NEW THIS WEEK
Earth's First Steps, Tracking Life Before The Dinosaurs Jerry MacDonald Hardcover, 1994 290 pages List Price: $22.95 Special SAS Member Price: $17.22 You Save: $5.73 (25%)
When Jerry McDonald, a back-to-school geology student, first arrived at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and gazed across the Mesilla Valley at the Robledo Mountains, he had no idea how many days of scorching heat he would soon be spending in their rocky arroyos. The Robledos have always been a fossil hunter's paradise, but it wasn't long before MacDonald became convinced that in the excitement of finding Permian fossils, the greatest secret of the Robledos had been overlooked.
Many collectors had found an occasional fossil footprint - a track. But what if an entire trackway - a series of footprints - could be uncovered? The scintific knowledge that can be gleaned from a trackway discovered in place is infinitely more valuable than a random footprint on a rock which may have been washed down an arroyo and deposited millions of years out of geologic context.
MacDonald tenaciously found and uncovered
not just one, but hundreds of trackways.
Then came the quest for vindication by the nation's leading museums,
the web of political intrigue which wrapped around government
agencies and local naysayers, and the inevitable cries of "fraud".
In the end, the MacDonald trackway discovery was recognized by the Smithsonian and Carnegie museums as the most significant Permian discovery in North America, yielding voluminous data about the creatures that lived along the then tropical shores of the great Southwest ocean 50 million years before dinosaurs roamed the land.
We think you'll enjoy reading this book. This book is out of print, the only place where you can get a copy is from us. Another exclusive SAS member benefit!
By: Sidney Gernsback
List Price:US$9.95
Special SAS Member Price: $8.45
You Save: (15%)
Back in 1920 people were hot to set up their own laboratories and invent something and become rich. Experimenter Publishing Company published books and magazines to whet their appetite. They reprinted the best information from the magazines in this book.
Here you get formulas on cements and glues, compositions of all kinds, glass and glass working, inks, leather polishes, metal-craft, perfumes, soaps, photography, blue-print and other papers, plating, pyrotechny, polishes and stains, varnishes and paints, cleaning compounds, wood-craft, chemical lab hints, mechanical lab hints, electrical lab hints, miscellaneous formulas and an appendix.
Not everything here is useful in my opinion, and some of it is downright dangerous. Some of this looks like it came out of the Boy Mechanic books. Learn how to convert coin silver into pure silver, formulas for solders, lithographic ink, how to make a gasoline torch, recipes for killing flies, proper use of sulphuric acid, hangrenades???, flashlight powder like the old photographers once used, how to make gas (you need a book for this??), homemade carbon crucible, methods to copper-plate carbon motor brushes, and on and on.
A lot of this is quaint, and not directly useful. It's for kitchen chemists. But a few of the formulas and ideas are worth the entire priceof the book. If you're trying to build a master reference library of unusual secret formulas, this book is certainly worth considering. Check it out. It's been five or six years since I last offered this, I believe. I wouldn't have reprinted it if I didn't think it had merit. Fun reading if nothing else. Get a copy! 51/2 x 81/2 paperback 160 pages.
Special SAS Promontional Offer: $5.95
You Get Both The 2002 Old Farmer's Almanac &
The Old Famer's Almanac Guide to Watching the Weather
IT'S ALL HERE: Stories of romance! Adventure! Tragedy and triumph! Everything under -- and including -- the Sun, the Moon, and the stars! The Almanac makes every day special. It's the one book you'll enjoy reading all year long.
Recognized for generations by its familiar yellow cover, The Farmer's Almanac is America's best-loved periodical. Readers find a broad editorial mix an entertaining blend of wit and wisdom. Sky-watchers look to its uncomonly accurate weather forcasts and precise astronomical information.
The 2002 edition is one of the best ever. This issue also contains charming anecdotes, quirky news items, a tribute to the sports world, brainteasers, and crowd pleasers-stories to be shared again and again.
As a Special Promotion, and for a limited
time, a special edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac Guide to Watching
the Weather will be shrink-wrapped to each copy of The 2002 Farmer's
Almanac. You get both for the price of one! Place your order today.
Great Stock!
by Joseph Carr
Paperback: 386 pages
LLH Technology Publishing
ISBN: 1-878707-05-1; Dimensions (in inches): 6.00 x 9.00Price:
$19.95
Retail Price: $19.95 SAS Member Price $14.95 You
save: 25%
Here's what I said about this book in 1995 when I first saw it. And it's all still true today.
