The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments [Hardcover]

George Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 8, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1400041015 | ISBN-13: 978-1400041015 | Edition: 1

From the acclaimed New York Times science writer George Johnson, an irresistible book on the ten most fascinating experiments in the history of science—moments when a curious soul posed a particularly eloquent question to nature and received a crisp, unambiguous reply.

Johnson takes us to those times when the world seemed filled with mysterious forces, when scientists were dazzled by light, by electricity, and by the beating of the hearts they laid bare on the dissecting table.

We see Galileo singing to mark time as he measures the pull of gravity, and Newton carefully inserting a needle behind his eye to learn how light causes vibrations in the retina. William Harvey ties a tourniquet around his arm and watches his arteries throb above and his veins bulge below, proving that blood circulates. Luigi Galvani sparks electrical currents in dissected frog legs, wondering at the twitching muscle fibers, and Ivan Pavlov makes his now-famous dogs salivate at ascending chord progressions.

For all of them, diligence was rewarded. In an instant, confusion was swept aside and something new about nature leaped into view. In bringing us these stories, Johnson restores some of the romance to science, reminding us of the existential excitement of a single soul staring down the unknown.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Award-winning science writer Johnson (A Fire in the Mind; Strange Beauty) calls readers away from the industrialized mega-scale of modern science (which requires multimillion-dollar equipment and teams of scientists) to appreciate 10 historic experiments whose elegant simplicity revealed key features of our bodies and our world. Some of the experiments Johnson describes have a sense of whimsy, like Galileo measuring the speed of balls rolling down a ramp to the regular beat of a song, or Isaac Newton cutting holes in window shades and scrambling around with a prism to break light into its component colors. Other experiments—such as William Harvey's use of vivisected animals to demonstrate the circulation of blood, and the truncated frogs Luigi Galvani used in his study of the nervous system—remind us of changing attitudes toward animal research. Joule's effort to show that heat and work are related ways of converting energy into motion, Michelson's work to measure the speed of light, Millikan's sensitive apparatus for measuring the charge of an electron: these experiments toppled contemporary dogma with their logic and clear design as much as with their results. With these 10 entertaining histories, Johnson reminds us of a time when all research was hands-on and the most earthshaking science came from... a single mind confronting the unknown. 73 b&w illus. (Apr. 9)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Johnson pulls together nearly a dozen sketches of scientific moments-and, almost more importantly, the interesting minds and personalities that brought them into being-dating from Galileo's experiments with motion through Millikan's exposure of the electron. Along with compelling, often witty descriptions of the daily lives of the likes of the Lavoisiers and of Michelson's quest for peace of mind as well as astronomical insight, the author describes encounters with contemporary scientific players, such as the Santa Fe-area fellow who runs a kind of creative-reuse shop for neighbors in search of enormous cells and cabling with which to perform their own experiments. Teen autodidacts will love this book, both for its science and its respect for the quirky geniuses who dreamed up ways of demonstrating standards and physical laws that we now take for granted. Illustrated with the experimenters' own sketches, as well as portraits of each of the canonized 10, the narrative is accessible and a far cry from the aridity of a textbook.—Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400041015
• ISBN-13: 978-1400041015
• Product Dimensions: 4.9 x 1 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #151,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #70 in Books > Science & Math > Experiments, Instruments & Measurement > Experiments & Projects

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Book April 22, 2008

By G. Poirier

Format:Hardcover

In this little book, the author, a seasoned science writer, takes the reader on ten fascinating adventures into the world of science. Each adventure focuses on an important experiment that has provided humanity with a certain insight into the way in which nature works. The author's selection of these ten particular experiments appears to be a bit arbitrary, since he freely admits that others could have been included; however, in his view, these stand out the most. But that's not all: not only are the experiments described (with plenty of illustrations), but mini-biographical sketches of the scientists themselves are included, as are snapshots of the times in which they lived. The writing style is very accessible, friendly and quite engaging. This book can be enjoyed by anyone - especially those fascinated by how science works.

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Too brief... June 14, 2008

By BangorBill

Format:Hardcover

Scientists call an experiment beautiful or elegant if it is relatively simple and yields clear results, preferably involving a new discovery on an important topic. All of the experiments described by Johnson meet that criterion. We read brief descriptions of experiments by major scientists such as Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Faraday, Michelson, and Pavlov. The author, George Johnson, tells us a little bit about the personalities and the scientific-historical context of the experiments, including brief backgrounds on related work by other scientists. Though the described experiments were important, in some cases the meaning of the results was not fully understood at the time: for example, Galvani's work on animal electricity, where he demonstrated that nerve impulses could be electrically stimulated, but he did not understand that the impulse itself involved electrochemical activity. Seven of the ten chapters are on early experiments in physics. Only three topics are on biology topics, including those on William Harvey and the heart, Ivan Pavlov on conditioned responses, and Galvani on frog-leg twitches. One can always quibble over the selections. Why not make it a dozen beautiful experiments, and include Gregor Mendel on heredity, plus another one from biology or biochemistry?

Johnson's book is brief, with only 158 small pages of text before the notes and bibliography section. Unfortunately, it is too brief. The problem is that several of the experiments are not explained in sufficient detail to enable the non-expert to understand exactly how they were done, and/or why they were done the way they were done, and/or why the results demonstrated what they were claimed to demonstrate. For example, I still don't fully understand how an electromagnet or a cathode-ray tube or Michelson's interferometer work. Nor do I fully understand how Millikan used a cloud chamber to demonstrate the existence of electrons and to measure their electric charge. Johnson includes many drawings of experimental apparatuses, most of them taken from the original published sources. Unfortunately, most of the drawings are not labeled or described well enough to enable the non-expert to understand how the apparatus worked. In some cases it would have been better to create entirely new drawings, similar to those found in most modern introductory physics textbooks.

I like the basic idea of Johnson's book very much. Parts of it were interesting and informative, and I enjoyed learning some personal information about the researchers, such as the fact that Ivan Pavlov was very fond of his research dogs and treated them as humanely as possible. But the author could have done a better job of science education if he had extended the text to, say, only 199 pages, and included better illustrations, in order to make the explanations of the experiments clearer.

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful dreamers April 26, 2008

By Julie Neal TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Here's a surprisingly compelling read, a lively blend of history and science filled with interesting true tidbits about the people involved. Author George Johnson's mission is to list and describe the top 10 most "beautiful" experiments that have explored the mysteries of science. By "beautiful," he means an experiment that has a straightforward elegance, where "confusion and ambiguity are momentarily swept aside and something new about nature leaps into view."

Each chapter covers one experiment or series of experiments. It explains the back story, the theory, the procedures the scientist used and any conclusion he or she drew. Included is a drawing or photograph of the scientist, quotes, diagrams and drawings.

The most unforgettable chapter for me concerned how Ivan Pavlov trained dogs to salivate to different stimuli. Pavlov loved his animals, and gave them names such as Buddy and Gypsy and Spot. He tried to spare his dogs pain, unlike many other animal researchers. The author describes an ornate fountain topped by a large dog that graces the grounds of Pavlov's institute still today, complete with busts of eight canines around the top, "water pouring from their mouths as they salute in salivation."

Here's the chapter list:
1. Galileo: The way things really move
2. William Harvey: Mysteries of the heart
3. Isaac Newton: What a color is
4. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: The farmer's daughter
5. Luigi Galvani: Animal electricity
6. Michael Faraday: Something deeply hidden
7. James Joule: How the world works
8. A.A. Michelson: Lost in space
9. Ivan Pavlov: Measuring the immeasurable
10. Robert Millikan: In the borderland
Afterword: The eleventh most beautiful experiment