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Try Edmond Scientifics: http://www.scientificsonline.c...

Heh depending on your definitions my parents bought one for me when I was in 7th grade. Ordered it right out of a catalog. The company still sells them: http://www.scientificsonline.com/motor-driven-van-de-graff.html

Price has gone up, a bit, and the look redesigned, but, still is what it is:

Amusing bit from wikipedia:

One of Van de Graaff's accelerators used two charged domes of sufficient size that each of the domes had laboratories inside - one to provide the source of the accelerated beam, and the other to analyze the actual experiment. The power for the equipment inside the domes came from generators that ran off the belt, and several sessions came to a rather gruesome end when a pigeon would try to fly between the two domes, causing them to discharge. (The accelerator was set up in an airplane hangar.)[5]

The newer designs seem more...enclosed...

No problem!

Here is the PDF pieces of CARDIAC:
http://web.mit.edu/kmill/www/hardware/hardware.html

Additionally, you can purchase an original kit for $15 from:
http://www.scientificsonline.com/cardiac-illustrated-computation-aid.html

I still have mine on a bookshelf at home. It was an amazing little kit to me when I was 15, and still no less impressive today.

Enjoy!

I still have mine- nice plastic and metal computer.

You can still get CARDIAC paper kits, BTW, somewhere online.

http://www.scientificsonline.com/cardiac-illustrated-computation-aid.html

While it's not at all what you want, there is an electronics equivalent to erector set: Snap Circuits.

It's a real shame we didn't have things like this when we were kids. It would have saved many small appliances from destruction.

In 2000 Edmund Scientific was purchased by Science Kit and Boreal Laboratories, a western New York based science supply company. Science Kit and Boreal Laboratories is part of a group of companies that provide science supplies to elementary, middle, and high schools as well as colleges and universities.

Edmund Scientific sells high quality beginner and student microscopes in all price ranges.

Edmund's prepared slide sets have been in their catalogs for decades. You really can't go wrong here.

It looks like Edmund Scientific has some. Not sure which one is best though. http://www.scientificsonline.com/robotics.html/

You might take a look at Edmund Scientific ( http://scientificsonline.com/ ). They have a lot of science-oriented toys. When I was a kid, I was also fascinated by erector sets and Tinker Toys. As others have pointed out, not every kid is going to want or like educational toys. But it doesn't usually take long to figure out which is which. My grandson, aged six, when given a choice of toys, wanted a volcano kit. A trip to the observatory to see a large telescope, and a chance to look through smaller telescopes was the neatest thing ever. Conversely, I have another grandson who has little interest in such things, and is much more thrilled musical instruments.

Shape-memory alloys have been around for decades, but there are almost no applications for them. Yes, they change shape when heated, and return to the original shape when cooled. So do bimetallic strips, used in thermostats since 1880 or so. There are some toy engines based on this. Some flapping-wing devices have been built in toy size, but they're not strong enough to take off. There was some NASA enthusiasm for using this effect to control minor airfoils on aircraft, but that never went very far.

As actuators, SMAs are inefficient. You can run a current through an SMA wire, and after a while, it changes shape. That's because of resistive heating raising the temperature of the metal. Most of the electrical energy goes into waste heat, so this is far less efficient than an ordinary motor or solenoid. Then you have to wait for it to cool down, so cycle times are slow. Some small valves have been built; with SMA wire in liquid, the cool-down times are fast enough to be useful.

It's dependent on the output of the solar cell. Instructables.com has quite a few of these how-to's, look for one that offers 12v. You could pick up one of these and some Velcro and be in business, however I imagine you would still need to rig some form of connector, and most likely a voltage regulator. plus you still wouldn't be able to plug the netbook right into it, as a solar panel does a trickle charge, rather than a steady wattage to the device. You would need to plug the battery into the device (which probably means having two batteries)

50W lightbulb using a common 2L Bottle

This is basically functioning in the same way as a ship's Deck Prism. These were big glass blocks that were used in ships as a way to guide and diffuse light below decks. Edmund Scientific sells them:
http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3038621

A catalog from Edmunds Scientifics A Dream Machine for kids of all ages. http://scientificsonline.com/Default.asp?bhcd2=1260840634

I would suggest shopping at: http://www.telescope.com/ or http://scientificsonline.com/

Edmund Scientifics offers a tremendous assortment of science tools, kits and toys suitable for kids of all ages. From the time I was in elementary school until high school, most of my wish list came out of their catalog. They will likely have something that will satisfy your budding geeks.

As a kid decades back, I LOVED paging through Edmund Scientific catalogs.

Now, as an adult, go visit their site: http://scientificsonline.com/

If you can't find anything there, you're not looking hard enough!

