Titles by Bobby Mercer

Unleash your inner scientist with 50 hands-on biology experiments using everyday household items!

Junk Drawer Biology makes learning fun and accessible for kids of all ages. Science educator Bobby Mercer provides step-by-step, illustrated experiments that explain the building blocks of living matter. Aspiring doctors can build a model of human lungs, budding gardeners will germinate beans, and all ages will enjoy a candy DNA model.

• Discover the human body, plants, animals, cells, and genetics.
• Modify projects to match skill levels from elementary school to teens.
• Think further and come up with more questions to answer.

Educators and parents will find this a handy resource to teach children while having a lot of fun. Perfect for ages 9-12 and anyone interested in hands-on science!

Unleash your child's inner mathematician with hands-on geometry projects!

For many children, geometry is best understood through hands-on activities. Junk Drawer Geometry provides 50 creative project ideas that make learning fun and engaging. Children will build polygons with pipe cleaners, explore Mobius strips with index cards, and model the Pythagorean Theorem with cheese crackers. Each activity includes a materials list and detailed instructions with illustrations. These projects introduce problem-solving skills and applied geometry in an exciting way.

Educators and parents will find this a handy resource to excite any classroom or home learning environment. Modify lessons for different age groups and make geometry an adventure!

A project book for young readers with a need for speed, this work provides instruction on 25 easy-to-construct racecars that can be driven both indoors and out. They will learn how to use mousetraps, rubber bands, chemical reactions, gravity, and air pressure to power the cars that are made for little or no cost using recycled and repurposed materials. Readers will discover how to turn a potato chip can, a rubber band, and weights into a Chip-Can Dancer; retrofit a car with a toy plane propeller to make an air-powered Prop Car; and use an effervescent tablet in a small canister to make an impressive rocket engine for a Mini Pop Car. Each project is accompanied by a materials list, detailed step-by-step instructions with photos, and explanations of the science behind each racecar, including concepts such as friction, Newton’s laws of motion, and kinetic and potential energy.

How to use reuse and recycle components and supplies to build a variety of devices

The 20 easy-to-build robots in this project book can be constructed for little or no cost using common household objects and repurposed materials. From learning how to turn a toothbrush, an old cell phone or pager, and scrap wire into a Brush Bot, or how to hack a toy car to hotwire a Not-So-Remote Bot, each hands-on project contains a materials list and detailed step-by-step instructions with photos. Explanations of the science and technology behind each robot—including concepts such as friction, weight and mass, center of gravity, kinetic and potential energy, electric circuitry, DC vs. AC current, and more—are also included.