The Science Class You Wish You Had (Revised Edition): The Seven Greatest Scientific Discoveries in History and the People Who Made The m
David Eliot Brody
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 0399160329
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
What does E=mc2 really mean? What is DNA? What was the big bang? These scientific concepts have changed our perception of the world…but for many of us they remain mysteries, bits and pieces of information retained from classroom lectures but never truly understood.
Now we can finally grasp the grandeur and complexity of these ideas, and their significance in our lives. Revised and updated to include the latest discoveries that are changing the way we view the world and the universe, this new edition of The Science Class You Wish You Had will take you on a journey through space and time—from the subatomic to the universal. It explains in a lively, accessible way what these milestones of scientific discovery mean and what direct impact they have on our lives today and will have in the future.
For everyone interested in science, history, and biographies of extraordinary people—or anyone who wants to understand the workings of the physical world—this thorough and authoritative book is a perfect introduction to science’s most profound discoveries, and a testament to the triumph of human knowledge.
Newton: Gravity and the Basic Laws of Physics
Rutherford and Bohr: The Structure of the Atom
Einstein: The Principle of Relativity
Hubble: The Big Bang and the Formation of the Universe
Darwin: Evolution and the Principle of Natural Selection
Flemming and Mendel: The Cell and Genetics
Watson and Crick: The Structure of the DNA Molecule
The Custom-Made Brain: Cerebral Plasticity, Regeneration, and Enhancement
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
The Value of the Moon: How to Explore, Live, and Prosper in Space Using the Moon's Resources
Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions
Brain and Spinal Tumors of Childhood (Hodder Arnold Publication)
Matter, 54 composition of, 53 creation of, 157 electrical charges and, 52 energy and, 87 foreshortening of, 132 gravitational forces of, 153 as infinitely divisible, 83 physical characteristics of, 132 primary substance of, 55 quantity and state of, 87 at rest versus moving, 134–35 of sun, 87 water and, 55 Maxwell, James Clerk, 120, 161, 163 Mechanics, basic laws of, 43–44 Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity, The (Morgan), 299 Medicine chemistry and, 56 gold and, 55–56 influencing
are much too interesting and profound to be left only to scientists. The Seven Greatest Scientific Discoveries in History… All those phenomenal technological achievements and inventions we’ve witnessed and experienced over recent decades have a common thread: They became possible as a result of the basic scientific discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology (and their subdisciplines) made over the last four centuries. This book identifies the greatest of those discoveries—seven findings
extremely difficult to measure. But if we are dealing with observers and objects under observation that are moving relative to each other at velocities more than about half the speed of light, Einstein’s theory is the only correct way to determine the result. This is shown in Figure 8-5. FIGURE 8-5 Correlation Between Speed and Time Dilation The commonly observed phenomena in our daily lives are adequately described by Galilean relativity and Newtonian physics. However, the graph in Figure
and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission have proven the existence of numerous water-generated deposits of clay on Mars. And ice has been found buried in Martian soil along with thick glaciers. In 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars and reached a clay-rich target, the huge Gale crater on Mars. The images taken by the rover’s cameras show strong evidence for torrents of water and salty puddles. As a result of such discoveries, the search for primitive life forms produces
to reconcile their observations with the scriptures. But Hutton’s and Lyell’s changing Earth view, coupled with attempts at evolutionary theory, marked the beginning of the end of this uneasy compromise. Against God’s word, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had taken humankind out of the center of the universe. Now another heretic was about to peer through the window opened by Hutton and Lyell and describe an unimaginable vista. In describing his view, he would offend humanity further by
