Customer Reviews

1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science

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

 

 

This book is based on a great premise. It covers a wide range of scientific ideas that even non-scientists should know. The light touch adds to its charm. However, the proofreading of the illustrations is not good. Several chemical structures were incorrectly drawn, and a few photos had caption errors. This is a serious drawback for a book that seeks to be a reference work. A new, revised edition would be most welcome.

Do I Need To Know This Much About Science? I'm not sure but certainly I need to know something, if only so I don't look like an idiot in front of my school age son. I picked this one up as an addition to our growing reference library after standing and browsing through it in the book store. The information is easy to read and comprehend while not written as if the reader is a science dummy (whcih I am). From Classic Biology, Plant Reproduction and Evolution right through to The Genetic Code and Quantum Mechanics, there literally are 1001 things to read and learn about and the book is very handy as a side car to school science lessons from elementary through high school. It isn't anything I would sit down and read cover to cover, but is constantly used by students around the neighborhood and passed hand to hand by theose in need of homework help.

I have used this for 7 years for my academic team. It is still the best primer on science I have found. I personally enjoy its question -answer format. Trefil interjects just enough humor to keep things light.

Reasonably good and handy reference. The guy who wrote it is a physicist by trade, and the weird thing is that a lot of his discussions of that topic are among the most oblique in the book. This quirk aside, and with some reservations on the choice of "important" things to know and some convoluted ways of saying things (look who's talking), this is useful refresher-course stuff.--J.Ruch

This book is so unbelievably bad that I can't even begin to form an idea of why. If it's because of lack of proofreading, it must have not been proofread at all. At times it's worse than a first draft. If it's because the author has little understanding of science, how on earth does this man have a PhD from Stanford? If I had read it not knowing who wrote it I would've guessed someone like Kent Hovind (save for the bits about evolution). It boggles the mind.

He gives the temperature of absolute zero as -2738 C or -4568 F. In actuality it's -273 C or -459 F. Okay, so maybe he rounded and somehow accidentally added an 8... But as another reviewer pointed out, there are illustrations that contain errors and incorrect captions, and plenty of other bizarre errors...

Some of his statements make no sense, especially to anyone the book is aimed at (I'm guessing young adults and teens, though some of it is a bit more advanced). For instance, the entire "Fact" #7 is "The red part of the strawberry isn't the fruit. It's actually a modified part of the stem. The fruit is the little yellow thing sticking to the side." Little yellow thing sticking to the side?

Or take "Fact" #796: "One place where seismic waves are important is in the detection of small underground nuclear explosions." He then goes on to conclude the short paragraph with "The question: how small can an explosion be and still be distinguished from a natural event?" Why would anyone care? Who goes around setting off tiny nuclear bombs underground that scientists might need to detect? The reader is left wondering, with no real explaination given. I'm not even real sure what he's talking about myself.

The part on geology reads "Mountains are not forever", "Rocks are not forever", "Deserts are not forever", and "Beaches are not forever". To which it begs the response:

#1: Duh.
#2: Diamonds are, I saw it on a commercial once.

Some of the stuff he says is irritatingly downplayed. "Fact" #184 says that "Creationism...has enjoyed a modest revival in the United States...and has little support from...mainline theology." Unfortunately, as a recent CBS poll shows, 51% of Americans reject evolution and believe that Creationism is true. That's a majority of support, not a modest revival, and also pretty unnerving that most of America has very little interest in science or fact.

With many of these complaints, one has to remember that the book IS 16 years old. But, many parts of the book are peppered with "could haves" and "might've beens", and "feel free to [grossly] approximate this", all of which should make anyone involved in science nervous. It's supposed to be a book of facts, not opinion or laze.

It's true that there ARE quite a bit of completely correct and useful items, but I wouldn't give this to a child that has no way of seperating the typos and gobblygook from the science. I'm sorry, one just HAS to be critical of anything calling itself science because it HAS to be factually accurate.

1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science, by James Trefil, is not worth the paper it is printed on. It is edited poorly. Additionally, many of the "1001 Things" are out of date and/or incorrect. Clearly, Mr. Trefil should stick to physics and stay far away from anything else, especially being an author.