Some of my favs, in no particular order:
1) Chemistry set
2) Electronics set
3) Rocket kit (build and launch)
4) RC Plane kit (build and fly)
5) One really cool gift was a big kit with a toolbox, various wood, paint, and a book of all the different things you can build. Things like a wooden clock (it included the electronics part, you just built the face and painted it). A bird house.

Check out http://scientificsonline.com/ for more ideas

Tell you what, CastrTroy, I'll give you a telescope that is the equal to what Harriot used (a telescope, by the way, that's inferior to even the cheapest toy telescope sold by Edmund Scientific.) a pencil and a pad of paper, and lets see YOU do a better job of mapping the Lunar surface.

Assuming sufficient and sufficiently geeky parental involvement, there are lots of cool things from United Nuclear. http://www.unitednuclear.com/

A collection of the smaller magnets and some ferrofluid are a pretty good combination. Ferrofluid has aproximatly the same danger and potential for mess as old engine oil, so depending on the kid you might need to supervise it. A variety of magnets also add variety to a ROMP set. http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp?eid=EID02&pn=3082172

You might also try throwing some mechanical puzzles at him. One that I particularly like can be found at http://stores.brilliantpuzzles.com/-strse-212/Internal-Combustion-Metal-Puzzle/Detail.bok but there are many.

This delightful "toy" planetarium sells for $130-$170.

$325 for the Homestar Pro. Moon Disk and three white LEDs for projection.

Homestar Optical System, Sega Homestar Pro Home Planetarium

Designed by Takayuki Ohira, [credited] by the Guinness Book of World Records as the builder of the "world's most advanced planetarium" for exhibitions and museums, it projects a realistic image of the heavens--over 10,000 stars--as they appear without light pollution. It can accept one of two high-resolution image disks that are illuminated by a bright LED built into the globe and projected onto walls or ceilings by an optical-quality adjustable focus lens, providing a completely accurate view of the visible band of the Milky Way galaxy seen from the Northern hemis phere. The planetarium has a whisper-quiet motor that slowly simulates the turning of the earth by making the image projected move across a wall or ceiling. It can also randomly generate a simulated meteor that streaks across the ceiling. Includes AC adapter. Ages 10 and up, meets U.S. Federal toy safety standards for lead. 6 1/2" Diam. globe with stand. (3 1/2 lbs.)

When I was a kid (which was a long time ago, stop laughing) these were the companies I dealt with, at least these are still in business.

Edmund Scientifics:
http://scientificsonline.com/category.asp_Q_c_E_421187

Sciencekit:
http://sciencekit.com/plastic-gears/p/IG0030524/

Also check Radio Control models which uses these gears for their motors:

Tower Hobbies:
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/listings/rcpsmfgs.html

Transmissions, differentials, and front wheel spindles on RWD cars ready for the crusher.

Did you see the site he linked?
Car parts will be way too big compared to the examples he has used.

I'd say he's looking for anything from hobby quality RC parts (small) up to motorcycle & atv parts (medium).
So the place to look would be hobby shops and motorcycle/offroad repair shops.
I leave out bicycles because they won't have the range of parts he's looking for.

That said, I don't think he's going to find anything in the small-medium range which can handle 550 ft-lbs of torque. Most cars can't handle that much torque. But 1 HP shouldn't be a problem.

Uh, people...

Hasn't anyone thought about getting a cheap lens and holding it just in front of the iPhone's camera so that it can focus at macro distances? Sure, it would have to be the right size and thickness but if scanning barcodes with an iPhone is that important to someone then this is one workable solution. One good source for lenses is Edmund Scientific http://scientificsonline.com/.

I'm not sure why your comment was modded 'funny' as opposed to 'insightful' -- because if it isn't stopped early, that /will/ be what happens in a few years or sooner. Best of all is the way the spokesperson justifies it: The sound isn't rattling your skull, it's not penetrating you, it's not doing anything nefarious at all. It's just like having a flashlight vs. a light bulb," he said.

Yeah. Right. A 28,000 candlepower halogen flashlight, shined right in my fucking eyes in the middle of a moonless night.

A comment found in the OP link cites Edmunds Scientific as offering a great chemistry kit: get them while you can! Alarmed by this thread, I ordered one for myself. Gee, hope I can still take my scientific mind outside the country. Hate to wind up on that pesky no-fly list along with, what's it up to, sixty thousand other risky suspects, all for ordering a *real* chemistry set.

United Nuclear

Well some one beat me to the punch on this. Good luck trying to find the more restrictive elements however, theres an unfinished tutorial on how to extract pure uranium from bulk ore, now all they need to do is show how to make centrifuges and a nuclear reactor. Although I almost got the chance to help design a lead cooled reactor.

