by Ken Silverstein

How would you like to come home one day and find people from the Environmental Protection Agency in your neighbor’s yard wearing those hazmat suits that they only wear when dealing with some kind of horrible disease or nuclear accident? Well, this actually happened to the residents of Golf Manor, which is near Detroit, Michigan. The folks from the EPA were busy cutting up a shed and sealing away all the parts in big canisters with radioactive warning signs on them.

What happened? Well, the seventeen-year-old boy who lived next door, David Hahn, was building a nuclear reactor in his back yard. Why? Well, he had always loved chemistry, and he may have been worried about the world eventually running out of oil. He was also a boy scout, and he had enjoyed getting his Atomic Energy badge, and he wanted to become an Eagle Scout. Very few scouts become Eagle Scouts, since it involves a really big project. Ideally, the project does not involve breaking federal laws and endangering the lives of 40,000 people, but David figured that making a nuclear reactor would still be the biggest Eagle Scout project ever.

You aren’t supposed to be able to get the material to build a nuclear reactor in the Unite States if you aren’t officially approved by the federal government, but that didn’t stop David. He pretended to be a high school science teacher (and eventually a college professor) when he wrote to various scientists for advice. He got a list of ordinary household items that contain radioactive materials, bought them in bulk, and extracted the radioactive elements. He bought or stole smoke detectors to get americium-241. Apparently he got a hundred broken smoke detectors for $1 each by claiming they were for a school project. He took tiny amounts of tritium from the sights of glow-in-the-dark plastic guns, wrote to the manufacturers claiming the sights were damaged, had them replaced, and took that tritium, too. He scraped the paint off glow-in-the-dark alarm clock hands because it contained radium-226. These clocks don’t really contain a lot of radium, but David managed to find a lot of spare paint in a clock at an antique store.

He used blowtorches, aluminum foil, coffee filters, and other household items to refine the radioactive materials he needed. Amazingly enough, most of his crazy ideas worked. He eventually decided to build a breeder reactor, which is a nuclear reactor that generates power and makes more radioactive fuel for itself. He never got the energy part working, but he did get it to produce more fuel.

Eventually David decided that the dangerous levels of radiation might be a little too dangerous, so he dismantled his reactor and put parts of it in the trunk of his car. While he was doing this, the police showed up. They were looking for a kid who was stealing tires, but they decided to check David out. You can guess what happened when he told them not to open the toolbox because it was radioactive.

There’s much more to the story, but you’ve got to read it yourself. If they put this stuff in a movie (and they might), nobody would believe it.

While this book is about science, it is not a science textbook. There are some big words, but you don’t need to know very much to enjoy the story, and what you do need to know will be explained. Basically, as long as you know that building a nuclear reactor in your bad yard is not a safe idea, you already know most of the science you need. You might even learn a thing or two. Just don’t try this at home.

You can read the first chapter online at the publisher’s website.

This book came from an article that Ken Silverstein wrote for Harper’s Magazine. You an read that article at the Harper’s site.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Antioch	.	621.483 SILVERSTEIN	In library
Concord	.	621.483 SILVERSTEIN	In library
Danville	.	621.483 SILVERSTEIN	In library
Lafayette	.	621.483 SILVERSTEIN	In library
Orinda	.	621.483 SILVERSTEIN	In library
Pittsburg	.	621.483 SILVERSTEIN	In library

This list was last updated May 8, 2012 at 8:13 am UTC. Click here to see newer information.

by James Kakalios

James Kakalios teaches a class called “Everything I Know About Science I Learned from Reading Comic Books.” Seriously. It’s basically a regular physics class, except that instead of all the stupid examples they use in regular physics classes, he uses crazy examples from superhero comics. The Physics of Superheroes does much the same thing, although it is not a textbook.

The book stats with a short history of superhero comics. Then it looks at different superheroes and superpowers and uses them to talk about different physics topics. Fortunately, the author is a huge comic book fan, so he does not start off the section on Superman by saying, “There’s no way Superman could do any of the stuff you see in the comics. It’s not possible, and here’s why.” Instead, he tells us how (in comic book world) Superman got is powers, focuses on “leaping tall buildings in a single bound,” and uses Newton’s laws to figure out just how strong Superman would have to be to jump that high. He doesn’t just connect superheroes with the basic laws of physics, though. He also works in modern technology, basically using superheroes and supervillains to explain how things like airbags and microwaves work.

The author says you don’t need to know anything about physics (or comic books) to read this. That’s probably true. He also says that, basically, all you need to know about math is

1. 1/2 + 1/2 = 1

2. so 2 times 1/2 = 1
3. and whatever you do to one side of that equation, you have to do to the other.

You might encounter more complicated stuff than this, but the author claims you can skip it. That may be true, too, but I’m not sure. One thing that you should know that he doesn’t warn you about is that he writes like a college teacher. He is much easier to read than any of your college textbooks, but it’s more complicated than Harry Potter. Fortunately, he has good sense of humor and some really interesting topics.

You can read an excerpt online at the author’s website. Or, if you have a student or employee ID for LMC, DVC, or CCC, you can read the whole thing online. Neat!

Where to Find It

You can get it from the school library.

School	Location	Call Number	Status
Los Medanos College	Stacks	QC24.5 .K35 2006	AVAILABLE

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Antioch	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Clayton	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Concord	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Danville	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Dougherty Station (San Ramon)	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Hercules	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Lafayette	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Moraga	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Oakley	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Pleasant Hill	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Richmond	Main Adult Books	530.0711 Kakalios	CHECK SHELF
San Pablo	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
San Ramon	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library
Walnut Creek Park Place	.	530.071 KAKALIOS	In library

This list was last updated May 8, 2012 at 5:49 am UTC. Click here to see newer information.