In this unique interactive book, each turn of the page reveals a different, lo-fi-but-fully-functional paper gadget. Inside its pages live: a constellation-projecting planetarium, a strummable musical instrument, a geometric drawing generator, a perpetual calendar, a message encrypter and decoder, and a speaker that amplifies sound.

This Book is a Planetarium …and other extraordinary pop-up contraptions. This book concisely explains—and actively demonstrates through six functional pop-up contraptions—the scientific wonders at play behind seemingly-simple everyday things.

By reducing familiar gadgets down to just paper, this book shows that a lot can—indeed—be done with very little. Because each pop-up works (despite exhibiting no apparent technology), the book enables an intimate, firsthand vantage point on invisible structural forces at play in our world. To satisfy readers’ curiosity about how something so simple can do so much, the book concisely explains how humble paper taps into the larger phenomena of light, time, soundwaves, and mathematics in order to make lo-fi magic.

“A marvel of paper engineering and imagination.” —The New York Times