Science Reviews

The budding, serious astronomer will love this solar-system mobile that features actual NASA photographs. The planets, made of thick, high-quality card stock, are double-sided, highlighting each orb's individual colors and features. The accompanying 16-page guidebook is a great primer and includes some nice passages like, "Perhaps you will someday rocket from Earth to land on the moons, race the comets, or play tag with Saturn's rings." It's enough to make any mobile watcher and potential astronaut starry-eyed. --Keith Simanton

A short review cannot do justice to this well-conceived, well-made, and endlessly fascinating "toy"--actually a complete electronics lab that could absorb weeks in the life of anyone over the age of ten who doesn’t already have a degree in electronics. The 16-inch by 13-inch attaché case opens to reveal a 31-key programming keyboard and a bewildering array of connectors, switches, wires, transistors, diodes, and processors. At least they would be bewildering if it were not for three big books: Hardware Entry Course, Hardware Advanced Course, and Software Programming Course, which total about 300 dense pages detailing 500 projects (memory backups, car horn imitators, LED counters, ramp wave generators, you name it.) This bag of tricks can teach an immense amount about basic wiring, the properties of electricity, transmitters and receivers, programming, and much more. Six AA batteries required. --Richard Farr

Ares Rising is a space-combat simulation game that combines the action of space combat with strategic planning and a gripping plot. A branching story line allows you to chart various courses to success and to replay the game in many different ways. You take responsibility for making alliances, purchasing equipment, and ultimately tipping the balance of power. Ares Rising brings together the best strategy, combat, resource-allocation, and storytelling elements to enable a degree of player freedom rarely achieved in other games.