QUICK SHOPPING
Defending Your Castle
| Item #: | 059836 |
|---|---|
| ISBN: | 9781613746820 |
| Grades: | 9-AD |
Product Description:
In your deepest imaginations, have you ever considered how to best protect your homestead from ancient (and not so ancient) invaders? Your home is your castle and engineer/author, William Gurstelle, author of Backyard Ballistics, has developed a defensive plan to protect the people and possessions you love most. With a quick intro and general safety guidelines, each chapter looks at historical events and situations before providing you with clear, step-by-step instructions, diagrams and photographs for creating a fully-fortified home. Topically, you will learn about Genghis Khan and the Mongols, while learning to build a catapult, a crossbow and a smoke bomb; Attila the Hun while devising a hidden book safe and palisade wall; Alexander the Great-making a bullet proof shield; as well as many other defensive devices. The author also explains the science behind many projects, making this a valuable supplement to your history or science curricula or an appealing father-son project book as they strive to defend their home at all costs against the invading hordes, and learn just a bit more about ourselves, our history and the sciences! 168 pgs, sc. ~ Deanne
Publisher Description:
Your home is your castle, but could it withstand an attack by Attila and the Huns, Ragnar and the Vikings, Alexander and the Greeks, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, or Tamerlane and the Tartars? Engineer William Gurstelle, author of the bestselling Backyard Ballistics, poses this fascinating question to modern-day garage warriors and shows how to build an arsenal of ancient artillery and fortifications aimed at withstanding these invading hordes. Each chapter introduces new bad actors in the history of warfare, details their conquests, and features weapons and fortifications to defend against themculminating, by the end of the book, in a fully fortified home. Clear step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and photographs explain how to build a dozen projects from table-top models of the Cheval-de-frise, Da Vinci's Catapult, and Alexander's Tortoise to the fullsize working Carpini's Crossbow, Hour-Glass Watchtower, and Palisade Wall. With a strong emphasis on safety, this book also gives tips on troubleshooting, explains the physics behind many of the projects, and shows where to find the best materials. It's sure to be an indispensible guide for at-home defenders everywhere.
Science is all around us, so Explore! Each book contains 25 projects in an easy to follow format and provides simple, hands-on opportunities in a variety of science areas. Make a mold of an animal track or build a terrarium to see the water cycle in action in Rivers and Ponds. Create shadow puppets or plant a garden that blooms at night in Night Science! Make your own stalactite or grow your own crystals in Rocks and Minerals. Construct a simple circuit, paperclip switch and a solar oven in Electricity. For each chapter in the book, textual information is included with vocabulary words listed in bold with definitions. Projects are listed along with a supply list and numbered instructions. A glossary, resource page, and index are found at the back of the book. Great resources to enhance your science or unit studies and bring some fun back to science! Approx. 90 pgs each. PB. ~Donna/Deanne
