How Can You Tell if a Spider Is Dead? And More Moments of Science

by Don Glass (Editor)

Overview

Have a minute? That's long enough to learn about rust, quicksand, tiny bubbles, or creaking snow. Or the shape of lightening bolts, how dogs eat, why it's hard to burn one log, or what our pupils tell us. This is a book to reawaken your childhood sense of curiosity. It's a feast of unusual facts and intriguing information for people with lots of curiosity but only a moment to spare. There is something to discover on every page—from what Jello is made of to why you can't heat an ice cube—presented in a concise and entertaining way. These easy-to-understand science stories are sure to delight the curious child in all of us.

A sequel to the popular Why You Can Never Get to the End of the Rainbow and Other Moments of Science, also available from Indiana University Press.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253210203
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	10/22/1996
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 - 11 Years

About the Author

DON GLASS is Special Projects Director at Indiana University's public radio station WFIU-FM and the radio producer of A Moment of Science.

Table of Contents

Partial Table of Contents
The Shape of the Earth
A Rising Fastball
Pine Tar Home Runs
The Force of a Tornado
Anemia
Newton, Tennis, and the Nature of Light
Stereo in 1881
A Water Magnifier
Bowled Over By a Sound Wave
How Do You Know If a Spider is Dead?
Degradable Plastics
A Molecular Soccer Match
Conversation at a Crowded Party
Blood-letting
Good Science, Bad Results
Tickling the Funny Bone
Putting South on Top
Learning to Talk
Baby's First Steps
Packaging for the Birds
The Roots of "Algebra"
Morality and Nutrition
Moral Fiber in Whole Wheat Bread
What Temperature Boils Down To
The Fable of Centrifugal Force
Savoring the Aroma
Salting Your Food
Why Human Milk Is Low in Iron
Radiation, a Word of Many Meanings
Babies on Treadmills
A Ticklish Question
Bicycles, Footballs, and Space Shuttles
The Shape of a Raindrop
Rings of Light
Making Water in the Desert
Cracks at Right Angles
Pouring Coffee on a Plane
Using Purple Cabbage As a pH Indicator
Cooking with Alloys
The Legacy of the Dodo
The Musical Bean
Benjamin Franklin Drops a Dollar
From One Cell to Many
Cologne and the Blue Sky
Father Determines Sex
The Monarch Butterfly's Poison Pill
Animal or Plant?
Approaching the Dew Point
You Can't Heat an ice Cube
Measuring Altitude with a Thermometer
Relying on Bacteria
Invention of the Vacuum Cleaner
Water Is Hard to Heat
Humidity, Relative to What?
The "Weightlessness of Space"
The Mystery of Proteins
Who Can Drink Milk?
Reflections in the Water
Half Heads, Half Tails
Spiders Don't Get Caught in Their Own Webs
First Elementary particle
Pillbugs Live in Damp Places
Cloud Seeding
Radar
Coriolis Effect
Illusion in a Coffee Cup
Why Are Clouds White?
Dimples in Golfballs
Night Vision
Seeing Stars
Where Do All Those Calories Go?
Some Like It Hot
When You Eat an Egg Are You Eating a Baby Chick?
Flipping the Switch for Digestion
Healing Elbows and Eyeballs
Quicksand
Language Production and Speech Errors
Why is Teflon Slippery?
Your Genetic Cookbook
Number Crunching at the Electronic Feast
Hot and Cold Chirping Crickets
When a Boy's Voice Changes
How Dogs Eat
Biodiversity and Genetic Engineering
Why Ice Is Not Slippery
Fighting AIDS, Fighting Evolution
The Shape of Lightning Bolts
Bugs in Cake Mixes
Why It's Hard to Burn One Log
Mushrooms and Rocket Fuel
Where do the socks go?

Editorial Reviews

Entertaining nuggets of scientific fact, as featured on the National Public Radio show A Moment of Science.

Glass, special projects director of Indiana University's public radio station and producer of the NPR program, has brought together nearly 200 scripts for this second book of excerpts from the show. The organization seems rather haphazard, although occasionally two or three articles in a row will be related, as in "A Rising Fast Ball" and "Pine Tar Home Runs," both on the physics of baseball. The subjects cover a very wide terrain, probing the science behind such matters as steering a bicycle, the color of clouds, why opera singers can be heard over a full orchestra, the origin of algebra, why spiders don't get stuck in their own webs—even what happens to socks that disappear in the laundry. The articles average about one page in length, making this book a natural for browsing. (Conversely, it is of little use as a serious reference—not that many readers are likely to mistake it for that.) While the brevity of the articles does not permit very deep examination of any subject, each one is accompanied by a short list (usually one or two items, often encyclopedias or other popular materials) of additional references for readers curious to learn more. The informal tone and breezy approach are likely to make this a popular book with younger readers as well.

Fun, easily digestible, this collection is a browser's delight.

Kirkus Reviews