To help you get a better idea of what you'll find in "Magical Experiments", I've included the Table of Contents and Prefaces here.  If you'd like to see Sample Activities, click here.

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MAGICAL EXPERIMENTS

OR

SCIENCE IN PLAY

BY

ARTHUR GOOD

TRANSLATED BY

CAMDEN CURWEN AND ROBERT WATERS

Originally Published by David McKay, Publisher, 1892

This Edition Copyright © 2006 by Mintaka Publishing Inc.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

1.    The Plate on the Point of the Needle

2.    The Egg that will Stand up

3.    One Way of Halving a Pear

4.    How to Pierce a Pin with a Needle

5.    The Housekeeper's Terror

6.    How to Pierce a Nickel with a Needle

7.    The Diving Bell

8.    A Bottle, or an Acrobat

9.    The Bottle in Peril

10.    The Barrel and the Bottle; or, The Automatic Cellarman

11.    Eruption of Vesuvius

12.    Water Changed into Wine

13.    The Champagne Devil

14.    The Intelligent Fish

15.    A Remarkable Candlestick

16.    How To Weigh A Letter With A Broomstick

17.    Soap Bubbles and Carbonic Acid Gas

18.    The Camphor Scorpion

19.    Hydraulic Turntable of Nuts

20.    The Revolving Siphon

21.    The Bottle Cannon

22.    The Paper Swimming Fish

23.    The Power of the Breath

24.    The Jumping Coin

25.    The Automatic Butterfly

26.    Centrifugal Force.--Whirling a Glass of Water without Spilling a Drop

27.    The Waltzing Egg

28.    The Pressure of the Atmosphere

29.    The Water Pendulum

30.    Lifting a Glass with the Palm of the Hand

31.    A New Way to Empty a Glass

32.    The Metamorphosis of a Soap-Bubble

33.    Hung without a Rope

34.    In Water, but not Wet

35.    How to Make Pins and Needles Float

36.    Rotation of the Earth

37.    How to Float Corks Vertically

38.    The Dancing Jack in the Looking-Glass

39.    An Eye in the Back of the Head

40.    New Chinese Shadows

41.    Theatricals in a Mirror

42.    The Living Shadow

43.    The Disappearing Gold Piece

44.    The Devil in Green

45.    The Tricolored Star

46.    The Spinning Pin

47.    The Family Lottery

48.    The Broken Looking-Glass

49.    Stage Equilibrists

50.    The Electrified Envelope

51.    Lamp-Glass, or Electric Machine

52.    Experiments in Primary Electro-Magnetism

53.    The Punishment of Tantalus

54.    Butting the Wall

55.    A Very Awkward Broomstick

56.    The Five Straw Trick

57.    To Lift Fifteen Matches with One

58.    The Bent Match Problem

59.    The Infernal Machine

60.    The Magic Javelin

61.    The Pyramid of Glasses

62.    The Triplet Glasses

63.    The Bottle on the Keys

64.    The Improvised Plate Support

65.    A Pair of Scales made out of Threads

66.    The Steelyard Balance

67.    Candlestick and Watch-Stand

68.    The Magic Ball

69.    A Novel Vaporizer

70.    Unconscious Movements

71.    The New Shadowgraphy

72.    The Obedient and the Disobedient Egg

73.    The Mannikins

74.    The Bird on the Branch

75.    A Rolling Body goes Up-hill

76.    Equilibrium of Superimposed Fluids

77.    Oil Sauce to Everybody's Taste

78.    The Egg in Salt Water

79.    The Microbe Bottle Imp

80.    Density of Carbonic Acid Gas

81.    The Candle in the Lamp Chimney

82.    How to make a Banana peel Itself

83.    The Jet of Water in a Vacuum

84.    The Revenge of the Danaides

85.    The Intermitting Fountain

86.    Automatic Drinking-Fountain for Fowls

87.    Wine Spouting from Water

88.    Wine Changed to Water

89.    The Cup of Tantalus

90.    Centrifugal Force

91.    How to Distinguish at Sight a Hard-boiled Egg from a Raw One

92.    Gold Washing

93.    The Greedy Matches

94.    Russian Mountains

95.    The Compressed-Air Pistol

96.    The Shooting-Tube

97.    The Tractable Balloon

98.    The Jumping Coin

99.    How Not to Blow out the Candle

100.    The Sliding Railway

101.    Causing Water To Boil By Blowing On It

102.    The Musical Glass

103.    The Magical Arrow

104.    The Electroscope

105.    Rotation of a Horizontal Wheel before a Magnet

106.   Reflection of Light on the Surface of Transparent Bodies

107.    The Magical Box

108.    Double Convex and Double Concave Lenses

109.    Cutting a Thread Hung in a Bottle

110.    The Wish-Bone Experiment

111.    Making the Bird enter the Cage

112.    Moving Shadows

113.    Lineal Drawing without Instruments

114.    Superposable Figures

115.    The Five-pointed Star

116.    The Square of the Hypotenuse

117.    Tracing an Oval with an Ordinary Compass

118.    The Surface of the Sphere

119.    The Scissors Feat

120.    The Enervator

121.    An Awkward Fix

122.    Cutting Glass with a Pair of Scissors

123.    The Coin That Cannot Be Removed

124.    Effaceable Ink

125.    Finger Exercises

126.    Fantastic Soap-Bubbles

127.    The Traitorous Glass

128.    Japanese Kites

129.    The Automatic Extinguisher

130.    Illustrated Candles

131.    The Nut-Cracker

132.    Construction of the Lily of the Valley

133.    The Horse-Chestnut as a Night-Light

134.    The Hypnotized Egg

135.    The Dancing-Jacks

