Author: Gabrielle Walker Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780151011247 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
A study of Earth's atmosphere traces a journey of scientific discovery, from the Renaissance scientist who realized that we live at the bottom of a dense ocean of air, to a well-meaning inventor who nearly destroys the ozone layer.
Author: Gabrielle Walker Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 054753695X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 293
Book Description
The science and history of what lies between us and space: “I never knew air could be so interesting.” —Bill Bryson, New York Times bestselling author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is (the air filling Carnegie Hall, for example, weighs seventy thousand pounds). A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds a set of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads. An impoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door. A well-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer (he also came up with the idea of putting lead in gasoline). A reclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before he’s proven right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fed by the glowing tails of shooting stars. We don’t just live in the air; we live because of it. It’s the most miraculous substance on earth, responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In this exuberant book, science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who have uncovered its secrets. “A sense of wonder . . . animates Ms. Walker’s high-spirited narrative and speeds it along like a fresh-blowing westerly.” —The New York Times “A fabulous introduction to the world above our heads.” —Daily Mail on Sunday “A lively history of scientists’ and adventurers’ exploration of this important and complex contributor to life on Earth . . . readers will find this informative book to be a breath of fresh air.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Everest Media, Publisher: Everest Media LLC ISBN: 166938926X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The traditional way to understand the world was through a combination of divine revelation and abstract reasoning. But a new breed of scientist called natural philosophers had begun to look at the world differently. #2 Galileo was a famous philosopher in Italy, but he knew that in itself wouldn’t save him from the fire. He had damaged his eyes by staring through a telescope at wonders he had discovered, and now he was blind. He had started the experiments described in his manuscript while awaiting his summons to Rome. #3 Galileo believed that air is heavy, and he tested this by taking a large glass bottle and forcing air into it until it was three-quarters full of water. He then weighed the bottle, opened the valve, and allowed the pressurized air to escape. The weight of the air that escaped was exactly equal to the weight of the water that remained. #4 The weight of air is so extreme that even Galileo, the man who first measured it, didn’t see the whole story. He didn’t realize that the air above us is still heavy, and he believed that our atmosphere as a whole is incapable of pushing.
Author: Gabrielle Walker Publisher: Bloomsbury UK ISBN: Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
In 1960 Joe Kittinger fell to earth from the edge of space and lived. Inside a pressure suit, attached to a huge helium balloon, Kittinger freefell from where the earth's atmosphere met space - an appalling, hostile, environment that would freeze us, and burn us and boil us away. It is the air that Kittinger fell through that makes our lives on earth possible - the atmosphere is made up of enfolding layers of air which protect us so completely that we don't even realise the dangers of space lurking just twenty miles above us. We don't just live in the air, we live because of it. Gabrielle Walker's new book illuminates this most extraordinary and yet most underrated substance on earth- air. Thin air miraculously transforms into food; our atmosphere soaks up flares from the sun that are more violent than a nuclear explosion; the air wraps our planet in a blanket of warmth; radio signals bounce off a layer of floating metal in the air. An Ocean of Air reveals the story of how humanity came to understand earth's atmosphere through the stories of the people who discovered the functions of each of its layers- the Italian Renaissance scientist, disciple of Galileo, who discovered that we live at the bottom of a dense ocean of air; an arrogant Frenchman who had only just discovered how air brings us life, when the guillotine brought him death; a hapless 1920s inventor who inadvertently created chemicals that could punch a hole in the sky. After you've read this book, you will never take air for granted again.
Author: Miles McPhee Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 0387783350 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
At a time when the polar regions are undergoing rapid and unprecedented change, understanding exchanges of momentum, heat and salt at the ice-ocean interface is critical for realistically predicting the future state of sea ice. By offering a measurement platform largely unaffected by surface waves, drifting sea ice provides a unique laboratory for studying aspects of geophysical boundary layer flows that are extremely difficult to measure elsewhere. This book draws on both extensive observations and theoretical principles to develop a concise description of the impact of stress, rotation, and buoyancy on the turbulence scales that control exchanges between the atmosphere and underlying ocean when sea ice is present. Several interesting and unique observational data sets are used to illustrate different aspects of ice-ocean interaction ranging from the impact of salt on melting in the Greenland Sea marginal ice zone, to how nonlinearities in the equation of state for seawater affect mixing in the Weddell Sea. The book’s content, developed from a series of lectures, may be appropriate additional material for upper-level undergraduates and first-year graduate students studying the geophysics of sea ice and planetary boundary layers.