BOOK REVIEW
Practical How-To Science, reviewed by Shawn Carlson
The Art of Science -- A Practical Guide to Experiments, Observations, and Handling Data
There are few basic how-to texts for amateur scientists, and very few good ones. The Art of Science could well be the very best.
Carr has distilled his experience in medical research into a practical, nuts-and-bolts guide full of insights, techniques, and strategies to wrestle away nature's secrets. But Carr is unique in his approach because he doesn't simply provide a recipe of experimental techniques. He starts out by teaching his readers how to see the world the way scientists do -- that is, to think scientifically. With this skill the whole universe is opened up. Without it, the reader simply will never be able to grasp the essence of science. He returns time and again the scientific thinking, helping the reader with every example think a little more like a scientist.
"Science" he says in the preface, "is a verb. ... It is a field for doers." Carr puts his readers on the right path to doing good science. Perhaps the most important habit a scientist can develop is to keep a detailed and accurate record on one's experiments. Most authors ignore this aspect of research (which, I suspect, is one reason why some scientists fall short on this aspect of science.) Carr devotes an entire chapter to scientific record keeping. Every scientist,amateur and professional, is likely to pick up a few tips in this section.
Some may argue that the book is a bit weak in the mathematical fundamentals of data analysis, but Carr would rather his readers not get too bogged down in the details. He does handle the basics, though, in such a way that even math phobics have a fighting chance of gleaning something important. He teaches his readers how to think about data, how to quickly understand it and to discern what it means. I think his treatment of mathematics is just about right.
Carr takes experimenting out of the Ivory Towers and places it right into his readers laps with his very clearly worded descriptions about doing hands-on experimenting. The chapter titled "Experimenting -- Step by Step" is just that; a step-by-step prescription for conducting experiments.
While, this chapter is full of useful information, it may oversimplify things just a bit too much. Carr presents all experiments as quests to falsify or confirm a well-defined hypothesis. "The basis of any scientific experiment is a hypothesis about the phenomena being investigated." (pg. 91)
This is a useful device for novices, like the "Who, What, When, Where and Why" method of writing is useful for people just starting out as wordsmiths. However, as professional writers rarely rely on the "Five W's," professional scientists often don't write down a specific hypothesis in their lab books when they conduct an investigation. A scientist may well ask questions like "what happens if...?" without ever formulating a specific hypothesis. A sophist could argue this point, but hypothesis testing is only one way that science gets done. In my view, presenting experiments exclusively as hypothesis testers limits research too much.
While the information contained is quite good, Carr does miss an important point. (I don't want to say too many good things about a book.) The essence of science is making sure you don't fool yourself. That is what all scientific methods are all about. Why do we quantify our measurements? Because we know our senses just aren't very accurate. Why do we require an affect to be confirmed in several different laboratories? Because we know that anyone can make a mistake! The essence of good science is self-skepticism, not the elimination of all bias. Good scientists realize that they are biased, and design their experiments so that their own biases can't affect the outcome. Unless you are aware of your human failings, you have no chance of discovering something truly unexpected.
A number of useful computer programs are given in the back. These are printed in large type, and, in my view, take up too much space. Also, the programs are all given in BASIC. Although still widely used, this language has already been outpaced by C. I hope the next edition will reprint these programs in 10-point type, and also include a C version. The book could stand a good summary page where important facts and formulas can be collected together.
But I have to look hard to find something to complain about. The Art of Science is simply the best general introduction to hands-on science I have yet read. It should be on the bookshelf of every amateur scientist. If it isn't on yours, take the hint.
Procedures in Experimental Physics
by John Strong
Softcover 642 pages
List Price: $25.95 SAS Member Price: $20.76
A Fantastic book loaded with construction secrets for unusual equipment! If you consider yourself an experimenter, an inventor, or a builder of unusual machines and equipment, you must have a copy of this classic text. No two ways about it.
Chapters include: laboratory glass blowing, laboratory optical work, technique of high vacuum, coating of surfaces by evaporation and sputtering, the use of fused silica, electrometers and electroscopes, Geiger counters, vacuum thermopiles and the measurement of radiant energy, optics, photoelectric cells and amplifiers, photography in the lab, heat and high temperature, notes on the materials of research, notes on the construction and design of instruments and apparatus, and molding and casting.
