Everyone knows that the universe is extremely old and extremely large. But how did scientists determine just how old and how large? How do astronomers know that there are upwards of 100 billion galaxies in the universe if the nearest one is over 40,000 light-years away? How do we know what the stars are made of? The answer is that our current knowledge of the universe has arisen from the work and ideas of scientists and philosophers over hundreds of years. While it's only been during the last several decades that scientists have had the technology and theories to really understand how the universe works, humans have thought about such issues for millennia. And the scientists who today are attempting to understand the most complex issues of the universe build upon the work and thought of the thinkers of the last hundreds of years.
Richard Morris has done a wonderful job of taking what should be a dry
topic and making it very interesting.
The Last Sorcerer details the
discovery of the elements and the people behind these discoveries.
Along the way we meet a number of brilliant eccentrics, would be
charlatans and an interesting collection of scientists and
non-scientists. The chapters are short and punchy. The book flows well.
Scientific Writing: A Reader and Writer's Guide by Jean-Luc Lebrun Given that scientific material can be
hard to comprehend, sustained attention and memory retention become
major reader challenges. Scientific writers must not only present their
science, but also work hard to generate and sustain the interest of
readers. Attention-getters, sentence progression, expectation-setting,
and memory offloaders are essential devices to keep readers and
reviewers engaged. The writer needs to have a clear understanding of
the role played by each part of a paper, from its eye-catching title to
its eye-opening conclusion. This book walks through the main parts of a
paper; that is, those parts which create the critical first impression.
The unique approach in this book is its focus on the reader rather than
the writer. Senior scientists who supervise staff and postgraduates can
use the book to review drafts and to help with the writing as well as
the science. Young researchers can find solid guidelines that reduce
the confusion all new writers face. Published scientists can finally
move from what feels right to what is right, identifying mistakes they
thought were acceptable, and fully appreciating their responsibility:
to guide the reader along carefully laid-out reading tracks. (Amazon.com).
McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Hundreds of engineers and scientists contributed to the alphabetically arranged 7,800 short articles including 19 Noble Prize Winners
This definitive reference offers you concise, authoritative, and up-to-date coverage of every major field of science and technology. In articles authored by scientists and engineers at the forefront of their fields (including 19 Nobel Prize winners), and written to be accessible to the general reader as well as the scientific user, this newly revised volume covers 75 major fields of science and engineering, including current and critical advances in fast-developing fields such as virology, genetics, computer science, and oceanography. Richly illustrated, it also features biographical sketches of the world's top scientists, a superb index, cross references, and bibliographies. No other reference offers scientists, researchers, students, and the interested public such definitive and inclusive coverage of science and technology in a single volume.
Quirky Sides of Scientists True Tales of Ingenuity and Error from Physics and Astronomy
These historical narratives of scientific behavior reveal the often irrational way scientists arrive at and assess their theories. There are stories of Einstein’s stubbornness leading him to reject a correct interpretation of an experiment and miss an important deduction from his own theory, and Newton missing the important deduction from one of his most celebrated discoveries. Copernicus and Galileo are found suppressing information. A theme running throughout the book is the notion that what is obvious today was not so in the past. Scientists seen in their historical context shatter myths and show them to be less modern than we often like to think of them.
