Alfred Powell Morgan (1889–1972)

If you know someone that, given the opportunity will bemoan the loss of a bygone age of science lessons where spotty school boys were encouraged to take their lives in their hands, then this book may be just up their street. It is a reprint of a book originally printed in a time when health and safety weren't ideas demonised in the tabloid press.It is an introductory text book to the subject of electricity, but it isn't just a dry description of what is known about electricity, it provides guidance on experiments that can be done to demonstrate the points being made. It starts with simple things like rubbing rods made of certain materials with an appropriate cloth to create a static charge, and then moves on to static electricity generators which wouldn't look out of place in a Hammer House of Horror remake of the Frankenstein canon. The point at which I recognised just how times have changed was when there were instructions for making a tin amalgam for rubbing in to a leather covered rubbing arm. Amalgams are alloys in which one component is mercury. The instructions for use involved heating tin till it was molten and then adding the mercury. The book does advise that this would need to be done in a well ventilated area, and that you would need to avoid inhalation of the vapours, but given mercury is a retentive neuro-toxin which can enter the body either as vapour or absorbed through the skin, I wouldn't like anyone trying that particularly part of the experiment at home.I haven't finished the book in the conventional sense. I haven't read it from cover to cover, but I do keep on dipping into it and reading little sections with real relish. If, like me you're a science geek who thinks that lessons in science should be fun, and that they should also contain a small measure of risk then this will probably make you smile as much as it did me.… (mer)