Customer Reviews

The Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories, & Things

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

 

 

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.

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!

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

This is the perfect summary of scientific knowledge in one easy to read book. It is presented in a historical timeline, showing the progression of discovery. Virtually everything is there, but not too much is there. It is also useful as a reference. It includes just the right formulas, and beyond that provides enough information for an internet lookup.

I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble one day when I came upon this book in the sale section. After perusing its contents I decided to buy it. I found it to be both informative and entertaining. It's perfectly suited for either classroom use or reading material while you're "on the throne." It covers a nice range of scientific topics: from physics to math to astronomy to geography. Nearly every entry is contained on just one page, so the information is concise. Each entry lists the idea's discoverer/inventor, a summary explanatory statement, and the time of the discovery. These data are followed by a few short paragraphs that provide a little context, such as historical and/or biographical information, reactions to the discovery, etc.

Please note the following information about the different editions of this book: I have a hard cover, 2008 edition published by Metro Books (it shows an original copyright of 2005 by Reed New Holland). This edition does *not* contain the mistakes noted by reviewer Bokubob (Jan. 7, 2007) regarding the paperback version. You therefore want to make sure that you get this 2008 edition. It lists the information in chronological order, from earliest discovery to most recent, and it does contain a fairly extensive index in the back of the book.

I really would highly recommend this book. It's delightful and useful, and I have already browsed through it numerous times. It makes some potentially complex scientific information accessible and enjoyable.

(By the way, none of the three Amazon listings of this book exactly matched the combination of publisher and copyright date in the edition I have, so I decided to place my review in the most popular of these three listings.)

This book sounds like an important reference resource for people of all ages, but has little value if it contains errors. Is there any chance it will be corrected, re-edited, and re-published?