American Scientist

As the end of the year draws near, we here at Science Culture Central are making our holiday gift lists and checking them twice—and we’re always excited to share our lists with you.

Here’s an array of STEM-related gifts that science enthusiasts will be eager to unwrap.

(If you're looking to share STEM books as gifts, check out our recommendations for younger readers as well as adult and young adult readers.)

Nimble Newt

Who doesn’t love an acrobatic newt? In this print, a California newt (Taricha torosa) performs the unken reflex, reacting to a perceived threat by showing off bright coloration that advertises to predators that it will make for a toxic meal.

A Robot Lizard with All the Frills

For tinkerers 10 and up who appreciate the spectacular frilled lizard and would like to hang out with a robot version, here’s a dazzler. The Kingii Dragon Robot kit is designed to resemble Australia’s Chalamydosaurus kingii. However, this specimen has some features not yet spotted in the wild, such as an infrared sensor that enables it to interpret interactions in two different modes—one that triggers it to react in a way similar to the way a frilled lizard would respond to humans in the wild (by making a threatening display and then fleeing), and another that allows it to respond more like a pet.

A Robot Pal for the Littlest Programmers

Most robot kits are intended for kids who are well out of preschool, but Kinderlab Robotics’s KIBO robot is designed to be assembled and programmed by kids 4 to 7 years old. It moves according to the programs kids create for it by assembling sequences of building blocks. And add-ons are available that expand the robot’s repertoire, including one that allows the robot to draw. You can find activities and curricula on the Kinderlab Robotics website as well. For one assignment, kids learn about traditional dances from different cultures, select one, and program their robot to perform it.

Trilobite Terror

From the folks who brought us the popular Dance Dance Revolution “I Can’t Dance Without Arrows” tee: a trilobite to haunt your dreams. This “Night of the Trilobite” design offers a vision of the world as it might have appeared had evolution taken a different turn: Trilobites stalk the night, shooting lasers from their eyes. (Shudder…)

A Taxonomic Treat

Whether for an evening of entertainment or as a reassuring reminder that laser-eyed trilobite overlords were never an evolutionary threat, Clades (and the forthcoming Clades: Prehistoric) promises a taxonomically good time. Created by Jonathan Tweet and illustrated by Karen Lewis, the same folks who wrote and illustrated Grandmother Fish: A Child’s First Book of Evolution (included in our 2016 gift guide for young kids), Clades is a card game designed for both kids (age 6 and up) and adults. It can be enjoyed as either a multiplayer game or in solitaire mode—either way, it’s good educational fun.

Negotiating Galactic Piece(s)

The good folks at Nervous System design studio have a flair for delighting STEM gift hunters, and this carefully crafted puzzle is no exception. Applying the Klein bottle concept to a photograph snapped by the Hubble telescope, designers transformed it into the devilishly difficult Infinite Galaxy puzzle. (As Sarah-Marie Belcastro explains in her article “Adventures in Mathematical Knitting,” “a Klein bottle is an abstract, infinitely thin mathematical surface, formed in such a way that its inside is contiguous with its outside.”) It has no edge pieces, and although each piece may fit together with others, it only fits correctly with the few that immediately surround it. Balancing the puzzle’s difficulty with some whimsy, the designers shaped some of the puzzle pieces like space-themed objects, such as rockets and astronauts.

A Work of Art, a Quote, and a Quiz All in One

What better time to find a place in one’s home for Henry David Thoreau’s ideas than during the bicentennial of his birth? This charming print collages statements on wilderness from the “Spring” chapter of his classic philosophical memoir, Walden, and transplants them on the ridges of a mountainous landscape. It’s worth noting, however, that the quoted material includes a small typo that alters one of the words, so this may not be the ideal gift for Thoreau purists—unless they’re purists with a sense of fun who might enjoy playing “spot the typo” with houseguests. (The print reads, “We require that . . . land and sea be indefinitely wild”; the original phrase is “infinitely wild.”)

Here are a few more of our favorite Thoreau-related gifts: for those who wear their affection for Thoreau on their sleeve (or their lapel), these tiny pins featuring replicas of Walden and Cape Cod; for those who still enjoy writing a good old-fashioned letter, handsome notecards; and for those who are especially fond of bees (and are patient, as these individually-made prints take a few weeks to create), this beautiful woodcut print emblazoned with Thoreau’s observation that “the keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”