Gakken's Otona no Kagaku Kits List

Adult Science in a box

This is a guide to the "Adult Science" line of build-it-yourself kits published by Gakken, in Japan. The books are in Japanese only, but there's lots of nice pictures in each book, and the instructions are illustrated clearly enough that you can build the kits even if you can't read Japanese.

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News:
11/03/09 - Added review of kit 25, Twin Reflex Lens Camera.
10/03/09 - Added link to Ranking Chart.

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Gakken is a publisher of magazines, mooks (magazine books) and science kits for both children and adults. Collected here are the "Otona no Kagaku ("Adult Science") kits. I'm ignoring the children's kits largely because they're not as interesting, and it's not worth trying to buy them as imports. You can find info on them from Gakken's online shop. What I do have are the two sets of Adult Science kits - the mook series and the kit-only series. The mook series packages a really nice glossy magazine-book filled with background info, descriptions of other science experiments to try, and various stories of science history, along with the kit itself. The kit-only series contains a much higher-quality kit, usually a "premium" version of a mook kit but without the mook. Usually, the mook kits have volume numbers, but there are some exceptions (such as with the synthesizer and the aurorium). I'm currently only buying and reviewing the numbered mook series kits. The ones that don't have reviews are ones I haven't bought yet.

Note that many of the lower-numbered kits are out of print, which is why I don't have kits 3, 4, 5, 7 and 12 now. These are available from collectors, but at 2 to 10 times the original cover price. New kits come out about once every 3 months, with #26 expected to hit the shelves on near the end of December.

The mook kits are designed to be customized and otherwise modded. The mooks often have several pages of customizations as suggested and implemented by the authors and editors. Not all of the kits are worth modding, though, so I'll only put in links to mods that I've done myself. Note that the obvious first mod to any kit that runs on batteries is to add a mono headphone jack to connect up an external DC power supply.

- Curtis
ThreeStepsOverJapan

Visit the Otona no Kagaku Ranking Chart here.

Numbered Mook Kits

No.	Title	Cover Price (Yen)	Review	Date Published	Magazine
1	Self-Propelling Boat	1680	Review	4/1/03	Vol. 1
2	Finger Printing Kit	1680	Review	8/1/03	Vol. 2
3	Pinhole Camera	1680	Out of print	12/19/03	Vol. 3
4	Crystal Radio	1680	Out of print	4/1/04	Vol. 4
5	Illuminated Microscope	1680	Out of print	7/1/04	Vol. 5
6	Phonograph	1800	Review Mods	12/24/04	Vol. 6
7	Steam Engine Car	1800	Out of print	3/1/05	Vol. 7
8	Slow Clock	1800	Review	8/10/05	Vol. 8
9	Planetarium	2200	Review Mods	11/1/05	Vol. 9
10	Sterling Engine	2100	Review Mods	1/15/06	Vol. 10
11	Newtonian Telescope	2100	Review Mods	4/20/06	Vol. 11
12	DaVinci Helicopter	2100	Out of print	6/27/06	Vol. 12
13	Kaleidoscope Projector	2100	Review Mods	10/20/06	Vol. 13
14	Stereo Pinhole Camera	2300	Review Mods	12/1/06	Vol. 14
15	Reflective Movie Projector	2300	Review Mods	3/1/07	Vol. 15
16	Mini Tea-Carrying Windup Doll	2300	Review Mods	6/1/07	Vol. 16
17	Mini Theremin	2300	Review Mods	10/20/07	Vol. 17
18	Wind-Powered Generator	2300	Review	12/1/07	Vol. 18
19	Galileo-Style Telescope (Galileo)	2300	Review Mods	4/25/08	Vol. 19
20	Bird Organ	2500	Review	6/27/08	Vol. 20
21	Magnet Motor Car	2500	Review	10/15/08	Vol. 21
22	Edo-Era Static Generator	2500	Review	12/21/08	Vol. 22
23	Wire recorder	2500	Review	3/31/09	Vol. 23
24	4-Bit Microcomputer	2500	Review Mods Programming Guide in English	6/30/09	Vol. 24
25	35 mm Reflex Camera	2500	Review	10/30/09	Vol. 25
	Mini Electric Guitar	3675	Not Released Yet.	12/31/09	Vol. 26

Unnumbered Mook Kits

The mooks for these kits only cover the history of that specific type of kit (that is, the vacuum tube variometer radio mook talks about vacuum tubes, and their use in radios), the theory of operation, and gives instructions for building the kit. The radio and synth mooks also offer suggestions for simple mods.

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SX-150 Analog Synthesizer The synth consists of a pre-assembled circuit board and speaker, the case, knobs, stylus and resistive strip. Takes between 15-20 minutes to assemble. Uses 4 AA batteries.	3360	7/30/08	SX-150 Review
Aurorium The aurorium kit consists of a pre-assembled base and LED stand, a fogged plastic cone, and some reflective disks. Light from the LED bounces off the slowly spinning disk, and is diffused by the plastic cone. Should take no more than 15 minutes to assemble. Uses 4 AA batteries.	2200		Aurorium
Hand-made Speaker The cover shows all of the parts of the kit. Lots of gluing to do. If you're careful and take your time, it make take 1-2 hours to fully assemble and let the glue dry, then it's up to you as to what to do for the housing. May represent 15 minutes of actually assembly.	2940		Speaker
Variometer Radio Unlike the other kits in the unnumbered mook series, this one actually requires some work to build. There's the case, antenna forms, vacuum tube, casings, and wire to make the antenna coils. I haven't opened the package to confirm this, but the schematic in the book indicates that three 9V batteries are used. Assembly requires wrapping the antenna coils. As long as you don't need to unwrap and then rewrap the coils, this kit may take 1-2 hours to build. One suggested mod is to add a telegraph key for sending morse code.	3250	5/26/09	Radio

Kit-Only

	Title	Cover Price	Date Published	Magazine
	*Premium Theremin*	9,975	12/18/08	Magazine
	*8mm Film Projector*	7,980		Magazine
	Two Edo-Era Tea Carrying Wind-up Dolls	6,195 8,190		Magazine English Instructions
	Arrow Shooting Boy Wind-Up Doll	10,290		Magazine English Instructions
	Somersaulting Wind-Up Doll	5,981		Magazine English Instructions
	*Premium Gramophone*	7,980		Magazine
	*Vacuum Tube Amp*	12,390		Magazine
	*Crystal Radio*	5,775		Magazine
	Vacuum Tube Radio, Ver. 1	8,800		Magazine
	Vacuum Tube Radio, Ver. 2	9,801		Magazine
	Edison-Style Cup Phonograph	3,045		Magazine English Instructions
	New Edison-Style Cup Phonograph	2,981		Magazine
	Berliner-Style Gramophone	4,095		Magazine English Instructions
I got this kit as a present for a friend. It's cool in its simplicity. Basically, it's a pair of motors connected to a battery through two photoresistors. Light from an LED bounces off the disk and hits the photoresistors, changing the motor speeds. As the robot advances, the disk rotates and the black ink marks represent the "program". The "program" then lets you trace different patterns with the robot's movement.	Programmable Robot	3,990		Magazine English Instructions
	*Volta-style Carbon Battery Kit*	3045		Magazine
	*Marconi-style Electric Wave Car*	3360		Magazine

	*Mechanical Crab*	5,981		Magazine English Instructions
	*Mechanical Inchworm*	5,981		Magazine English Instructions
	*Mechanical Centipede*	7,980		Magazine English Instructions
	*Stirling Engine*	9,801		Magazine English Instructions
	*Vacuum Engine*	15,540		Magazine