technology to accomplish goals.

Thanks for the reply.

This book Backyard ballistics has some great experiments and fun things to do. Its not dedicated to chemistry but a good place to start.

No questions. Check out this book, Caveman Chemistry. I took a class in college and our professor wrote the textbook for the class. As you create an element or project, the following ones build on from it. Goes all the way to production of pharmaceuticals and plastics. Thought you might find it interesting or an idea out of it.

[Quick and Easy Stirling Engine]
(http://www.amazon.com/Quick-Easy-Stirling-Engine-Larsen/dp/1466277777/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331352941&sr=1-2&tag=bookforyoudm-20)

History of science is indeed interesting. I have a little book on the history of modern chemistry that I hope to get to in the near future.

Have you read the Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science by E. A Burtt? It's a game changer. Burtt, to my knowledge, was neither a Thomist nor a Theist, so you don't have to worry about his bias.

There's more to reading ancient philosophy than looking for prototypes and origins of modern scientific ideas. Philosophy is prior to science. Scientific theories presuppose philosophical theories. Here is one way that natural philosophy is prior to modern physics.

Natural philosophy considers motion as such, at its most universal level. What is common to all types of motion. Modern science looks at one aspect of motion (quantitative) and creates mathematical models of specific types of motion (inertial, gravitational, Brownian).

We must first know that motion exists, and have a general understanding of what it is and how it is possible before we can proceed to look at quantitative aspects of motion, usually considered under experimental conditions.

As for the early Middle Ages, have you read Pierre Duhem's history of physics? His continuity thesis is provocative, but he definitely provides a comprehensive survey.

> Science. Religion has been fighting it for thousands of years.

I'm afraid that to even assume that science and religion existed as distinct concepts or endeavours thousands of years ago is a bit naïve, and this idea that they are eternally opposed is a very simplistic view that reflects the biases of anticlerical 19th Century historians more than the actual facts—it's only really been defended by people with a grudge against religion since a reappraisal of the subject in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (and especially since the reappraisal by James Moore in The Post-Darwinian Controversies). Here are a few books that could help you develop a richer understanding of the historical relationship between science and religion.

• David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
  
• E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Routledge, 1931)
  
• Gary B. Ferngren, ed., Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (John Hopkins University Press, 2002)
  
• Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009)
  
  These would probably be illuminating reading as well.
  
  
• Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962)
  
• Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  
  > Here is just another surrender by a guy at the top of the money chain.
  
  No one interested in the subject should be under the impression that what the Pope has said is anything new. Eminent Catholic theologians like John Henry Newman found Darwin's theory of natural selection consistent with Christianity when it was published, and Pope Pius XII very famously affirmed that there was no intrinsic conflict between them in his 1950 encyclical Humani generis. As for the Big Bang, it is downright foolish to characterise the Church as "surrendering" to a theory that was formulated by a Catholic priest in the first place.

https://www.amazon.com/Angels-Dont-Play-This-HAARP-ebook/dp/B00OV5L9LY?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

although the HAARP facility in Alaska is 'down' now there are almost certainly smaller versions out there, and this book goes into some detail about how projecting thoughts/voices can/has been done.