I’m looking for a juvenile science fiction book I read in the early 1970s. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. I borrowed it from the public library. It was about a teenager (or youngster) who discovered a mysterious method of making things weigh less, have less mass. In the process of making things weigh less he was able to harness the seemingly limitless energy to power things like an automobile. Pretty vague, but that’s all I can remember.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
William Pene DuBois wrote Peter Graves about a kid who meets up with and befriends a mad scientist, destroys his house, and then the two of them hit the road with “magic tricks” made of this new weird science. The scientist had developed this antigravity metal – it is what destroys the house, and what Peter uses to levitate for various reasons.
Might this be the first book in the Danny Dunn series by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams, “Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint”? (Wikipedia: “Through a mishap in Professor Bulfinch’s laboratory, Danny accidentally creates an anti-gravity paint. In time, the government constructs a spaceship which uses the paint as a propulsion system. The spaceship is launched prematurely after Danny and Joe follow Professor Bulfinch and Dr. Grimes on a tour of the ship. A mechanical failure dooms the four to a trip out of the Solar System unless they can repair the ship. Should they fail in this, they will drift too far from the Sun and freeze to death.”)
Peter Graves!