Stories
- In pictures
Laughing gas and the scientific pursuit of the sublime
Part science lecture. part public spectacle, thanks to chemist Humphry Davy the 19th-century craze for inhaling nitrous oxide rapidly spread from the science laboratory to fashionable salons and homes of the day, and onto the popular stage.
- Article
Acid and the sexual psychonauts
How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.
- Article
Bringing biotech to the people
Amateur scientists have inspired all kinds of frightening scenarios, from Frankenstein’s monster to ‘The Fly’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. But it can be a force for good. Today’s DIYbio enthusiasts are having fun – and even making lucrative breakthrough discoveries.
- Article
Artificial intelligence and the dream of eternal life
Until now, eternal life was the stuff of fiction, or in the unknowable realms of religion. But an artificial intelligence that ‘remembers’ the whole of an individual’s experience could be the way to life after death.
Catalogue
- Books
- Online
Scientific recreations in philosophy and mathematics. Including arithmetic, acoustics, electricity, magnetism, optics, pneumatics; together with amusing secrets in various branches of science: the whole calculated, to form an agreeable and improving exercise for the mind / [William Enfield].
Enfield, William, 1741-1797.Date: 1825- Books
Popular scientific recreations in natural philosophy, astronomy, geology, chemistry, etc., etc., etc. / translated and enlarged from "Les récréations scientifiques" of Gaston Tissandier.
Tissandier, Gaston, 1843-1899.Date: 1885- Books
- Online
Recreations mathematical and physical; laying down, and solving many profitable and delightful problems of arithmetick, geometry, opticks, gnomonicks, cosmography, mechanicks, physicks, and pyrotechny. By Monsieur Ozanam, professor of the mathematicks at Paris. Done into English, and illustrated with very many cuts.
Ozanam, Jacques, 1640-1717.Date: [1708]- Books
- Online
Rational recreations, in which the principles of numbers and natural philosophy are clearly and copiously elucidated, by a series of easy, entertaining, interesting experiments. Among which are all those commonly performed with the cards. By W. Hooper, M.D.
Hooper, William, M.D.Date: MDCCLXXXVII. [1787]- Books
- Online
Rational recreations, in which the principles of numbers and natural philosophy are clearly and copiously elucidated, by a series of easy, entertaining, interesting experiments. Among which are all those commonly performed with the cards. By W. Hooper, M.D.
Hooper, William, M.D.Date: MDCCLXXIV. [1774]