Customer Reviews

Gravity Is a Mystery (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)

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This book is as important as it is wonderful. It brings home the Big Secret about science that escapes most people: Science is about the unknown, not the known. There are lots of mysteries out there; the business of science is to change the unknown into the known, which is the lesson, I think, of Franklyn Branley's masterpiece.

Although this book will painlessly teach your four year old what science is and what that abstract concept, gravity, is, it is also excellent for a teenager who is struggling through a physics course. As Einstein said, you don't really understand a concept until you can explain it to your grandmother. Well, this is a book for Grandmother.

In 1990, my husband went to the library and brought home " gravity is a mystery" for our son to read. He loved it! It was his favorite book for weeks! Every night one of us would have to read it to him. This is a fun book that everyone should get a chance to read.

Illustrations were bright and the children were excited to see the same experiment that they tried in class, that it was also in this book. Great science book.

I bought my son several of the Let's Read and Find Out books for Christmas. He's a first grader going on 7 years. These are just absolutely fantastic books for introducing varoius difficult concepts. I like that they contain alot of information, but are still easy to understand. Hard to find something "not too young, not too old" for this age. We love them. This particular one was a favorite.

One of my older children brought this book home from a school book sale many years ago. It was a hit with both of my children for several years. Then, as they grew up, the book was put away in a box for another time.

When I had another child, I got out that "box for another time" and stacked the books on a shelf. This one was amongst them, and onto a shelf it went, though I did't expect it to be of interest to him for several years yet.

But lately, at 21 months, Jack has been asking for this book frequently -- and listening with interest to reading after reading! I doubt that the concept of "how much you weigh on Mars" makes much sense to him yet -- but the idea of gravity is one that he is working out, and Branley's explanations of the Earth pulling everything to its center is simple and seems to satisfy even at this age!

Even better, the science is simple, but accurate so it's a good start on his physics education!

A good book to read to kindergarden and 1st grader. Have to be a 2nd grader or higher to read on own.

The illustrations are beautiful!

Unfortunately, the author chose an example that has not been verified by experiment or observation. Falling into a hole through the center of a large massive body is a common example of a PREDICTION of Newton's theory of gravity. But we have no empirical evidence to support it (not even in laboratory tests that could actually be performed).

Science is supposed to be about making sense of the world by observing it. So it would have been better if the author had stated that WE DO NOT KNOW what happens when you jump into the hole through the earth. But that IF WE COULD, then we would learn something important about gravity. We might then prove that Newton's prediction is correct. Presenting this prediction as though it were a fact is an error that has been repeated many times, even in college level books. It is most unfortunate.

My daughter loves this book, as she is currently really into gravity. It has a nice explanation of gravity and its relationship to weight on earth and on different planets and the moon. This would serve as a good introduction to force/acceleration, though it doesn't discuss gravity in those terms. Also, I like how it shows how gravity pulls to the center of an object, as opposed to the apparent pull of it to the ground or surface.