How to Fossilize Your Hamster

tags: How to Fossilize Your Hamster, scientific experiments, Mick O'Hare, book review

I sometimes think that I disappoint random strangers after they find out that I am a scientist because I am not engaging in a variety of odd experiments over coffee or beer. It's true that I enjoy answering people's questions, but I only sometimes suggest fun experiments such as those described in How to Fossilize Your Hamster: And Other Amazing Experiments for the Armchair Scientist by Mick O'Hare of NewScientist magazine (NYC: Henry Holt Company; 2007).

But some scientists routinely get their friends involved in their own experiments. My favorite story was about Richard Feynman's fascination with how dry spaghetti will invariably break into at least three pieces and how, in his quest to understand this phenomenon, he invited friends over to his home to break their way through piles of spaghetti while drinking their favorite ethanolic beverages.

How to Fossilize Your Hamster is a clearly written exploration of basic scientific principles that have intrigued a wide variety of scientists such as Nobel Laureate, physicist Richard Feynman. The experiments described rely on the scientific method to get at the answers and use common household items such as dish soap, ethanol, corn starch, milk and vinegar. The experiments themselves deal with a variety of concepts ranging from the simple, such as electromagnetism, to the complex, such as fluid dynamics

After reading this book and carrying out the experiments described, you will understand why hot water freezes faster than cold water, how to weigh your own head without chopping it off, how to create your own deliciously edible fried green eggs and ham (Dr Seuss would be so proud), how to get a surprisingly accurate measurement of the speed of light using only a microwave oven and a chocolate bar, and the physical reasons that underlie a variety of important ethanol-mediated observations such as the cause of "drinker's legs" and why salted peanuts float in cheap beer. In fact, booze is a favorite subtopic throughout this entire book, and is used so effectively to illustrate various phenomena that I think every bartender in NYC should get a copy and use it to entertain their customers.

Similar to Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?, this book has one illustration. In this case, it is a hamster parachuting from the top right-hand corner of each page down into a volcano in the lower right hand corner. Just as the hamster reaches the bottom of the page, the volcano erupts and transforms the hamster into a cinder that fades away into nothing at all. Each subsequent drawing has been changed just a little so that if you flip through the pages rapidly, you can watch the hamster drift downward, being incinerated by the volcano and then fading away, just like watching a cartoon.

This 240-page paperback divides 100 simple scientific experiments along with their typically more complex explanations into seven separate chapters. Each chapter is designed around the different rooms in one's house where these experiments can be safely performed, ranging from the kitchen and bathroom to the garage and even farther afield than that.

This is such a fun book that it is difficult to imagine anyone who would not appreciate it, but I especially recommend this book for home scientists, especially those who are disappointed by their home chemistry kits, and I also think that magicians, teachers, cooks and bartenders will especially enjoy this book.

So how would one fossilize their pet hamster? Pages 171-175 describes this process in some detail, and the process itself takes tens of thousands of years to complete, so the original experimenter would not be around to enjoy the results of this particular experiment. Further, describing this process gives a person a whole new appreciation for how special and rare fossils are.

Mick O'Hare is the production editor of New Scientist magazine and editor of the two international best sellers, Does Anyting Eat Wasps? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? He lives in London.