Learn how to blow glass and make aspirators, distillation condensers, and so on. Learn how to seal copper to glass so that you can imbed electrodes. Learn how to rough cut lens blanks from large plates of glass and then grind them into lenses on your homebuilt lens grinder. Learn how to make a parabolic telescope mirror using the standard techniques. Learn to make unusual equipment to test the finished mirror. Learn how to grind a Schmidt lens.
Build high vacuum roughing pumps, getters for creating the highest vacuums, diffusion pumps using mercury and oil and much more. Silver mirrors, even with aluminum. Manipulate fuzed quartz strands to build a microbalance sensitive down to a billionth of a gram per division. And there's so much more!
First published in 1938, this baby went through a couple of dozen printings. It's a classic. It's incredible. You should have a copy for reference if nothing else. Highly recommended. Order a copy today.
Handbook of Chemical Technology
by Rudolf Wagner
translated by William Crookes
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 hardcover
745 pages, 332 illustrations
List Price: $33.95 SAS Member Price: $27.16
This is the most amazing single reference to practicle hands-on chemistry I have ever seen.
In 1872 German chemists were world famous, and Wagner's Handbook was the master reference for chemists the world over. This translation of the eighth German edition can be yours for much less that an original copy should you be able to find one. I have never seen such a comprehensive collection of incredible technological detail in a single volume anywhere else. You'll find early and/or simple ways of making chemicals, refining metal, formulating glue, paper, dyes, or just about anything else chemical in nature.
Want to refine iron ore into steel? Want to make sulfuric acid? And use it to make nitric acid? And use it to make explosives? Care to brew beer? How about a batch of whiskey? A loaf of bread? And on, and on, and on.
This is not really a cookbook. You won't find step-by-step instructions. But you will find more detail on a wider variety of basic essential processes (many of them made obsolete by more complicated processes) than in any other volume. For instance, if you're investigating the tanning of hides, making illuminating gas, charcoal, soap, or anything else, you'll find that this single volume can provide more information in less time than a search through most libraries for a month of Sundays.
This incredible classic text will definitely fill a void in your reference library. I've never seen anything like it. And it's almost a sure thing you haven't either. It's expensive, but it's worth every penny and then some. Order a copy! You won't be disappointed.
You get a whole encyclopedia in a single volume:
PARTIAL CONTENTS LIST
Division I : Chemical Metallurgy; Alloys; and Preparations Made
and Obtained from Metals.
Division II : Crude materials and products of chemical industry.
Division III : Technology of Glass, Ceramic Ware, Gypsum, Lime
& Mortar
Division IV : Vegetable Fibers and Their Technical Application
Division VI : Dyeing and Calico Printing - Aniline colors
Division VIII : Fuel and Heating Apparatus -Fuel
Chemical Demonstrations-- A Handbook for Teachers (and lovers) of Chemistry
by Bassam Z. Shakhashiri
This is GREAT! We just got these in and I finally had a chance to take a good look at them. Believe me, this is the best reference of it's kind that I have ever seen.
The most complete collection of chemistry demonstrations to delight the student, teacher or anyone who loves chemistry. (And since you can buy all your chemicals and glassware from SAS, there's nothing to stop you from trying any of these delightful and educational demonstrations. Remember, email to chemical needs to Nancy and she'll figure out how to take care of them.)
In this series of practical handbooks, Prof. Bassam Z. Shakhashiri and collaborators describe a wide range of demonstrations for displaying chemical phenomena in science classrooms at all levels. The demonstrations are grouped into topical chapters, and each chapter includes an introduction which provides information about the concepts, terminology, and principles related to the demonstrations. The demonstrations themselves are divided into seven sections:
A brief description gives a succinct overview of the demonstration.
A list of materials carefully itemizes everything you need to perform the demonstration, including chemicals, laboratory equipment, and other supplies.
The procedure section provides step-by step instructions for preparation and presentation of the demonstration.
The hazards section details the specific potential dangers of every hazardous chemical used in the demonstration and, where appropriate, additional potential hazards associated with the demonstration.
The disposal section provides information about discarding or storing the chemicals used in each demonstration.
