What causes an avalanche? Find out when you make one. What’s happening during a lunar eclipse? Find out when you recreate it in your living room. How is rocket fuel different from regular fuel? Find out when you build your rocket out of a soda bottle. How long will it take a pizza to be delivered? It doesn’t matter once you’ve built a solar pizza cooker.

Easy booktalk on the title alone, though the book itself is maybe a little dense to read through for all but the most intrepid of young scientists. I suspect most middle-schoolers will skip over the history and the explanation of the science to get to the good parts: the experiments in which they blow stuff up, launch objects, or build machines. ( )