Peanut Persons
INGENUITY, a sense of humor and a bag of peanuts—that’s the new recipe for fun with color photography. Put a peanut on a peanut and you’ve got a torso. Add a few more for arms and legs. Bits of bright cloth or crepe paper make fine dresses and pants. Stick a tooth pick in your model’s hand, tie on a piece of thread and he’s a fisherman. Water is a pocket mirror. See? Now it’s your turn!

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Dry Ice-Capades

Dry ice is very interesting stuff! Get yourself a chunk (handling it with gloves) and perform the simple experiments illustrated here.

DRY ice is solid carbon dioxide. It’s very interesting stuff. For one thing, it sublimes at room temperature; that is, although a solid, it evaporates to form a gas without passing through the liquid state. The mist you see formed by dry ice is water “squeezed” out of the air because it has been chilled below the dewpoint.
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Glass Making Easy for Home Chemist

By Raymond B. Wailes

BECAUSE of its importance in glass making and other industries, silicon opens a particularly interesting experimental field to the home chemist. In nature, silicon is almost as plentiful as oxygen. Yet, it hides itself well in its compounds. It never is found free and uncom-bined and can be separated from its associates only through clever chemical thievery in the laboratory.

Industrially, silicon is obtained by heating sand—a compound of silicon and oxygen—and coke to a high temperature in an electric furnace. The white-hot coke steals the oxygen from the sand to form carbon monoxide and frees the silicon. Although the amateur chemist will have no electric furnace in which to duplicate this process, he can obtain a similar result by heating sand and powdered magnesium over his ordinary laboratory gas burner.
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Scientific Experiments with Toys

By Raymond B. Wailes

Many Novelty, Toy and “Jokers” Supply Stores sell small glass “meters” or “thermometers.” as they are called, attached to a card supposed to represent the quantity of intoxicating liquor the individual can consume, a state of health, denote a fortune, etc. The items are designed to provoke mirth and hilarity, but they operate on a scientific principle and can be used admirably for demonstrating some physical laws. What to do and how to conduct the experiments are details covered in the accompanying text.
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High-voltage Spark Generator

By WalterE. Burton

Here’s a simplified Toepler-Holtz static machine for generating high-voltage electric sparks. By experimenting with it you can learn something about the nature of electrical currents.

IF YOU are interested in learning the nature of that mysterious and invisible force known as electricity, there is no better means of studying it than by experimenting with this inexpensive and easily made static machine. This is not a machine, mind you, which makes that awful noise in your radio receiver, but a device which generates high voltage electric sparks which are quite harmless, but with which you can have barrels of fun. It is of the Toepler-Holtz type which is used in most school physics labs to demonstrate the strange things that electricity can be made to do.
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Popsy – A Simply Made But Very Lifelike Dummy for the Amateur Ventriloquist

By KENNETH MURRAY

POPSY is an intriguing ventriloquist’s dummy you can construct from inexpensive materials without any special skill or shop equipment. His name comes from Popular Science Monthly, for which he was specially designed. He wags his jaw realistically and, if you want to take a little extra trouble, he can be made to wink, wiggle an ear, smoke, spit, or even blush!

Teaching him to talk takes a little practice, of course, but it’s not nearly so hard as commonly believed, and once you learn the trick, you will be able to entertain and astonish your friends.
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The Amateur Electrician

Edited by THEODORE ALLEN

Experimenting with electricity is a most fascinating and instructive pastime. This month, Modern Mechanics and Inventions presents to its readers plans for making apparatus with which both the practical and theoretical side of electricity can be studied. Editors of this department always stand ready to assist readers in any way possible.
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HOW TO CONSTRUCT A FUN – PROVOKING Cigarette Dispenser

When the fisherman’s figure is pushed backward, one of the fishes instantly disgorges a “butt”

By HOWARD R. HEYDORF

STRUGGLING with his catch, this comic fisherman seems to be fighting a pretty hopeless battle. Give him a little help by tilting him backward and he will reward you with a cigarette delivered through the mouth of one of the fishes. He will continue to deliver cigarettes one at a time till the magazine of thirteen is empty.
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How to Build an Electric Organ FOR ABOUT FIVE DOLLARS

WITH its deep, mellow notes, the electric organ is fast gaining the musical limelight. As a rule, these instruments are large and costly. Yet, for the price of a new hat, you can build a duplicate of a small organ that was featured in a recent coast-to-coast radio broadcast.
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That sundial looks like something out of Hellraiser.

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a sundial for your garden

Sundials are not only decorative adjuncts to outdoor gardens and walls—they’re also fascinating and fairly reliable time tellers.

By Carl W. Bertsch

SUNDIALS may be made of a variety of materials; the only requirement is that they be weatherproof. Exterior-grade plywood, stainless steel, aluminum, opaque plastics, brass, copper, bronze, concrete, ceramics, and slate are all useful. Hour lines and numerals may be painted, etched, or carved.
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Building and Riding a Unicycle

Learning to ride this fugitive from the circus is becoming an increasingly popular modern day exercise

By HAROLD P. SMITH

A USED or even wrecked 20 or 24-in. bicycle will supply most of the major parts needed to make a unicycle, and you can build it for one-third the cost of a new one.

We chose 24-in. bikes for parts to build the unicycles shown in Fig. 1. If you are picking up a used or wrecked bike for parts, select one with a good front wheel fork and rear wheel. And, if possible, one having a New Departure Model D or Bendix 13 coaster brake because these types have rear wheel hubs that are identical in size and shape at both ends, a feature that simplifies the making of the axle adapters.
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These are actually kind of cool looking.

Photographic Cut-Outs Appear to Prop Up Book Ends

To make novel photographic book ends of the type illustrated, first take pictures of the subjects pushing against a wall or the side of a car and enlarge to 5″ by 7″. These enlargements are mounted on 1/4″ thick plywood with glue or dry mounting tissue.

The outlines are then cut on a jig saw with a rather fine blade. Read the rest of this entry »