AN INVENTOR, whose parents are well-known residents of Kew, has launched a How To book offering solutions to hundreds of day to day problems.

Tim Hunkin along with cartoonist Oliver Hunkin and artist Sally Hunkin have collaborated on the book, Hunkin's Experiments.

Solutions could range from how to test an electric fence to how to hold a drink upside down.

Tim Hunkin said: "After years of developing experiments, showing them on TV, publishing them in newspapers and on the net I have at last put them together with some new ideas, into a handy book.

"I hope that readers will get as much pleasure from them as I have."

Other experiments included in the book could be life saving, such as how to extract water from a desert, or how to avoid catching a cold.

Some are downright strange - how to make a potato find its way through a maze or how to make an onion glow.

And along the way there are experiments which will appeal to all ages: pre-schoolers - how to make a goose shadow; schoolchildren - make a door into a sawdust trap; teens - mind read with dice; and all adults - watch cheese mites, sit on a tail coat or decapitation.

Tim Hunkin is a trained engineer but then became a cartoonist, drawing the Rudiments of Wisdom for the Observer newspaper for 14 years.

His next career was television, writing and presenting three series called The Secret Life of Machines for Channel 4.

He has worked for museums, building interactive exhibits and curating and designing exhibitions.

His current obsession is an amusement arcade of his own simulator rides and other coin operated inventions on Southwold pier.

The book is available from www.hunkinsexperiments.com/buythebook and from booksellers and amazon.co.uk