“With this book in hand, we have all we need to set off on our next flight with our eyes open to the sheer wonder of what is involved.” —Alain de Botton, author of A Week at the Airport, in the Mail on Sunday
“Imagine Leonardo da Vinci seated next to you on an airplane. . . . Brian Clegg attempts to restore something of the lost wonder of air travel . . . even as Leonardo, so fascinated by science, might have done . . . leav[ing] his readers improved for the journey and filled with a renewed sense of curiosity toward the wonders out their window.”—Wall Street Journal
“An eye-spy book for adults . . . fitting into that publishing niche somewhere between hard science and Schott’s Miscellany that was so successfully exploited by books such as The Cloudspotter’s Guide.” —London Times Book of the Week
Every moment of your airplane journey is an opportunity to experience science in action—Inflight Science will be your guide. Brian Clegg explains the ever-changing view from your window seat and suggests entertaining experiments to calculate how far away you are from distant objects and the population of the towns you fly over. You'll learn why the coastline is infinite in length, the cause of thunderstorms, and why there's absolutely no chance of getting stuck on an airline vacuum toilet!
Packed full of amazing insights from physics, chemistry, engineering, geography, and more, Inflight Science is a voyage of scientific discovery perfect for any journey.
Brian Clegg is the author of several popular science titles, including Before the Big Bang and the forthcoming How to Build a Time Machine (2011), both from St. Martin's Press.
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'We should be grateful for this book from Brian Clegg, an unabashed aircraft geek ... With this book in hand, we have all we need to set off on our next flight with our eyes open to the sheer wonder of what is involved.' Alain de Botton, Mail on Sunday 'Inflight Science, by Brian Clegg, is essentially an eye-spy book for adults ... The great strength of the book is its ability to pull out from the mundane experiences of modern air travel - the contrails and cumulonimbus, the security scanners and salted snacks - to explain a wider technical point' The Times
About the Author
Brian Clegg: Brian Clegg is the author of a number of popular science titles including The God Effect, Before the Big Bang and the forthcoming How to Build a Time Machine (2011), all from St. Martin's Press. He is a science writer living in Wiltshire, England, and runs www.popularscience.co.uk.
Brian's most recent book is Gravity He has written eleven other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, Ecologic, A Brief History of Infinity and Build Your Own Time Machine.
Along with appearances at the Royal Institution in London he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare. It has since been widely applied to problem solving and decision making in business.
Brian has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous publications, including Nature, The Guardian, PC Week, Computer Weekly, Personal Computer World, Innovative Leader, Professional Manager, BBC History, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. His books have been translated into many languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Thai and even Indonesian.
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Firstly, a quote from the Author, English Scientist Brian Clegg; "Too many people find science dull and uninspiring. It shouldn't be. It's about how everything works. Us,our world, our universe. Its life and death stuff. But the sad fact is that science is often presented in a lifeless, unexciting way."
This book is a great example of his point - it is science, but presented in a readable, clear way - so that the science is understood. The books structure is simple, we are asked to suppose we are taking a trip on a `plane. From the check-in, through security to the gate ... each experience confronts us with an item of technology. The x-ray machines and scanners, of pre-boarding to the eventual (often after that interminable wait at the gate) to push-back and the actual flight. At each stage the science, theories, and invention of the deployed technology is explained, often with amusing side-bars of direct examples and simple (very) experiments to prove out the narrative's explanation.
In-flight Clegg explains the function of Radar, flight-controls, the theory of lift - and encourages us to fly our own paper airplane - and even explores some visual archeology from the air.
Quite simply, this book was a joy to read and the style brought back memories of the Popular Science magazine that, as a young boy, I so eagerly awaited each month.
Forays into airport security and aerodynamics do not live up to the title. The title suggests phenomena and science that can be SEEN. This book is something entirely different.
This was a really fun book. The science itself wasn't very advanced (being a geek I aleady knew a lot of what was in there) but it was written well and included lots of practical 'experiments' that you can do while sitting in your seat. In some ways, this is a high school science book for adults (but in a good way!).