You can also try this set, but I would rather have my own reactor in my backyard selling power, granted Nevada power doesn't pay jack squat after a certain amount when it comes to selling power from alternative sources.

C3000 Set

the best scope is the scope you use

I know that this isn't what you're looking for, but the answer to your question is "$22.50" : http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_30 72375

Now the cool thing, of course, would be to use the iPod as the audio portion of a Geiger counter—maybe write a meter-face and radiation level recording app for it. It turns out that modern Geiger counter circuits are readily available as finished devices, in kit form, or even as a do-it-yourself project. (The suggested schematic is a bit retro: with a more modern boost converter you could conceivably get it even smaller and simpler.) I don't have the time right now, but someone should give this a go and let us /.ers know how it went.

I wasn't going to get into the whole "is 25 years appropriate" arguement, but since you asked ...

I don't think FPMITA prison is appropriate for this doofus. Take away his lasers. He's a fiber optic tech (or something related?) Take away his access to lasers. Force a career change on him. Tatoo "asshat" on his forehead. House arrest with a tracking collar would probably do fine. A year of intense scrutiny will alter his outlook, and that's the point, right? This guy's probably more ignorant than fundamentally evil. A prison sentence makes you and me pay (financially) for his transgression. I'm not interested in that. Prison should be reserved for truely violent and dangerous folks.

If he does it *again* after all that, then it's definitely malicious. Toss him in the clink if he even *looks* at an Edmund Scientific catalog ...

I have a couple of 12" fresnel lenses-- they were all of $10 each from edmund scientific when I was in college. Looks like they have 11" square fresnels for $5 now.

Their industrial optics catalog can probably get you larger ones.

The 11" square is enough to melt pennies, and you don't have to be nearly as patient as you would have to with a piddly 4" round glass lens. I recommend adding a pair of welding goggles to the box when you give it to your kids as a present, though-- the "bright spot" it makes is more than a little bit dangerous to look at, even indirectly.

The home hobby branch of the company lives on here:
http://scientificsonline.com/

Firstly: It appears we have some of the stuff wrapped in aluminium foil and aren't entirely sure where it is.

Try one of these.

...I have a cheaper solution than NASA. It would cost 80 billion less, too.

Only for astronauts who demand better things in life.

You may also want to look at Edmund's general science offerings (which include microscopes and accessories) at their Scientifics Online website.

It's probably not technically a perpetual motion machine, but stores like Science World and such, have little solar whirligigs (don't know the actual term) which are evacuated glass globes with 4 little paddles, dark on one side, light on the other. The paddles sit on top of a needle... Heck, a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Another good source is Edmund's Scientifics.

So called "childrens" chemistry and electronics sets are perfectly good for adult too.

Not long ago, I was inspired to romp thru the Edmund Scientifics catalog for the first time in [grfmbl] years. It was sad. The legal profession has clearly held more than a couple gang-bangs with ES as guest of honor. Chemistry sets without so much as an alcohol burner!? Chemicals (apparently) diluted to near-homeopathic levels!? My kiddie chem set (ca. 1966) included a vial of sodium cyanide - stick THAT in your pipe and...well, maybe that's a bad idea. And that's my point. Elementary chemistry is as much about laboratory safety as anything else, and how can you learn that with equipment & procedures that are about as hazardous as Play-Doh?

I'm with the earlier poster - build up your own lab (Daigger is a decent source of equipment & basic chemicals) and find a couple of good demonstration experiment texts that'll provide entertainment while you learn.

DDB (who may still have that old Heathkit catalog offering a build-it-yourself particle accelerator. *sigh*.)

As a kid I loved the Edmund Scientifics catalog (thanks to my grandparents) and guess what... they do indeed have a website.

I spent a total of five minutes and found gyroscopes, gears, pulleys

If ES is too high-tech, there's a great site dedicated to "Science Toys You Can Make wWith Your Kids". Instructions on building kaleidoscopes can be found there.

Oh hell, or just look here

Actually, this is one of the few cases wherein if you don't trust the gub'mint (setter of standards for rad-leakage) or the corporates (laptop manufacturer), you can just as easily verify for yourself.

Alpha: If you're not convinced from the laws of physics that alphas will be stopped by the casing of your laptop, build a cloud chamber with some dry ice and alcohol, and sit your laptop on top of it. Observe the lack of straight fat traces emanating from your laptop.

Beta: Ditto. You can also build a detector for charged particles out of gold leaf and leave it next to your laptop for a few hours, or you can just eyeball your cloud chamber for longer traces with occasional kinks as electrons are deflected in the medium.

