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- Science is frequently of use to the average person for a variety of purposes. From getting drains unclogged to growing a vegetable garden, the principles of science enable us to successfully meet many of the demands of everyday living. Science is not only a tool, it is a toy and a source of wonder and satisfaction. The more each of us know about science the more we can accomplish and the more we can marvel at and appreciate all that science adds to our lives.
Science is so empowering and so inspiring that discovery of principles of science can be a pleasureable hobby. Any new understanding has the potential of being useful in a practical way, at some time. And any new bit of understanding adds to awe that science inspires.
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Below is a list of science books about topics of popular interest. The list includes only books
available in electronic format at ebooks.com.
Make your own decision whether a particular book is useful to you. Everybody's circumstances and attitudes are different. Some of the books may be available through your local library.
eBooks about science available through ebooks.com
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See How It's Made: Clothes, Toys, Shoes, Food, Drinks, Skateboards
Author: Smith, Penny; Mack, Lorrie
Published By: Dorling Kindersley
Format: Adobe
Price: $15.99
From chocolate to guitars, See How It’s Made lifts the lid on all kinds of everyday objects, foods, and toys, revealing the amazing ways they’re manufactured.
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
Author: Bryson, Bill
Published By: Broadway Books
Format: Adobe, Mobipocket Reader, Microsoft Reader
Price: $16.95
The story of the discoveries that comprise our understanding of the universe - atomic particles, the Big Bang theory, the composition of the universe, the rise of civilization, and the basic facts of physics, chemistry, biology, botany, climatology, and geology. Understanding how things got to be the way they are and understanding the biggest questions that science seeks to answer. Bryson sought the insight of archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, interviewed them and read their books and put their insights into understandable explanations
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction 1
Pt. I Lost in the Cosmos 7
1 How to Build a Universe 9
2 Welcome to the Solar System 19
3 The Reverend Evans's Universe 29
Pt. II The Size of the Earth 41
4 The Measure of Things 43
5 The Stone-Breakers 63
6 Science Red in Tooth and Claw 79
7 Elemental Matters 97
Pt. III A New Age Dawns 113
8 Einstein's Universe 115
9 The Mighty Atom 133
10 Getting the Lead Out 149
11 Muster Mark's Quarks 161
12 The Earth Moves 173
Pt. IV Dangerous Planet 187
13 Bang! 189
14 The Fire Below 207
15 Dangerous Beauty 224
Pt. V Life Itself 237
16 Lonely Planet 239
17 Into the Troposphere 255
18 The Bounding Main 270
19 The Rise of Life 287
20 Small World 302
21 Life Goes On 321
22 Good-bye to All That 335
23 The Richness of Being 350
24 Cells 371
25 Darwin's Singular Notion 381
26 The Stuff of Life 397
Pt. VI The Road to Us 417
27 Ice Time 419
28 The Mysterious Biped 434
29 The Restless Ape 453
30 Good-bye 469
Notes 479
Bibliography 517
Index 529
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The Origin of the Species
Author: Darwin, Charles
Published By: Random House Publishing Group
Format: Adobe, Mobipocket Reader, Microsoft Reader
Price: $21.95
Charles Darwins's presentation of the evidence for plant and animal species arising by small
changes occurring from one generation to the next until one species evolves into another species.
Why those changes occur. An outstandingly influencial work, written in the 1800s, but remains
readable and engrossing.
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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Author: Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
Published By: Random House Publishing Group
Format: Adobe, Microsoft Reader
Price: $27.00
A black swan is a highly improbable event that has a huge impact. The author asserts that
people are exceedingly ignorant of general trends and their consequences that lead to
important, life-changing events.
We are unable to recognize opportunities because we are occupied with the inconsequential.
We concern ourselves with the inconsequential and what we already know and are convinced that we are reasonably able to forecast the future. But actually we have little awareness of influences leading to overwhelming events such as wars, 9-11, the rise of major religions, and
revolutionary cultural changes. We simply and pay little attention to what we do not know
and ignore the possibility of black swans.
