Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

Popular Science magazine has made the archives of its entire 137-year catalog available for free online. If you’ve a scientific bent, you’ve probably read an issue or two and gotten some ideas for class from the venerable magazine. Just think what you can do with more than a century’s worth of content? Find cool projects, explain difficult concepts in plain English, and perhaps most importantly, show students that science has lots of practical and fun applications in everyday life.

Speaking of fun, you can also amuse yourself by taking a look at how people of the past envisioned the future — or our present. Some predictions were pretty accurate — “Year-2,000 appliances will save energy in new ways, recycling water whenever possible and using electronic sensors so that they cool, heat, cook, wash, or dry only as long as necessary…” (May 1985, p. 114). Others were a little off:

“Not far above the ground [in the year 2000], jet-propelled monorail trains rush the daily commuter traffic to its destinations. Underground, rocket subways roar through plastic tubes. Over electronically controlled superhighways, family ground-effect cars whisk along on cushions of air. When a driver reaches his exit, he lets down the car’s retractable wheels and drives off onto a noncontrolled access road.” (April 1962, p. 84)

Well, you can’t get ‘em all right. Nevertheless, having access to this much content is sure to inspire your inner mad scientist. Check out the archives now and start experimenting.

Popular Science archives

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