Product Description

Do you know how to make something that can tell whether the $20 bill in your wallet is a fake? Or how to generate battery power with simple household items? Or how to create your own home security system? Science-savvy author cy Tymony does. And now you can learn how to create these things - and more than 40 other handy gadgets and gizmos - in Sneaky Uses For Everyday Things. More than a simple do-it-yourself guide, this quirky collection is a valuable resource for transforming ordinary objects into the extraordinary. With over 80 solutions and bonus applications at your disposal, you will be ready for almost any situation. Included are survival, security, self-defense, and silly applications that are just plain fun. You'll be seen as a superhero as you amaze your friends by: Transforming a simple FM radio into a device that enables you to eavesdrop on tower-to-air conversations; Creating your own personalized electronic greeting cards; Making a compact fire extinguisher from items typically found in a kitchen pantry; Thwarting intruders with a single rubber band. By using run-of-the-mill household items and the easy-to-follow instructions and diagrams within, you'll be able to complete most projects in just a few minutes. Whether you use Sneaky Uses For Everyday Things as a practical tool to build useful devices, a fun little fantasy escape, or as a trivia guide to impress friends and family, this book is sure to be a reference favorite for years to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7624 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780740738593
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Offering readers a chance to become real-life MacGyvers, Tymony (Computer Gamer's Survival Guide) shares a mixed bag of useful and useless tricks. The book, which may remind 007s-in-training of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, offers sections on gimmicks, gadgets and survival techniques (the last section is by far the most valuable). Tymony's tips for fashioning gel packs for swollen muscles (out of water, rubbing alcohol and a plastic bag) and for making a fire extinguisher out of kitchen supplies (with baking soda and vinegar) are undoubtedly functional. But other suggestions, such as placing bubble wrap underneath a doormat to alert you when someone's standing on the other side of your door, or making a videotape rewinder out of a paper clip and a hanger, are somewhat farfetched. Still, adventurous, inquisitive teens may delight in a book that shows them how to "use ordinary objects as sneaky weapons."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Cy Tymony has been creating useful high-and low-tech inventions all his life. By reading comic books as a kid and studying scientific techniques, he bridged science and fiction to amaze his friends. He's authored three books and more than a dozen articles on science and computer science. His technical wizardry has landed him on ABC-TV's AM Chicago and in features in the Chicago Tribune and Future Life magazine. He lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Compeletely useless
With maybe the exception of 5 year olds, this "book" is completely useless. I've had it for 20 minutes and its going in the garbage. Nothing inside this "book" isn't plain ol' common sense. Some of the highlights of this book are:

Using Ordinary Objects as Sneaky Weapons - You can throw coins at an assailant to "stun and throw him or her off balance." Yeah right, that'll work!

Sneaky Wire Sources Are Everywhere - Big surprise, you can use tin foil and speaker wire as spare wire.

Make a Portable Light - Tape a flashlight light bulb to a battery. Wow, that's amazing!

And the most amazing part of the "book":
Capture Break ins On Film - Great project if you don't mind having a large eye sore built next to your door, and the burglar is too dumb to take the disposable camera with him after his picture has been taken.

This is my first time writing a review for anything, but I felt I had for this "book" because its so ridiculous. Even the couple useful things like turning milk into plastic can be found on the web. Obviously the author made up most of this stuff off the top of his head, or found a couple useful things on the web and published it as a "book".

Be a hero to your kid / Do things on the cheap
This book isn't / doesn't include 1500 uses for vinegar or how toothpaste gets rid of pimples.

Nope, this book and it's sequel (Sneakier Uses ... ) is chock full of simple gadgets and science experiments you can build in your home using coins, magnets, leaves, etc. Any boy and a lot of girls would love to spend time with a parent, uncle/aunt or godparent putting this Spy Stuff/Survival Equipment/Home Security Systems together.

Included are sneaky sources of power (a battery using coins or fruit); how to scavenge wire (to connect your sneaky battery to something); how to use Mother Nature to help you survive in the wilderness; build radios, amplifiers and wireless microphones (baby monitor?); lights, alarms, telescope. There is also a "Green Lantern" magic ring to control the objects you make.

So let's see: Build useful stuff for the home, office, outdoors; spend time with your kids; teach them some science, creativity, frugality, recycling, how to protect themselves, how to survive. That makes this quite a full package.

When I let one youngster read the table of contents it elicited a series of "ooo's" from him. But you can judge for yourself by using the "Search Inside" feature above.

Just the entry on making your own form-fitting ice pack to place on your strains and sprains makes it worth the price!

As for some previous comments, they are cynical and have no soul and no imagination. They knock the book as nothing more than common sense. I'd like to have seen one make a radio from a toilet paper roll and a penny with no directions, just common sense. I've got a fairly broad science background and it wouldn't occur to me, particularly not in a pinch of, say, no electricity due to approaching hurricane and I want to hear the warning broadcast. Using a plastic bag and plants to get drinking water is common sense? As for web sites, who is going to think: "Gee, I need to fix the chip in this picture frame. I've got some milk. Maybe I can log on and find a web site that will tell me how to make a maleable plastic compound out of milk." Common sense just isn't all that common, anyway.

A little silly, but fun
This book is a sort of training manual for MacGyver wannabes. It's a collection of low-tech, cheap little projects that one can do in order to simulate "real" technology. You could certainly use some of these in an emergency, which is what the author suggests, but that's not really the point of the book in my view.

The real use would be for kids-- or, even better, kids and parents-- who want to mess around with some every day items in ways they haven't previously, have some fun, and enjoy some "Wow! Look at that!" moments. Had the author designed the book explicitly for that purpose, many of the negative reviews here wouldn't have been written.

So, the book is both pretty silly and enjoyable, but it's not any sort of survival manual. A word of advice: Avoid the sequel; the author used all of his good ideas in this volume.