Product Description

What is ear wax for? Do bacteria have sex? How do they put stripes in toothpaste? Does your nose run in space? What are stars made of? This book answers those tantalising or perplexing questions for which you thought you'd never find an answer. A book for the naturally curious, as well as those seekers after scientific truths, it unravels both those things we take for granted, such as, when you boil an egg, why does the yolk stay in the middle, or why is the sky blue, as well as questions which probe deeply, such as, what does an atom look like, or what was there before the beginning of time? If you were to write in the dust on the moon, how big would the letters have to be so you could see them from earth without a telescope? Drawing on the expertise of a team of enthusiastic scientists around the world, authoritative, entertaining, and often a touch humorous, it will appeal to anyone who's ever been curious about life on earth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106262 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Paul Heiney is a well-known writer, broadcaster and journalist. He writes features and reviews for The Times and is also the author of several books, among them Pulling Punches, Home Farm, two novels, and The Nuts and Bolts of Life.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable enough read but peppered with inaccuracies
It's a perfectly fun book to dip into and easy enough to read, but there are too many factual errors, evidence of lack of proof-reading and generally simply not answering the questions, for a pedantic scientist to be able to entirely enjoy it.

Examples:
- claiming nettles sting with formic acid
- confusing galaxies with the universe
- claiming the distant planet Sedna is a mere 10 million miles from the Sun
- determining fingernail growth of 0.5mm/week to be 2.16mm/month, ignoring significant figures

Ultimately it mainly does what it says on the tin in terms of its recycling of the source material, but that source material really should have been checked better.