Author: Kunal Verma Publisher: Roli Books Private Limited ISBN: 9788174363800 Category : Photography Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
Foreward:Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma This book, over eight years in the making, is a dramatic photo exploration of the Indian subcontinent from the air. The breathtaking visuals many of them taken from over 30,000 feet from the cockpit of MiG fighter planes, and others from AN-32 aircraft and choppers are a poetic mosaic of the stunning variety of India s landscape, from ocean to sky. A visual feast unlike any attempted before, the book extends from the southern tip of the Andaman Islands to the northernmost point on the Siachen Glacier. It brings alive the relentless beauty of nature s handiwork together with human embellishments over the ages.
Author: Thea Lim Publisher: Gallery Books ISBN: 1501192566 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
A shortlisted finalist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the ALA 2019 Reading List for Science Fiction “Thea Lim’s An Ocean of Minutes is that rare thing—a speculative novel that is as heartfelt as it is philosophical. In lucid prose, Lim lays bare the complexities of migration and displacement, while offering a clear-eyed meditation on the elusive nature of human devotion.” —Esi Edugyan, Man Booker Prize Finalist and author of Washington Black “Lim paints a strange and unfamiliar world with her novel, full of fascinating social commentary on class differences, racism, and sexism.” —The Los Angeles Times In September 1981, Polly and Frank arrive at the time travel terminal at Houston Intercontinental Airport. One will travel, and one will stay. America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. Frank has caught the virus and Polly will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means risking everything. So she agrees to a radical plan—time travel has been invented in the future to thwart the virus. If she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years. But when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a changed and divided America, with no status and no money, Polly must navigate a new life and find a way to locate Frank, to discover if he is alive, and if their love has endured. “Lim’s enthralling novel succeeds on every level: as a love story, an imaginative thriller, and a dystopian narrative” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Author: Jacquelyn Mitchard Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101199563 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 501
Book Description
"Masterful...A big story about human connection and emotional survival" - Los Angeles Times The first book ever chosen by Oprah's Book Club Few first novels receive the kind of attention and acclaim showered on this powerful story—a nationwide bestseller, a critical success, and the first title chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Both highly suspenseful and deeply moving, The Deep End of the Ocean imagines every mother's worst nightmare—the disappearance of a child—as it explores a family's struggle to endure, even against extraordinary odds. Filled with compassion, humor, and brilliant observations about the texture of real life, here is a story of rare power, one that will touch readers' hearts and make them celebrate the emotions that make us all one.
Author: Debra Frasier Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780152163549 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 44
Book Description
A young girl and her mother walk along the beach and marvel at the treasures cast up by the sea and the wonders of the world around them.
Author: Peter Ward Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309100615 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
For 65 million years dinosaurs ruled the Earth-until a deadly asteroid forced their extinction. But what accounts for the incredible longevity of dinosaurs? A renowned scientist now provides a startling explanation that is rewriting the history of the Age of Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were pretty amazing creatures-real-life monsters that have the power to fascinate us. And their fiery Hollywood ending only serves to make the story that much more dramatic. But fossil evidence demonstrates that dinosaurs survived several mass extinctions, and were seemingly unaffected by catastrophes that decimated most other life on Earth. What could explain their uncanny ability to endure through the ages? Biologist and earth scientist Peter Ward now accounts for the remarkable indestructibility of dinosaurs by connecting their unusual respiration system with their ability to adapt to Earth's changing environment-a system that was ultimately bequeathed to their descendants, birds. By tracing the evolutionary path back through time and carefully connecting the dots from birds to dinosaurs, Ward describes the unique form of breathing shared by these two distant relatives and demonstrates how this simple but remarkable characteristic provides the elusive explanation to a question that has thus far stumped scientists. Nothing short of revolutionary in its bold presentation of an astonishing theory, Out of Thin Air is a story of science at the edge of discovery. Ward is an outstanding guide to the process of scientific detection. Audacious and innovative in his thinking, meticulous and thoroughly detailed in his research, only a scientist of his caliber is capable of telling this surprising story.
Proudly powered by WordPress |
Theme: Rits Blog by Crimson Themes.
Author: Gabrielle Walker
Author: Gabrielle Walker
Author: Everest Media,
Author: Gabrielle Walker
Author: Miles McPhee
Author: Kunal Verma
Author: Thea Lim
Author: Jacquelyn Mitchard
Author: Debra Frasier
Author: Peter Ward