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Author
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Description
Comedian Robin Ince quickly abandoned science at school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love and he now presents one of the world's most popular science podcasts. Every year he meets hundreds of the world's greatest thinkers. In this erudite and witty book, Robin reveals why scientific wonder isn't just for the professionals. Filled with interviews featuring astronauts,...
Author
Publisher
John Murray
Pub. Date
2018
Description
Professor Hawking was a brilliant theoretical physicist, an influential author and thinker, and a great popular communicator. Throughout his career he was asked questions by business leaders, politicians, entrepreneurs, academics and the general public on a broad range of subjects, from the origins of the universe to the future of the planet. This book brings together his thinking on the most timeless and the most-timely questions in science.
Series
Publisher
Dorling Kindersley Limited
Pub. Date
2022
Description
Discover and understand the key ideas that underpin the core science of chemistry and learn about the great minds who uncovered them. Written in plain English, 'The Chemistry Book' is packed with short, pithy explanations of some of the most historic moments in science, from the birth of atomic theory to the discovery of polythene and the development of new vaccine technologies to combat COVID-19. Simple graphics, such as flowcharts and mind maps,...
Author
Publisher
Doubleday
Pub. Date
2019.
Description
The hare, a night creature and country-dweller, is a rare sight for most people. We know them only from legends and stories. They are shape-shifters, witches' familiars and symbols of fertility. They are arrogant, as in Aesop's 'The Hare and the Tortoise,' and absurd, as in Lewis Carroll's 'Mad March Hare.' In the absence of observed facts, speculation and fantasy have flourished. But real hares? What are they like? In 'The Private Life of the Hare,'...
Author
Description
Do you sometimes dream you can fly like a bird? Gliding effortlessly above the treetops, soaring and swooping, playing and dodging through the third dimension. Computer games, virtual reality headsets, and some drugs can lift our imagination and fly us through fabled, magical spaces. But it's not the real thing. No wonder some of the past's greatest minds, including Leonardo da Vinci's, have yearned for flying machines and struggled to design them....
Author
Pub. Date
2020
Formats
Description
There is a lifeform so strange and wondrous that it forces us to rethink how life works. Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation....
Author
Description
In 1954, a young television presenter named David Attenborough was offered the opportunity of a lifetime - to travel the world finding rare and elusive animals for London Zoo's collection, and to film the expeditions for the BBC. Now 'the greatest living advocate of the global ecosystem' this is the story of the voyages that started it all. Staying with local tribes while trekking in search of giant anteaters in Guyana, Komodo dragons in Indonesia...
Author
Publisher
Icon
Pub. Date
2022
Description
From the mysteries of the subatomic world to the curious property of water that makes our planet inhabitable, master of popular science John Gribbin delves into the astonishing facts that underlie our existence. Some aspects of the quantum world really do seem impossible to 'common sense', but have been proved correct by experiments. Other features of the universe appear obvious, such as the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. But this familiarity...
11) Eight improbable possibilities: the mystery of the Moon, and other implausible scientific truths
Author
Publisher
Icon
Pub. Date
2023
Appears on these lists
Description
Echoing Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.' With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular 'Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science', Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science.
12) Rocks & minerals
Author
Series
Publisher
Dorling Kindersley Limited
Pub. Date
2021
Description
The visual recognition guides in this series are designed to make identification as simple and accurate as possible. Each volume contains clear photographs and artwork with text.
Author
Publisher
BBC Books
Pub. Date
2020
Description
Accompanying a major 5-part BBC series presented by David Attenborough and produced by the team behind Planet Earth and Blue Planet, this volume is an exploration of the unique conditions that make life on Earth possible, and how our wildlife is perfectly adapted to its environment. There is no place like home. The conditions of Earth are not just good for life, they are perfect. Everything about our planet - its size, its distance from the Sun, its...
Author
Publisher
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Pub. Date
2018
Description
Based on the interviews broadcast on BBC Radio 4's hugely popular series, this book takes science out of its box and introduces us to the men and women who make it happen. The explorers featured in this volume include: Michele Dougherty, the mathematician who persuaded the Cassini mission to Saturn to make a diversion; Richard Fortey on his love of trilobites; Monica Grady, Meteorite Lady; neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on slicing through our thoughts;...
Author
Publisher
Picador
Pub. Date
2021
Description
Bird migration remains perhaps the most singularly compelling natural phenomenon in the world. Nothing else combines its global sweep with its inherent ability to engender wonder and excitement. The past two decades have seen an explosion in our understanding of the almost unfathomable feats of endurance and complexity involved in bird migration - yet the science that informs these majestic journeys is still relatively in its infancy. Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted...
Author
Appears on list
Description
This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer.
Author
Publisher
John Murray
Pub. Date
2022
Description
Randall Munroe is here to provide the best answers yet to the important questions you probably never thought to ask. The millions of people around the world who read and loved 'What If?' still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Planning to ride a fire pole from the moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone's freezer doors at the same time? Maybe it's time...
Author
Publisher
Square Peg
Pub. Date
2015.
Description
Much more than just another field guide or a natural history of butterflies, this book explores the ways in which butterflies delight and inspire us all, naturalists and non-naturalists alike. In this uniquely eloquent and deeply personal book, naturalist Peter Marren explores the special place that butterflies hold in our hearts, in our cultural lives and in our imagination and recalls his own lifetime's obsession with these ephemeral creatures.
Author
Publisher
Elliott and Thompson Limited
Pub. Date
2018
Description
Birdsong is woven into our culture, our emotions, our landscape; it is the soundtrack to our world. We have tried to capture this fleeting, ephemeral beauty, and the feelings it inspires, for millennia. In this fascinating account, Richard Smyth asks what it is about birdsong that we so love.