Author: Sean Connolly
Publisher: Icon Books
Price: £9.99/.00CDN
Isbn: 9781840468120

Science can be looked at in two ways, I suppose: as a self­less quest for know­ledge in the serv­ice of human pro­gress; or as a really good excuse to blow shit up. This book sits firmly in the second camp, and as I make a living org­an­is­ing this kind of stuff for public audi­ences at one of the UK’s hands-on science centres, it was inev­it­able that Wholly Irrespons­ible Experi­ments would land in my in-tray.

So, is it any good, then? Well, yes, but not actu­ally wholly irres­pons­ible. It comes with inst­ruct­ions that tell you to put the match out after light­ing a candle and does not employ any­thing more eso­teric than house­hold ingred­ients. It does not feat­ure any­thing with a blast radius, or the potent­ial to be struct­ur­ally dam­ag­ing or a gross vio­lat­ion of health and safety law.

There is noth­ing involv­ing misuse of cust­ard and/or hair­spray, no inter­est­ing combin­at­ions of liquid gases and bar­be­cues/body parts/ live invert­eb­rates, no vege­table based weap­onry, noth­ing with the potent­ial to coat minor TV starl­ets in slightly corr­os­ive hot-offal res­i­due, no fire tor­nad­oes, home­brew napalm, or, in fact, any­thing that could be classed as an IED or of inter­est to law enforce­ment. To fall into the class of wholly irrespons­ible experi­ments, at least a few of the demos would have to include some or all of the above feat­ures.

Most of the stuff here falls into the cat­e­gory of “quite fun and inad­vis­able to do in the par­ental kit­chen with­out per­miss­ion as they’re a bit messy”, but that’s not such an eye-catch­ing title. So, you get the YouTube Mentos and cola fave, how to ram a straw through a potato, danc­ing moth­balls, CD hover­craft and the very pleas­ing film-can­is­ter rocket that has long been a fav­our­ite of mine (I timed my speech at my wedd­ing with it), plus plenty of others to amuse the feck­less and mildly destruct­ive. It also comes with a handy index that class­if­ies the experi­ments by how long they take to do, which is invalu­able to those of us with incred­ibly short attent­ion spans.