Your Inner Fish: The Amazing Discovery of Our 375-Million-Year-Old Ancestor by Neil Shubin |
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
|
by Ben Goldacre
|
Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey |
by Robert Macfarlane
|
Join Amazon Prime and get unlimited Free One-Day Delivery. Already a member? Sign in.
|
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links(What is this?) |
Product Description
Review
"In tireless pursuit of the mundane mystery of the blue sky, Pesic takes us on a thrilling 2,000-year scientific treasure hunt, turning up profound questions, surprising answers, unexpected connections, and--always--more questions. Scholarly, sophisticated, yet broadly accessible. A little sapphire of a book!" --Hans Christian von Baeyer, Chancellor Professor of Physics, College of William and Mary, author of "Information: The New Language of Science"
Product Description
The age-old question "Why is the sky blue?" begins a quest through science, history, and art, from Aristotle and Newton through Goethe and Einstein. Children ask, "Why is the sky blue?" but the question also puzzled Plato, Leonardo, and even Newton, who unlocked so many other secrets. The search for an answer continued for centuries; in 1862 Sir John Herschel listed the colour and polarisation of sky light as "the two great standing enigmas of meteorology." In Sky in a Bottle, Peter Pesic takes us on a quest to the heart of this mystery, tracing the various attempts of science, history, and art to solve it. He begins with the scholars of the ancient world and continues through the natural philosophers of the Enlightenment, the empiricists of the Scientific Revolution, and beyond. The cast of characters includes Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Descartes, Euler, Saussure, Goethe, Rayleigh, and Einstein; but the protagonist is the question itself, and the story tells how we have tried to answer it. Pesic's odyssey introduces us to central ideas of chemistry, optics, and atomic physics. He describes the polarisation of light, Rayleigh scattering, and connections between the appearance of the sky and Avogadro's number. He discusses changing representations of the sky in art, from new styles of painting to new pigments that created new colours for paint. He considers what the sky's night-time brightness might tell us about the size and density of the universe. And Pesic asks another, daring, question: Can we put the sky in a bottle? Can we recreate and understand its blueness here on earth? This puzzle, he says, opens larger perspectives; questions of the colour and brightness of the sky touch the secrets of matter and light, the scope of the universe in space and time, the destiny of the earth, and deep human feelings.
See all Product Description
"In tireless pursuit of the mundane mystery of the blue sky, Pesic takes us on a thrilling 2,000-year scientific treasure hunt, turning up profound questions, surprising answers, unexpected connections, and--always--more questions. Scholarly, sophisticated, yet broadly accessible. A little sapphire of a book!" --Hans Christian von Baeyer, Chancellor Professor of Physics, College of William and Mary, author of "Information: The New Language of Science"
Product Description
The age-old question "Why is the sky blue?" begins a quest through science, history, and art, from Aristotle and Newton through Goethe and Einstein. Children ask, "Why is the sky blue?" but the question also puzzled Plato, Leonardo, and even Newton, who unlocked so many other secrets. The search for an answer continued for centuries; in 1862 Sir John Herschel listed the colour and polarisation of sky light as "the two great standing enigmas of meteorology." In Sky in a Bottle, Peter Pesic takes us on a quest to the heart of this mystery, tracing the various attempts of science, history, and art to solve it. He begins with the scholars of the ancient world and continues through the natural philosophers of the Enlightenment, the empiricists of the Scientific Revolution, and beyond. The cast of characters includes Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Descartes, Euler, Saussure, Goethe, Rayleigh, and Einstein; but the protagonist is the question itself, and the story tells how we have tried to answer it. Pesic's odyssey introduces us to central ideas of chemistry, optics, and atomic physics. He describes the polarisation of light, Rayleigh scattering, and connections between the appearance of the sky and Avogadro's number. He discusses changing representations of the sky in art, from new styles of painting to new pigments that created new colours for paint. He considers what the sky's night-time brightness might tell us about the size and density of the universe. And Pesic asks another, daring, question: Can we put the sky in a bottle? Can we recreate and understand its blueness here on earth? This puzzle, he says, opens larger perspectives; questions of the colour and brightness of the sky touch the secrets of matter and light, the scope of the universe in space and time, the destiny of the earth, and deep human feelings.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Imagine a summer afternoon with a serene sky. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Imagine a summer afternoon with a serene sky. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet. Create your own review
| |||
Video reviews
|
 |
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Other Historical Subjects > History of Science
- Books > Science & Nature > Earth Sciences & Geography > Meteorology
- Books > Science & Nature > Physics
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Physics
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Weather
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Earth Sciences > Meteorology & Climatology
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Physics
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
Fun for Everyone |
More From Peter Pesic
Abel's Proof: An Essay on the Sources... In 1824 a young Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel proved conclusively...
Read more
|
Treat Someone
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). |
||||||||
| |||||
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
You have no recently viewed items or searches.
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session. |
Continue Shopping: Top Sellers
| ||||
Amazon Home | |
| International Sites: United States | Germany | France | Japan | Canada | China | |
| Business Programs: Sell on Amazon | Fulfilment by Amazon | Join Associates | Join Advantage | |
| Customer Service | Help | View Basket | Your Account | |
| About Amazon.co.uk | Careers at Amazon | |
| Conditions of Use & Sale | Privacy Notice © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates |