In its first English incarnation, "amateur" could be used to mean "lover" or "admirer," which is of course the sense used in 1863 by Mrs. T.W. Atkinson when she remarked "I am no amateur of these melons" in her "Recollections of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants." (Who among us doesn't shed a little tear when we read Mrs A's convoluted prose? We'll never see her like again!)

These days "amateur" has mutated into a word with a number of meanings, including referring to "A person who engages in an art, science, or athletic activity as a hobby as opposed to a profession." Of course this incarnation still relates to the word's original roots, in that, ultimately, an amateur is someone who does something for the love of it.

The end of an era!

Ever since its debut in 1928, the "Amateur Scientist" column in Scientific American magazine has provided the perfect "how-to" resource for citizen-scientists. In addition to stimulating hundreds of thousands of science fair projects, the column has inspired innumerable amateur experiments and provided seeds that launched many careers.

For more years than I care to remember I used to really enjoy running across this column. Not that I actually constructed any of the apparatus or performed any of the experiments myself, you understand. Still, it was strangely reassuring to know that I had the ability to fabricate something like an electromagnetic gun that could fire nails at the speed of sound in the comfort of my front room should I so desire.

Sad to relate, "The Amateur Scientist" is no more. The last time the column appeared in print was in the March 2001 issue of the magazine. And the very last column of all appeared in the e-bulletin board associated with the November 2001 copy. At that time it was intended to keep the electronic version alive, but lack of time and resources prevented it from going forwards.

Strange as it seems to me now, like many readers I didn't really notice the column's passing. It was only recently when I was chatting to the guys and gals at the Tinkers Guild that I realized that I hadn't seen its familiar banner for quite some time. And of course, as soon as I realized that the Amateur Scientist was no longer with us I started to miss it dreadfully (isn't that always the way of things)?

Turn that frown upside down ...

But turn that frown upside down into a smile, because I am the bearer of glad tidings. The folks at the Tinkers Guild have recently released "The Amateur Scientist 2.0 Science Fair Edition", which contains two jolly interesting CDs. The first — which runs on Macintosh, Windows, and Linux platforms (I love that) — contains every "Amateur Scientist" column ever published. That's over 1,100 projects in all, covering every major field of science!

This CD supports multiple search techniques. If you simply wish to be exposed to a wide variety of "stuff," then all you have to do is select the "Browse By Decade" option by clicking one of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, or 2000s buttons and then scan through the ensuing topic summaries. Alternatively, you may decide to browse by subject. You can start by selecting from Archeology, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, Mathematics, and Physics ("Technical Notes" and "Tools & Techniques" are also options here). Last but not least, the CD's integrated, self-contained Java search engine allows you to search the contents by keywords (I first searched for "fish" and was soon engrossed in articles that delighted me for hours).

In addition to being linked to extensive supplementary resources, each project has an associated difficulty level from 1 to 5, a danger level ranging from 1 (no hazards), through 2 (minor injury possible) and 3 (serious injury possible), to 4 (POSSIBLY LETHAL!), and an associated cost in terms of today's monetary values. With regard to the latter, costing these projects is somewhat tricky — not the least that "stuff found around the house" is a major component of many projects — so the values provided are (very) rough estimates.

A plethora of projects

The main CD is replete with a plethora of projects sufficient to keep you drooling for days. Some are downright serious, while others are of a more philosophical bent. As an example of the latter, one need look no further than the April 1989 offering entitled "How to Build a Plank-Mass Accelerator in Your Solar System."

For myself, my background in digital logic design made the August 1962 article by C. L. Stong, entitled "How Streams of Water Can Be Used to Create Analogs of Electronic Tubes and Circuits" a must-read (this is definitely outside the mainstream, if you'll pardon the hideous pun).

I would love to catalog the CD for you in its entirety, but that would spoil your fun when you come to explore it on your own. On the other hand, there are a few projects that stood proud in the crowd that I simply must share as follows:

• January 1970: "Experiments in Generating the Constituents of Living Matter From Inorganic Substances"
• May 1969: "How to Blow Soap Bubbles That Last for Months or Even Years"
• June 1968: "A Plan for an Analog Computer That Can Be Built for about $40" (that's original dollars in the title, but this project has an adjusted cost range of 0 to $100).
• April 1967: "Little Pendulums That Oscillate Like Big Ones"
• February 1967: "How to Make Holograms and Experiment with Them"
• February 1966: "How to Record and Listen to the Electrical Signals Produced By Microscopic Animals"
• February 1964: "How to Photograph Air Currents in Color and Build an Accurate Foucault Pendulum"
• November 1979: "Flames in Which Air Is Introduced into a Flammable Gas Rather Than Vice Versa"
• April 1974: "Curious Bubbles in Which a Gas Encloses a Liquid Instead of the Other Way Around"
• April 1988: "How to Map Electrically Charged Patches with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme"
• September 1970: "Curious Oscillators That Involve Salt Water, Flame and Hot Wire"

The science software library CD

Accompanying the main projects CD is a "Science Software Library CD" that contains a library of demo programs, shareware, freeware, and other items of use to amateur scientists. These offerings are categorized by topics that include Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, General Tools and Utilities, and Teaching Aids.

In the case of electronics, for example, one item that caught my eye was the "CRO Tutor," which is a computer program that simulates a single channel Cathode Ray Oscilloscope. A variety of adjustable basic controls such as the Timebase, Horizontal Shift, and Level are immediately available, while more complicated controls such as Coupling and Trigger-level adjustment are added onto the screen in stages. And there's also an INSTRUCTOR mode which gives animated instructions.

A quick glance at the biology topic reveals the "Genetics 3.148" utility, which teaches the user about breeding using a simulation of genetic organisms. I then bounced over to astronomy to discover the NEWT program, which can be used to design Newtonian telescopes. But there was no time to delay, because I was soon captivated by the EULER application (found under the mathematics topic) that allows you to perform interactive computations with real and complex numbers, matrices, and intervals and can generate 2D and 3D drawings of your functions. And once again, the list goes on ....

Perhaps foolishly, I originally supposed that I could pen this column in a relatively short period of time. Truth to tell, however, I became so engrossed by one project and tool after another that the days turned into weeks while I wended my erratic way to the "here and now," at which point it is time for me to say that "The Amateur Scientist 2.0 Science Fair Edition" from the Tinkers Guild receives a mega-enthusiastic "Cool Beans" from me! Until next time, have a good one!

Clive (Max) Maxfield is president of Techbites Interactive, a marketing consultancy firm specializing in high-tech. Author of Bebop to the Boolean Boogie (An Unconventional Guide to Electronics) and co-author of EDA: Where Electronics Begins, Max was once referred to as a "semiconductor design expert" by someone famous who wasn't prompted, coerced, or remunerated in any way.