Gamma: OK, your cloud chamber won't work as well here, so drop $300 for a pocket geiger counter from a place like Edmund Scientific. (It slices, it dices, it's something no kid who grew up during the Cold War should be without! :-)

Cloud chambers are easy to build, and fun to watch. Get an old radium-dial watch or clock, place a blue LED next to it, and you've got yourself a "nuclear lava lamp".

Case modders alert! You could replace the top flat part of a PC with it and the cool air from the base of the chamber would ooze down into your case, providing a little bit of extra cooling. along with one hell of a l33t case mod - permanently mount your rad-source in the middle of the chamber, mask off and paint a "radioactive" symbol in the plexiglass cover, with a small source directly beneath the center of the rad-symbol, and illuminate it with a one of those traffic-light/borg-cube-green LEDs, and bring a few blocks of dry ice to the LAN party! W00T!

OK, back on topic. The bottom line is that measuring the amount of ionizing radiation leacking from a nuke-powered laptop is trivial, and if you compare the (lack of) radiation coming from your laptop from the (big pile of) background radiation coming from the bricks in your house, the glaze on your grandma's dishes, and the potassium in that bundle of bananas, or just from living in the Rockies, you just might learn something about risk assessment - something about which those in the knee-jerk anti-nuclear movement would prefer to keep you in the dark.

other memorable demonstrations from 9th grade science class:

put a feather in a vacuum chamber and watch it fall as fast as a rock.

fill a mason jar with pure oxygen, light a piece of steel wool (which will have a very feeble red glow where you lit it, if anything) and then put it in the pure oxygen. It lights up real good.

fill a mason jar with pure hydrogen and then open the jar and light it up. It just makes a big bang if memory serves.

(there are probably safety considerations with the last two which I'm forgetting.)

Someone already mentioned the gas can filled with boiling water which you seal and then cool it down to cause the gas can to be crushed by atmospheric pressure. That was another good one, from high school chemistry.

Also in high school chemistry we had an "acid tasting experiment" which I don't recommend you try. :) We tasted successively stronger acids until we got to hydrocloric acid, as I recall. I just got a slight whiff of that one, not a real good taste.

There are a lot of good little science toys, I mean demonstrations, at Scientifics Online. The van de graaf generator is cool, of course. There is also a magnetic levitator which is very cool, but its scientific value is unclear. :)

Here is my entry. =)

Edmund Scientific sells a ton of this kind of stuff. Their stereo microscope page lists stuff ranging from about $150 to $1000. Take your choice.

I recall long hours of drooling over everything in the Edmund catalog when I was a kid. Heck, their catalog (and web site) is still worth some time drooling over. So many toys, so little money, sigh...

Nah, they're still open, but their soul is gone.

When I was a kid, the Edmund catalog was the best thing in the world. That's where my birthday and christmas presents would come from. I had one of the big red fishing magnets, fresnel lenses, prisms, crystal growing kits, that flying saucer kite, and a crapload of surplus electronic and military gizmos.

I still want the Astroscan Telescope and some big lasers, but it's just not the same anymore.

IMHO, they jumped the shark when they put a french maid costume in the catalog. I remember my dad trying to explain what that was all about... =)

Check this out.

Pricey, though, at $499 before the PC adapter ($169)

However it is wirelessly connected to its sensors.

Gotta come right back at you...

I never said get a 12 inch CAT instead of binoculars. I said get a telescope.

You suggest 10x50's. Have you checked the weight on those puppies? Well, let's go to Orion's website and see. BTW, if you MUST get binocs, Orion makes some damn fine ones. Don't go to KMart and buy Tasco crap if you can help it. Anyway, here's Orion's website.

This page says that 10x50 binocs weigh 28 ounces. That's almost 2 pounds! Now how long is that going to be comfortable to hold over your head? Not long. Observing with unmounted binoculars is a great way to get someone to dislike Astronomy.

I'd recommend a small dobsonian, say a 4.5 inch or a 6 inch. Another great scope (which I own) is the Edmund Scientific Astroscan. It's a 4.5 inch Newtonian in a funky looking mount that is incredibly stable and easy to use. The magnification with the eyepiece that comes with it is 16X, which is PERFECT for a beginner.

Here is the Astroscan's page on Edmund's site. I cannot recommend this scope highly enough. It will show you far more than binoculars, you don't have to hold heavy binoculars over your head, it's a real telescope, it's quality built, it's easy to use, it has nice bright images (I can easily see the Veil with mine), it has very very easy setup, it's easy to find objects in the sky (it has a 3 degree field of view), it's completely manual (making the process of learning the sky a PART of observing rather than a tedious memorization process), and it's inexpensive.