Customer Reviews

Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Considering that Michael Faraday had very little formal education, he is one of the greatest scientists in history. Without him, we wouldn't have a Kindle, let alone things we depend on.

The book itself is top notch - Faraday greatly detailed his experiements, so much that if you had the background and the equipment, you could easily follow his work. If I were in high school, college or a science buff, this book would be a great work to get as a gift - it places you in the scientific mindset of a great scientist. There's very little graphs or diagrams, and mainly the book is a narrative. If you're not a scientist, this book might seem rather boring to you, but I find it fascinating, if not a bit too technical for casual reading.

When one considers that this volume was written by one of the greatest scientists of all time, it is quite surprising to examine the way he approaches the work of documenting his discoveries. It wasn't so very long ago that scientific publication was so loosely governed and composed. When one considers that the science behind the publication was flawless and thorough, one has to be a little taken aback.

The $2.99 version from Amazon is essentially the same as the free ($0.00) version from publisher 'Public Domain Books' and both have much better formatting than the Einstein Books version which is $0.99. I'm not sure, but it seems that I got both the $2.99 version and the $0.00 version at the same time from Amazon - even though I paid for the $2.99 version. So try to get the free one first since it's formatting is just as good.

(Update after posting review) In fact this review shows up on both of the versions from Amazon - so I got both together.

This is a seminal work by an important scientist. But the line breaks are wrong in the Kindle edition. Read it only if you have patience for poorly justified text. I've found that many of the free or very inexpensive Kindle editions are poorly laid out. If someone would take a little time and do it right I would gladly pay a few bucks more. E-editions are a great way to make important works like this one more widely known, but I for one find them unreadable when lines of text jump around and are staggered.