The Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories, & Things [Paperback]

Surendra Verma (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2006 | ISBN-10: 1402738706 | ISBN-13: 978-1402738708

What is Pythagoras’ Theorem? Who developed the World Wide Web? What is the difference between circadian rhythms and the popular concept of biorhythms? Find out the answers here, where serious science is presented simply, clearly, and chronologically for the layperson. This fascinating and jam-packed little book explains 175 of the most important laws, principles, equations, and theories that form the foundation of the field as we know it. All the great names are featured, including Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, as well as more recent contributors such as Rachel Carson, James Lovelock, and Stephen Hawking. It’s an invaluable resource.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Sterling (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402738706
• ISBN-13: 978-1402738708
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #829,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Journalist and author based in Melbourne, Australia since 1970

A born skeptic

Website: www.surendraverma.com
Also on Facebook

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Should have been proofread, fact checked..., January 7, 2007

By 

bokubob - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories, & Things (Paperback)

This book just makes so many mistakes that I recommend that I can't recommend it to anyone. The annoying mistakes are numerous publishing errors like &lambda (small lambda) being printed as just l (pg. 144), &theta (small theta) as a q (pg. 138), or &harr (left right arrow) as the euro sign (pg. 114).

Then the author is just wrong in other places, such as: Claiming that ordinary hydrogen consists of one neutron (should be one proton) and hydrogen three consists of two protons and one neutron (should be one proton and two neutrons) (pg. 160). Claiming that atoms had been cooled to below absolute zero (pg. 145).

Other sections are just confusing, such as: "The Schwarzschild radius is roughly equal to three times the weight of the black hole (in solar masses)." (pg. 159) How does a distance equal a mass?

These were just the errors that I found while casually reading this evening. How many more could there be? The fact that the type was wrong for the greek characters tells me no one bothered to read it before shipping it out, and the blatant factual errors tells me no one bothered to fact check this before sending it to the press.

There are plenty of well researched, much more useful books out there. Don't waste your money on this one.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compact Mini-Encyclopedia of Essential Scientific Concepts, September 13, 2006

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories, & Things (Paperback)

As a science teacher, I have found this book invaluable as a reference and refresher book. So much information is packed into just one little volume! It contains 175 one-page entries of concepts in math and science. Each concept is labeled by the year of discovery, the discover(s), and the nationality of the discover(s). All descriptions are concise and almost always well explained and illustrated.

The math concepts include the Pythagorean Theorem and the Fibonacci numbers. Scientific concepts and discoveries include the Archimedes Principle, Eratosthenes and his measurement of the earth's sphericity over 2400 years ago, Snell's Law, Pascal's Law (as applied today in hydraulics), Boyle's Law, Hooke's Law (used today in engineering), Bernoulli's Principle (making airplane flight possible), Bode's Law (of planetary intervals), Howard's cloud types, Avogadro's Law and Number (standard in chemistry class), Gauss Law, the Foucault pendulum (proof of earth's rotation), the benzene ring as inspired by Kekule's dream of the snake biting its own tail, Polish-born Marie Curie's discovery of Polonium, the pH scale, Hubble's Law, the Richter Scale, and much more. Attention is also devoted to newer concepts such as chaos theory and the buckyball molecular morphology of elemental carbon.

This little book is a must for scientifically-minded readers!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good, but Unorganized, February 28, 2009

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories, & Things (Paperback)

This is a book of over 175 scientific laws, theories, models, rules hypotheses, postulates, axioms, paradoxes, equations, constants, and other ideas that literally form the foundation of science.

Although the topics are well-chosen, and well written summaries, and appear to be well-researched, the organization of this little book suffers. The most noticeable drawback is that it has no "Table of Contents" and thus the reader is forced to use the index to find topics, whose placement in the book seem to have no rhyme or reason. The diagrams and pictures are helpful once a topic is located via the index. However, there is no way the reader can know what the book contains, or what to anticipate.

This most trivial of oversights, makes and otherwise good book just average.

Two stars