Taleb explains what we know about what we don’t know and presents tactics for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
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Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Author: Mlodinow, Leonard
Published By: Knopf Publishing Group
Format: Adobe, Mobipocket Reader, Microsoft Reader
Price: $24.95
How randomness and probability affect our successes and failures and many of the occurrences and circumstances of our lives.
how we misunderstand the significance of events and situations that are unknowingly determined more by chance than known cause and effect relationships. How many things in daily life are less reliable than we believe. Illustrates how common sense sometimes fails us in simple matters of probability.
The psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge reality and miss what is truely meaningful. How to make decisions based on more realistic judgements. Proposes that much of what we experience is about as predictable as the steps of a stumbling man after a night at the bar.
Uses historical narrative to implement a readable quick course in randomness and statistics without technical mathematics to aid understanding of real life problems and circumstances.
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Making a Good Brain Great: The Amen Clinic Program for Achieving and Sustaining Optimal Mental Performance
Author: Daniel G. Amen, M.D.
Published By: Harmony
Adobe Price: $13.95
Mobipocket Reader, Microsoft Reader
Price: $13.95
What to eat for best mental performance
How to protect your brain from injuries and toxins
How to nourish your brain
Mental exercises
Best physical exercises
How to achieve best mental attitude and mood
From Dr. Amen's many years of experience. Somwhat overloaded with terminology
but has useful information.
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The World In Six Songs: How The Musical Brain Created Human Nature
By: Levitin, Daniel J.
Published By: Penguin Group Inc.
Mobipocket Reader Price: $25.95
How and why the brain evolved to play and listen to music and how musical ability is a precursor to other advanced abilitities and behaviors that form human culture.
Every song ever written can be placed into one of six categories. A wide variety of song examples are included to support that proposition. The narration is dry at times, but lucid, and successfully conveys the significance of music both throuhgout the progression of human
advancement and in todays world.
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The Selfish Gene
Title: The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition
By: Dawkins, Richard
Published By: Oxford University Press, UK
Adobe Price: $14.35
Presents a theory of natural selection that includes social biology, and how competition, exploitation, and deceit, are major contributors. HOw acts of altruism are surprisingly abundant. When a honey bee stings an animal precieved as a threat to the hive, the bee looses its life when the stinger is pulled from the bee. Animal parents frequently risk their lives to protect their young. Presents many scientific insights including how humans interact and what motivates us in our day-to-day lives.
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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Author: Pollan, Michael
Published By: Random House Publishing Group
Adobe Price, Mobipocket Reader, Microsoft Reader
Price: $15.00
Describes the impact of four plants on civilization: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. Plant breeders continually improved the desirable qualities of those plants as humans became more and more dependant on and influenced by them. That coevolution has positive and
negative effects on humans and the plants. The potato became a source of abundant, inexpensive food for humans. But our dependence on it resulted in the potato famine in the 1800 causing extreme hardship for millions of people. Through our cultivation of the plants, their distribution and number increased expotentially, and it would seem their continued existence became guarenteed. That could be thought of a great advantage for the plants caused by man's influence.
Pollan points out benefits and potential tradgedies as we adapt plants to suit our desires - genetic accidents releasing invasive species or destructive genes into the ecosystem, our dependence of a few species of plants which perhaps are becoming increasingly vulnerable because of their ubiquitous and monocultural presence, loss of diversity resulting in instability of the ecosystem, and other potentially harmful effects of agricultural practices. A thoughtful and interesting treatment of our interdependence with plants and our unpredictable relationship with nature.
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Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
Or
Cool It
By: Lomborg, Bjorn
Published By: Knopf Publishing Group
Adobe Price: $13.95
Mobipocket Reader Price: $13.95
Microsoft Reader Price: $13.95
Presents evidence that much more good would be done by efforts to lessen problems such as malaria, contaminated water, and famine than by efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions would improve lives much less at a much greater cost than such measures as reducing mosquito populations to reduce malaria incidence and providing clean drinking water to reduce water born diseases.
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