The valuable discussion section for each demonstration provides, often in considerable detail, the chemical phenomena and principles illustrated by each demonstration. If includes appropriate chemical equations and quantitative data. These analyses enhance the book's usefulness by facilitating the teacher's explanations of the phenomena that occur in the demonstrations.
A list of references details sources of additional information.
Y We're selling each book to SAS members for just $27.96. Just email to Nancy. and let her know which volume you're interested in.
by Robert H. Smith
800 pages heavily illustrated
Retail: $30.00 SAS Member Price $22.50
Here's the best general machine shop book I've ever seen old or new. Smith brought out this book in 1915, updating it in 1925. That makes it new enough to still be of great value, but old enough to contain a many techniques that are no longer taught.
You get easy-to-read text, step-by-step instructions, and great illustrations. Modern books are prettier, but they cannot possibly do a better job of teaching.
"Advanced" covers everything you
can imagine from basic operation of a micrometer and vernier caliper,
to the testing of machine tools for accuracy. You'll learn the
different methods of turning tapers and their fitting, detailed
instructions on cutting threads, making bolts and nuts, face plates
and chucks, mounting work, turning flanges and pulleys, boring,
threading, cutting square threads bolts and nuts, cutting multiple
threads, knurling, and much more.
You'll learn about drilling jigs, eccentric turning, facing large cylinders, use of steadies and followers, external and internal grinding, and the grinding of piston rings, milling cutters, reamers, and more.
Chapter nine covers planers and their use. Learn to plane keyways, lathe beds, vises, and more.
In learning to use a milling machine you'll groove taps, flute reamers, mill T-slots in a circular table and more.
And there's so much more on everything from gear cutting to making mandrels, taps, twist drills, using indicators, sine bars and more. You'll learn how to make expensive tools that you now buy. You'll even learn how to check the accuracy of lathes, milling machines, drill presses, and lead screws, and even use of optical flats to measure to millionths of an inch!
Just about everything you can imagine in amazing detail. This baby delivers! A bargain! Worth twice the price. I recommend it highly. People rave about it! Order yourself a copy today! Lindsay.
by L. H. Martin and R.D. Hill
Paper back: 120 pages.
Retail: $12.00 SAS Member Price $8.95
If you have any interest in vacuum work, then this is a fabulous reference. I've owned a copy for several years and I refer to it frequently when I need to dip into vacuum tips. Written by two experimental physicists who wanted to give workers in the field the best practical how-to information about working with vacuums. Highly recommended! Sorry I don't have a picture this time. But for under $9, how can you go wrong? Shawn
Perterson First Guide to
the Solar System
by Jay M. Pasachoff and Wil Tirion (Illustrator)
Paper back, Illustrations : 100 color photographs.
List Price : $6.00 SAS Member Price:
$4.76
The first book the beginning astronomer needs, whether young or
old. First Guides are simplified versions of the full-size guides,
they make it easy to get started in the field.
Budding astronomers--backyard or armchair--will
learn not only where to look for the planets in the nighttime
sky but also how space missions to the planets and their moons
have increased our understanding of Earth, its atmosphere, and
the moon. More than 100 spectacular color photographs, including
views from the Hubble Space Telescope of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn,
as well as the latest Voyager photographs of Neptune. The latest
scientific information on other solar systems and extraterrestrial
life, charts showing where to find the planets in the night sky,
and much more.
Peterson Field Guild to
the Atmosphere
By Vincent J. Schaefer
Paper Back
List Price : $20.00 SAS Member Price: $15.00
Clouds * Rain * Snow * Storms.
What more can you say? No one who reads
this book will ever experience an outdoor stroll in quite the
same way again.
How to Know the Insects
By: Bland, R. G. &. H. E. Jaques
Spiral bound; 409 pages, with 73 illustrations.
List Price: $32.50 SAS Member Price: $29.25
If you want to put together an insect collection, this is the book for you! A complete handbook for insect study and identification, with directions for collecting and mounting insects. Natural history data, basic biology, and characteristics used to identify immature insects accompany pictured keys for 29 orders and most common families. Describes selected common species or genera in most families.
I bought this book in when I was in graduate school because I needed an enjoyable diversion from physics. And now I'm hooked on the little buggers. In fact, you should see the size of the dobsonfly outside my office doorway. Wow... almost as large as my hand! Bugs here in New England are even more interesting than those in California. But I digress... If you're interested in knowing the insects in a serious way, this is definitely the book for you.