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PREFACE TO THE MODERN EDITION

This book will prove to be an extraordinary resource for the parent or teacher who seeks original and engaging science experiments for their young students.  Because within these pages lies a collection of educational and engaging “counter-intuitive” experiments designed to instill in children (and adults) a sense of fascination, wonder, and awe!

This delightful treasury is really many books in one.  Part education, part entertainment, there are enough activities here to hold a child’s interest for many months, and perhaps years.  Some experiments can be done quickly, in only a few minutes.  Others require a bit of time and hands-on craftsmanship, and might engage and educate a group of kids for an entire afternoon.  Some are simply enjoyable pastimes, with a scientific twist; others are serious-minded experiments that many young students won’t get to experience until high school, if at all.

And please keep in mind… this book isn’t meant to be read from beginning to end, but dipped into when you’re looking for ideas for lessons, projects, or rainy day activities.  You’re sure to refer to it again and again over the years.

Although the material and the language in “Magical Experiments” sometimes seem old-fashioned, these activities remain as fresh and exciting for children now as they did more than a century after they were first published.  Remember, they were created in the late 1800’s, before widespread use of electricity and automobiles, and well before the invention of airplanes, radio, television, plastics, and other modern inventions we now take for granted. 

These “Magical Experiments”, conceived and written by Mr. Arthur Good more than a century ago, are a testament to one man’s imagination and skill in engaging children in the study of science, both pure and applied.  They’ll make science exciting, fun, and memorable.  Enjoy!

Brian Ventrudo, Ph.D.

Mintaka Publishing Inc.

Ottawa, Canada

September, 2006

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PREFACE.

To the young person who wishes to make himself agreeable and entertaining in company, this book will be one of the most helpful in literature. It will show him not only how to do things by which he can render himself more entertaining than the best talker or the best joker in the company, but will reveal to him a hundred things by which he can amuse and astonish everybody he knows. For the experiments here displayed are not only entertaining, but instructive; not only amusing, but surprising; not only attractive to the young man and the maiden, but to the old man and the matron. By means of the simplest and commonest objects, always at hand, the reader can illustrate some of the most wonderful things in science, and convey valuable instruction while amusing his audience and creating a feeling of admiration for the amusement-maker.

To the teacher who wishes to create in his scholars an interest in science, no book can be of greater assistance. It will enable him practically to illustrate and enforce scientific principles, and render his instructions as interesting as an Arabian tale.

My share of the book consists in the translation of the latter half, and the revision and correction of the whole.  The late Mr. Camden Curwen, at the time of his death, left the work but half finished, when it was placed in my hands. Mr. Curwen has done his part of the work well, and my hope is that the critics will not consider mine much inferior.

As to the author, Mr. Arthur Good, his work speaks for itself. Not only his skill and ability, but the genial and kindly nature of the man, crop out at every page.

ROBERT WATERS.

17 TROY STREET,

JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS, N. J.

JULY 1892

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TO MY SON JOHNNIE.

My dear little boy:

Among the experiments contained in this book, many are simple pastimes meant for the recreation of young and old, assembled round the family table.

Others, on the contrary, being of a really scientific character, are designed to introduce the reader to the study of Physics, that marvelous science to which we owe the discovery of the steam-engine, the telephone, the phonograph, and many other wonders—a science which, there can be little doubt, holds in reserve many other miracles for man.

The whole of these experiments, whether simple or complex, may be performed without any special apparatus whatever, consequently without the least expense. Our improvised laboratory is composed, as you will perceive, of such articles as kitchen utensils, corks, matches, glasses, knives, forks, and plates—in fact, such things as every house, the humblest in the land, possesses.

In dedicating this book to you, I trust it may prove a pleasant souvenir, in the days to come, of the happy moments we passed together in working these simple wonders, and in constructing the homely apparatus used in our MAGICAL EXPERIMENTS.

Your affectionate father,

ARTHUR GOOD (“Tom TIT”).

Paris, 1st of January, 1890.