My oldest daughter is really into “spy” stuff.  She loves the idea of forensic science.  So when we heard about the Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments, she was thrilled!  Unfortunately, it’s still a bit over her head (I think a lot of it is still over my head, to be honest), so she’ll have to wait a while before she can really make good use of it.  But it looks like a really thorough book that will provide a fun year’s science a few years down the road.

Because the experiments in this book are designed to be done at home, no extensive lab equipment is required.  Some basic home lab equipment (like a microscope) is, and there are some special chemicals that must be ordered.  The early portion of the book explains this, and points out that if you’re only planning on one or two experiments, it might be less expensive to purchase the supplies individually, but if you’re planning to use most or all of the book, you can buy everything you need in one package created for that purpose.  (If you’re using this as your science class for the year, for instance, you might want to just buy the lab kit.)

The text does a good job of walking the reader through everything, too.  At the beginning of each experiment, there are notes regarding any dangers of the particular experiment (“uses hot liquids,” for instance, “which must be handled carefully to avoid burns”) and tells you what safety equipment to use.  Then some background is given.  After that, the instructions for the experiment are provided in numbered step-by-step format.

The experiments are divided up into “lab sessions.”  Each lab session begins with a list of equipment and materials you will need, and ends with a series of review questions.

If you have a student who is into CSI, NCIS, or other similar television shows — or detective stories like Sherlock Holmes — this could be a great way to get him interested in science, or to squeeze a lab science into his transcript without having to hear complaints about it being “boring.” He’ll learn to analyze soil, hair, and fibers, recognize forgeries, develop fingerprints, reveal traces of blood, match pollen samples, match glass specimens, and more.  (If you’re looking for something more traditional, there are a few other texts in this series – like chemistry and biology experiments.)

We will be hanging onto this for lab science in a few years.

Disclosure: We were provided with a copy of the book to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.