Inspiration

The Little Book of Experiments

One of Planet Science’s own resources, there’s loads of stuff in the Little Book of Experiments, very little of which has been filmed so far. Be careful, though — many of the suggestions really are ‘experiments’, which makes them harder to interpret for a film than a demonstration.

Other websites

The SciCast Blog. We post links to interesting projects as I come across them; see particularly the ‘ideas’ tag. We’ll be doing much more of this through 2008!
Physics.org, the Institute of Physics’ magazine site. Great stuff here — try Marvin and Milo particularly.
Make. We’re huge fans of this, both the website and the print magazine. Lots of stuff, at all levels. It’s easy to spend a few hours nosing around, looking for ideas. Their stuff is wildly varied, so it’s hard to pick examples, but here’s a couple of things to get you started.
Instructables. Step-by-step instructions for doing… stuff. While lots of the site is about cookery or craft work, you’ll also find lots of practical experiments and light engineering projects. Examples? How about a compass, and a dodecahedron from plastic cups?
Also look for sites like this of Science Fair projects.
Science communicator Ian Russell has some excellent experiments to repeat, squirreled away on his website. Try his dinner-table science page to start.
Looking for big, brain-bending, worldview-changing ideas? TED Talks. It’s like Horizon for the new millennium. Utterly brilliant.

Books

There are loads of books of experiments, but be careful. Many of the ‘things to do on a rainy day’ books you’ll find easily in bookshops are the same old stuff going round and round and round. Mind you, in the first year of SciCast nobody made a film about cabbage water indicator, which is one of the classics.

Slightly unusual books that are worth a look include:

Usborne’s 100 Science Experiments, by Georgina Andrews and Kate Knighton. A 2006 finalist in the Science Books Prize, this is a big updating of all the standards, plus lots of new material. Well worth a look.
It looks like a sequel is out: The Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do, also from Usborne, also shortlisted for the Science Books Prize.
Neil A. Downie’s trio of books. These are quite advanced in places, but there are some terrific ideas in here that you won’t find elsewhere — particularly for mechanisms and electronic engineering projects. Don’t blame us for the titles, though:
Chemists will love Roesky & Möckel’s Chemical Curiosities. We’ve yet to see the more recent Spectacular Chemical Experiments, but from the title alone we’re excited.
Feeling crafty? If you can find it, The Big Bang Book was a tie-in to the CITV series, and includes some really clever stuff. In places, a bit too clever!

Keep your eyes open in second-hand shops, or specialists like AbeBooks.co.uk — there are some utterly brilliant books that are now out of print. Some personal favourites:

Don Herbert’s Mr. Wizard’s Science Secrets
Cyril Isenberg’s The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles
Tom Tit’s Scientific Amusements, which originally dates from France in 1918!

Ideas?

Got any more links to rich seams of ideas? Drop us a line, and we’ll add to this list or the blog!