Read Kitchen Pantry Scientist Physics for Kids free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Kitchen Pantry Scientist Physics for Kids by Liz Lee Heinecke is a hands-on science book for 9 year olds that pairs every experiment with the person who got there first.
The shape is the same each time. You meet a scientist. You find out what they were curious about and what they worked out. Then you build the thing they built, using whatever is already in the kitchen.
William Gilbert realised the Earth is an enormous magnet by making little magnetite spheres and watching compass needles swing towards one end of them. His lab here is a versorium, which is a strip of foil balanced on a pencil lead poked up through an upturned paper cup. Rub a balloon on your hair, hold it close, and the foil turns.
Galileo timed a swinging light fixture in Pisa cathedral using his own heartbeat. You get string, a paper clip, a few metal washers and a thirty-second timer, and you test whether doubling the weight makes it swing faster. (It doesn't.)
Isaac Newton, Laura Bassi, Count Rumford, Thomas Young, Augustin-Jean Fresnel and Michael Faraday all get a turn. Most of the kit is foil, string, tape, a nail, a balloon, a paper cup.
Every lab closes with a section called The Physics Behind the Fun, which explains in plain words what actually happened. Then there's a Creative Enrichment idea for the child who finishes and immediately wants more, like building a foil leaf electroscope out of a jam jar and a nail.
What I like is that the history isn't decoration. You find out that Galileo's books were banned, that he was arrested and told to deny his own findings or face punishment, and that he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. You find out Gilbert probably died of plague. It treats your reader as somebody who can take the real story.
A practical note. This is a doing book, not a reading book. Somebody will need to find the washers and supervise the balloon, the battery and the nail. If you hand it over expecting a quiet half hour, that isn't what you'll get.
It's the third in its series, although each lab stands on its own.
Path to the Stars is the one to reach for if this leaves them still asking questions. It's a real scientist telling her own story. Sylvia Acevedo held a kaleidoscope up to the moon in her New Mexico back garden, joined the Brownies, and grew up to build rockets.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
