"The Mad Science Book" is the UK edition of the German bestseller "Das Buch der verrückten Experimente". The amazing stories of 113 strange experiments from the middle ages to today. Entertaining, mind opening, deeply researched, with original illustrations (the second volume has not yet been licensed for the UK or US. Foreign rights).
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"Do embarrassement researchers ask you to suck a pacifier in public?"
"Did Darwin play the bassoon for worms?"
Know the answers? Then you are ready for the mad experiments quiz.
The weirdest experiments
Visitors to this website voted for their favorite weird science experiment. The ranking:
1. The three Christs of Ypsilanti -Three men think they are Jesus. What happens when they meet?(1959) full story
2. Diagnosing schizophrenics with spider webs (1955) full story
3. The hanging studies (1905) full story
4. Brilliantly saying nothing. Does anyone notice? (1970) full story
5. Staying in bed for one year (1986) full story
6. Crucifiying volunteers (1984) more
English
The Mad Science Book (Quercus 2008)
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German
Das Buch der verrückten Experimente (Bertelsmann 2004)
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Das neue Buch der verrückten Experimente (Bertelsmann 2009)
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Dutch
Bizarre Wetenschap (Elmar 2004)
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Willen Weten (Elmar 2010)
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Swedish
De Galna Experimentens Bok (Fahrenheit 2006)
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Corean
매드 사이언스 북 (Puriwa Ipari 2008)
Polish
111 najbardziej szalonych eksperymentów (Proszynski 2009)
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Chinese
疯狂实验史(新知文库;) (SDX Joint Publishing Company 2009)
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Paperback Hardcover
You don't have to be an eccentric obsessive to be a scientist, but it helps...In "The Mad Science Book", Reto Schneider tells the extraordinary tales of 111 of the more unusual experiments conducted across seven centuries of science. From the attempts of the 14th-century Dominican monk Theodoric von Freiberg to discover the cause of the rainbow, to the efforts of the 20th-century psychologist Harry Harlow to be the perfect mother to a family of reluctant rhesus monkeys, these are stories that are often bizarre, sometimes mind-boggling - occasionally stomach-churning - but always divert ing, informative and enlightening. Among the myriad delights on display in this cabinet of scientific curiosities are the renowned doctor from Padua who sat in a pair of scales for 30 years, recording the minutest changes in his weight; the sheep, the duck and the rooster who became the world's first air passengers; the disgusting Dr Stubbins Ffirth, who swallowed other people's vomit in an attempt to prove that yellow fever cannot be transmitted from one person to another; the hapless soldier Alexis St Martin, left with a hole in his stomach after an accident with a musket; and the ever-optimistic Charles-Edouard Brown-Seq uard, who injected himself with essence of guinea pigs' testicles as an anti-ageing remedy. There is trivia here in abundance, but also quirky, but genuinely influential, science, notably Merrill Flood's and Melvin Dresher's experiments with choices of outcomes, which have been widely influential as game theory. A fizzing cocktail of fascinating science and rich entertainment, "The Mad Science Book" tells the extraordinary stories of some truly, madly, geeky people. | Praise Science Book of the year Bild der Wissenschaft Brilliantly entertaining Robert Matthews in The Nation I loved it Mike O'Hare in New Scientist |