Overview

Goran Grimvall is determined to help mere mortals understand how scientists get to the kernel of perplexing problems. Entertaining and enlightening, his latest book uses examples from sports, literature, and nature-as well as from the varied worlds of science-to illustrate how scientists make sense of and explain the world around us. Grimvall's fun-to-read essays and easy-to-follow examples detail how order-of-magnitude estimation, extreme cases, dimensional analysis, and other modeling methods work. They also reveal how nonscientists absorb these concepts and use them at home, school, and work. Grimvall's simple, elegant explanations will help you tap into your inner scientist. Read this book and enjoy your own ""Aha!"" moment.

Full Product Details

Author:   Göran Grimvall (Royal Institute of Technology)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.272kg
ISBN:  

9780801897177

ISBN 10:   0801897173
Pages:   232
Publication Date:   26 January 2011
Recommended Age:   From 13
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Preface 1. Numbers 1.1. Numerical Literacy Babylon, Babble, and Billion Prefixes What Is the Point? 1.2. The Power of Logarithms Order of Magnitude Hot Air Balloons and Renard Numbers Finding Fraud in Figures 1.3. What Is Typical? The Height of an Adult Social Competence and Personal Encounters Hit by Returning Rocket 1.4. Estimates Is Anybody Out There? Sand, Sibyl, Olympic Medals, and Homeopathy Cover the Earth with Paper 2. Measures 2.1. What Is It on a Scale? The Richter Scale Nuclear Incidents and Accidents Natural Threats 2.2. Comparing Apples and Oranges Human Well-Being and Poverty Track and Field At Scout Camp 2.3. Units Going Metric—Inch by Inch Horsepower and Manpower The Loss of a Spacecraft 2.4. On the Road Left-Hand Traffic The Value of a Life Gasoline Here and There 3. Accuracy and Significance 3.1. Could You Be More Precise, Please? What Is Austria's Population? A Slim Waist Man on the Moon 3.2. Significant? Flunking A Change in Opinion Error Bars 3.3. Limiti Values Will Your iPod Make You Deaf? Lethal Dose The Weakest Link 3.4. A Fair Games? Winning by a Small Margin Accurate Timing Are All Sports Venues Equivalent? 4. Extrapolations 4.1. The Dangerous Exponential The Rule of 72 A Problematic Reward Suddenly Nothing Was Left 4.2. The Ubiquitous Straight Line Dubious Extrapolations Moore's Law Low Radiation Level and Cancer 4.3. Scaling Big and Small Fish Gulliver Roasting a Turkey 4.4. Looking Ahead The Law of Diminishing Returns The Sign of the Second Derivative Lynx and Hare 5. Models 5.1. What Are the Chances? Proofreading Losing a Leg Sunday Traffic 5.2. Seeking the Optimum Tax Rates and the Autobahn Running to the Rescue Selecting the Best Golf Club 5.3. Focus on the Essential How Small Can a Mouse Be? The Age of the Earth 5.4. A Loud Party Ohm's Law Is Not a Law A Mad Pursuit Is Coulomb's Law Exact? 6. The Real World 6.1. Plausible, but Not Correct The Unridable Bicycle Church Windows and Lead Roofs The Bathtub Vortex 6.2. You See What You Want to See Waves Are Rolling In Galileo Galilei's Trial Submarines and Mink 6.3. Suddenly Something Happens Fishing Nets, Coffee Percolators, and the Web Goethe and the Height of Trees Supercooled Rain and Critical Mass 6.4. Engineering versus Science Slapstick Not a Schoolbook Problem Hoisting a Sack 7. Tricks of the Trade 7.1. A Crash Course in Science Thinking Dinghy, Anchor, and Pool Up and Down the Escalator The Floating Apple 7.2. Is the Formula Accurate Enough? Obesity Wind Chill Temperature The Size of a Ship 7.3. Characteristic Quantities How Deep Is Deep? The Coldest Day of the Year Galileo Galilei, Basketball, and Table Tennis 7.4. Impress Them! What Is Your BMI? The Aeolian Harp One Trick and Two Areas Epilogue: Seven Principles in Scientific Literacy Notes Index

Reviews

An excellent piece of work with lots of fascinating information inside. -- Brian Clegg Popular Science 2011 Essays are fun, involving... and will appeal to both general readers and collections from high school into college grades. Midwest Book Review 2011 Grimvall's book should appeal to and amuse a wide audience, extending from professional scientists, teachres, school kids, newspaper columnists to the...average citizen. -- Philip J. Davis SIAM News 2011 A wonderful read for everyone, emphasizing how scientists and engineers tend to think about examples from daily life that are expressed by numbers... Highly recommended. Choice 2011

<p>Grimvall's book should appeal to and amuse a wide audience, extending from professional scientists, teachres, school kids, newspaper columnists to the...average citizen.--Philip J. Davis SIAM News (01/01/2011)

<p>An excellent piece of work with lots of fascinating information inside.--Brian Clegg Popular Science (01/01/0001)

Author Information

Author Website:   http://researchprojects.kth.se/index.php/pb_726/pb.html?add_to_infobox=1&&show_details=1&add_pb=726

Goran Grimvall is professor emeritus of physics at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. An elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, he is the author of a number of popular physics books, including Brainteaser Physics, also published by Johns Hopkins.

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Author Website:   http://researchprojects.kth.se/index.php/pb_726/pb.html?add_to_infobox=1&&show_details=1&add_pb=726

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