Light but genuinely informative writing for readers who have forgotten their high school science.
A British physicist and science presenter for the BBC joins the growing genre of popular authors who assure readers that science is fun.
For two decades, a simple Google search has answered our questions about why the sky is blue, how popcorn pops, and the reason you have to whack the bottle in order to make ketchup flow, but this hasn’t yet stemmed two centuries of traditional books that explain science to readers who don’t know any or may have forgotten it. In her debut book, Czerski (Physics/Univ. Coll. London) accompanies her entertaining, somewhat scattershot material with personal stories, jokes, and cute footnotes. She loves weird facts (a duck can stand on ice without freezing its feet) and extremes (the deep water of the Atlantic is moving south at one inch per year), but she is also a thoughtful educator who has done her homework. Each of nine long, anecdote-filled sections revolves around a basic element of physics. Thus, the energy in the universe remains constant; it can’t be created or destroyed but only changed from one form to another. Humans interrupt an energetic process—e.g., falling water with a dam, solar radiation by a silicon panel, decaying ancient plants in a coal furnace—and then allow it to proceed in ways that benefit us. Staying alive requires continual extraction of energy from the environment, and the chemical reactions inside our bodies that sustain life must keep matters far from equilibrium. Although many healing philosophies teach that perfect health requires balance in all internal processes, living creatures achieve equilibrium only in death. Throughout, the author’s voice is enthusiastic, and most readers—physicists excluded—will learn something about physics.
Light but genuinely informative writing for readers who have forgotten their high school science.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24896-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A panoramic view of life on earth from a Nobel laureate in physiology and Rockefeller University professor emeritus. Key words in this 4-billion-year chronology are ``complementarity,'' ``spontaneity,'' and ``congruence.'' De Duve (A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, not reviewed) is no miracle monger regarding the development of life. Basic physio-chemical forces permitted the spontaneous coming together of primordial molecules: They fit by means of complementary parts—the key-and- lock principle that would play out in the double helix, antigen- antibody reactions and the cell-cell communication characteristic of multicellular organisms. All this prebiotic sorting and shifting led to what de Duve calls ``protometabolism,'' which would be fully congruent to the chemical processes essential to life. Fully half this text is taken up with the most ancestral forms: protocells and bacteria, the latter splitting into the heat-loving forms found in subterranean thermal vents and the ``eubacteria'' that, de Duve hypothesizes, emerged to conquer the world when climate changed and, through a mutation, were able to adapt to a cooler world. Other crises would follow: Photosynthesis would enrich the atmosphere with toxic oxygen. Finally cells with nuclei emerged, coming together into complex differentiated life forms. So the story unfolds with crisis followed by opportunities down to the present, when human life predominates. Not the be-all and end-all, de Duve affirms—and particularly not at the rate we are disturbing the environment. Indeed, much of the latter part of the book is taken up with issues and schools of thought: mind-body dualism, the Gaia hypothesis, existentialist ``absurd'' philosophy versus Teilhard de Chardin's teleology. De Duve himself opts for a ``meaningful universe''; he believes that life is ``bound to arise under the prevailing conditions'' and exists elsewhere in the universe. This is a heady book with much conjecture and rumination. Withal, the reader cannot help but share de Duve's sense of joy and wonder at the chance and necessity that have created life on earth.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-09044-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
+ A journalist's revealing overview of the construction, engineering, and financial, political, and technical resources required to build the railway tunnel that now connects the sceptered isle of England with continental Europe by way of France. Drawing on a wealth of sources, including interviews with principals who got the immensely expensive job done, Newsday correspondent Fetherston provides a start-to-finish account of the so-called Chunnel project, which opens with a brief review of the false starts and alternative proposals that had been made over the years. He goes on to recount how Margaret Thatcher and Franáois Mitterand created a binational commission to study the possibility of an underwater link. Despite the Tory prime minister's insistence that no government money be spent, spirited opposition from ferry interests, the stock market crash of 1987, and other obstacles, the enterprise gained sufficient momentum and funding (from lenders in two dozen countries) for work to begin. Owing to a notably hostile operating environment as well as marked differences in national construction practices and standards, the Anglo-French contracting consortium experienced ongoing difficulties. In the fall of 1990, however, British and French excavators achieved a significant breakthrough, meeting at a midpoint beneath the English Channel. Now in service, the Chunnel encompasses three continuous tubes (each more than 49 kilometers in length) from Folkestone to Coquelles, plus dozens of cross-passages and chambers whose uses range from equipment storage through train switching. Despite signs of popularity with shippers and tourists, the spectacular submarine facility has yet to prove economic; plagued by past cost overruns and a staggering debt burden, in fact, the Chunnel remains years- -perhaps decades—from break-even. A tellingly detailed rundown on a remarkable undertaking that could prove either an eighth wonder of the modern world or one of commercial/industrial history's great white elephants. (69 illustrations)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8129-2198-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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