New Everyday Science Explained From the Big Bang to the human genome...and everything in between

by SUPLEE, CURT

• ISBN13: 9780792273578
• ISBN10: 0792273575
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: National Geographic

Summary

On a quiet afternoon, you settle in for some long-awaited reading. All is restful, still, serene. And yet, almost imperceptibly, your surroundings seethe with activity. Light beams produced 93 million miles away stream through your window and slam onto the page at 186,000 miles per second. The air in your home writhes with constant changes in temperature. A bird sings, and atoms in the air collide with your eardrums at hundreds of miles per hour. All the while, Earth's rotation is whipping you around the sun at 18 miles per second. Frenetic though they seem, these activities happen according to natural laws that make our world predictable. And now, in this newly-updated bestseller from National Geographic, the hows and whys of science become engagingly clear.

Author Biography

Curt Suplee is an award-winning science writer and author of numerous books and articles on a range of topics from the psychology of fashion to the physics of subatomic particles. During his time at the Washington Post, he served as senior science correspondent, and editor of Horizon, a special educational section. Suplee has won national writing prizes from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, and American Astronomical Society, and serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Science Writers

Table of Contents

Matter and Motion	p. 8
It's all downhill from here	p. 10
Orders of magnitude	p. 12
Getting started	p. 14
Inertia	p. 16
F=MA	p. 18
Equal and opposite	p. 20
Neither created nor destroyed	p. 22
Can't stop on a dime	p. 26
Friction as friend	p. 28
Friction: formidable foe	p. 30
Looking for leverage	p. 32
Wedges and wheels	p. 34
Animals at work	p. 38
To stick or not to stick	p. 40
Pressure and gases	p. 44
Pascal's liquid assets	p. 48
Making steel float	p. 50
A turbulent world	p. 52
Taking Bernoulli for a ride	p. 54
Making waves	p. 56
Reflection and refraction	p. 60
Resonance and interference	p. 62
Turning up the heat	p. 66
How heat gets around	p. 68
Heat and weather	p. 70
The effects of Coriolis	p. 72
Forces of Nature	p. 74
The four forces	p. 76
A situation of gravity	p. 78
Gravity's many shapes	p. 80
Attraction from afar	p. 82
Magnetism and our lives	p. 84
Getting charged	p. 86
Electricity in motion	p. 90
To conduct or not to conduct	p. 92
Around and around	p. 94
Resistance: pros and cons	p. 96
Now you see it...	p. 100
Light of many colors	p. 102
Managing light for fun and profit	p. 104
Of sunlight and Earth	p. 106
Making light bend	p. 108
Focusing on worlds near and far	p. 110
Beyond visible light	p. 114
At the cutting edge of light	p. 116
Making light speak	p. 118
In our own image	p. 122
The photoelectric effect	p. 124
Inner sanctum	p. 126
The Right Stuff	p. 128
Elements: personality kids	p. 130
Getting together	p. 132
Odd couples	p. 134
We're the stuff of stars	p. 136
Skeletons of substance	p. 138
Marriages of convenience	p. 142
Let's drink to water!	p. 144
Fresh water: not here	p. 146
Seeking balance: pH	p. 150
Chemistry for contractors	p. 152
Those amazing halogens	p. 154
Halogens and the environment	p. 156
Ashes to ashes, rust to rust	p. 158
It's what's for dinner	p. 160
Carbon's black magic	p. 162
A world of fuels	p. 166
Endless variations on a theme	p. 168
The Chemistry of Life	p. 170
What is life, anyway?	p. 172
Cells without walls	p. 174
Turning sunlight into food	p. 176
Life runs on sugar	p. 178
Turning on your body heat	p. 180
Getting going	p. 182
Fats: the good, the bad, and the ugly	p. 184
The building blocks of life	p. 186
Hormones: the body's semaphores	p. 188
How cells change as they stay the same	p. 190
Your personal bar code for life	p. 192
Species: It's a family affair	p. 194
Evolution: nature's test drives	p. 196
The death of a cell	p. 198
Cells that never die	p. 200
Two killers on the rise	p. 202
We're all Trojan horses	p. 204
Bacteria of the world	p. 208
Viral invaders	p. 210
Vaccines and viruses	p. 212
The body's immune system	p. 214
War in a lymph node	p. 216
The enemy within	p. 218
Nervous systems	p. 220
Nerves and muscles	p. 224
Putting flex in your step	p. 226
Born to beat	p. 228
Heart attacks and brain attacks	p. 230
Running on rust	p. 232
Being good to your gut	p. 234
The magic of the liver	p. 236
Vitamins and minerals	p. 238
Bones and teeth	p. 240
Blood: the liquid organ	p. 242
Basics of the brain	p. 244
Seeing and believing	p. 246
Perception--or confusion?	p. 248
Sounds of a lifetime	p. 252
Taste and smell	p. 254
Thresholds of pain	p. 256
Emotion and behavior	p. 260
Drugs of pleasure	p. 262
Sleep and dreams	p. 264
Intimations of mortality	p. 266
Index	p. 268
Acknowledgments and Additional Reading	p. 271
Credits	p. 272
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.