Parenthood brought me a whole new range of responsibilities. In 1965 and 1967, the arrival of Thomas B. Greenslade III and Russell MacWilliam Greenslade brought me the opportunity to bring up two children from “mewling infants”1 to be responsible and scientifically literate members of society. In this note, I will describe five pieces of apparatus: a telescope, a microscope, a galvanometer, an opaque projector, and an air table that I built for my boys to bring them into the worlds of physical science.
Over the years, I found that it was best to provide them with basic raw materials for scientific play. Early on, I made 100 and more wooden building blocks. These were designed to have thickness, width, and length measurements in the ratio of 1 to 2 to 3. This allowed for a certain amount of symmetry, and I also made a series of thin pieces of...