02 July 2004

Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius

Bob Iannini

Reviewed by Sheldon Greaves, Ph.D.

McGraw Hill, 2004. ISBN 0-07-142609-4.
Click here to order.

It's a stereotype every amateur scientist lives with to some degree: the slightly kooky, eccentric genius generally regarded as harmless. But when touched by some dementia he becomes a nemesis of titanic proportions who, when not trying to take over or destroy the world, runs around shouting, "Fools! I'll destroy them all!" or something similar.

I have long been fascinated by the evolution of the "evil genius" archetype in popular culture, from the demented scientist C. A. Rotwang in Fritz Lang's 1927 silent epic Metropolis, to Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Who's Davros, and Futurama's Professor Hubert Farnsworth. Even South Park has a resident evil genius, Dr. Mephesto.

Iannini's book embraces this stereotype with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but the projects in this book also lean toward the genre of things one might find in the laboratory of an archetypal mad scientist. No, you won't find projects for reanimating the dead, swapping the brains of two people or a faster-than-light stardrive. But you will find plenty of fascinating projects.

You get some of the old standbys such as the traveling plasma Jacob's Ladder, several Tesla coil projects, and a "plasma tornado generator." But you also get plans for a laser property protection fence, a laser window bounce listening device, an electromagnetic pulse generator, a hand-held "burning laser ray gun" and others. I was personally intrigued by plans for an "antigravity" project, which in fact is a model lifter that levitates by using electric charges to accelerate air particles. The home-built night vision device and low-power electrokinetic gun looked interesting as well.

This book has a relatively large format for a projects book, and includes illustrated plans and procedures for building each project, along with tips for fine tuning and troubleshooting. Iannini also takes time to explain the theory, science and math behind each project, and he provides lists of parts and suppliers. This is an excellent collection of off-beat projects that are very well presented.

These projects are not for the newbie. They assume you know a thing or two about electronics and can find your way around a workshop. But as a way of getting the attention of those new to science, they could prove useful indeed. If you want to build some projects calculated to entice young people into giving science another look, these projects will certainly excite curiosity, morbid or otherwise.

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