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'Gets right to the heart of what makes us what we are. Read it!' Angela Saini, author of Inferior and Superior: The Return of Race Science The popular science equivalent of Who Do You Think You Are? Popular science master Brian Clegg's new book is an entertaining tour through the science of what makes you you. From the atomic level, through life and energy to genetics and personality, it explores how the billions of particles which make up you - your DNA, your skin, your memories - have come to be. It starts with the present-day reader and follows a number of trails to discover their origins: how the atoms in your body were created and how they got to you in space and time, the sources of things you consume, how the living cells of your body developed, where your massive brain and consciousness originated, how human beings evolved and, ultimately, what your personal genetic history reveals.
'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' Douglas Adams, Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy We human beings have trouble with infinity - yet infinity is a surprisingly human subject. Philosophers and mathematicians have gone mad contemplating its nature and complexity - yet it is a concept routinely used by schoolchildren. Exploring the infinite is a journey into paradox. Here is a quantity that turns arithmetic on its head, making it feasible that 1 = 0. Here is a concept that enables us to cram as many extra guests as we like into an...
Fascinating facts and mind-boggling science of the human body. Built from the debris of exploding stars that floated through space for billions of years, and controlled by a brain with more possible connections than there are atoms in the universe, the human body is the most incredible thing in existence.
The breakthroughs that have had the most transformative practical impacts, from thermodynamics to the Internet. Physics informs our understanding of how the world works – but more than that, key breakthroughs in physics have transformed everyday life. We journey back to ten separate days in history to understand how particular breakthroughs were achieved, meet the individuals responsible and see how each breakthrough has influenced our lives. It is a unique selection. Focusing on practical impact means there is no room for Stephen Hawking's work on black holes, or the discovery of the Higgs boson. Instead we have the relatively little-known Rudolf Clausius (thermodynamics) and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (superconductivity), while Albert Einstein is included not for his theories of relativity but for the short paper that gave us E=mc2 (nuclear fission). Later chapters feature transistors, LEDs and the Internet.
Chaos and complexity explained, with illuminating examples ranging from unpredictable pendulums to London's wobbly Millennium Bridge. The math we are taught in school is precise and only deals with simple situations. Reality is far more complex. Trying to understand a system with multiple interacting components—the weather, for example, or the human body, or the stock market—means dealing with two factors: chaos and complexity. If we don't understand these two essential subjects, we can't understand the real world. In Everyday Chaos, Brian Clegg explains chaos and complexity for the general reader, with an accessible, engaging text and striking full-color illustrations. By chaos, Clegg m...
'Clear and compact ... It's hard to fault as a brief, easily digestible introduction to some of the biggest questions in the Universe' Giles Sparrow, BBC Four's The Sky at Night , Best astronomy and space books of 2019: 5/5 All the matter and light we can see in the universe makes up a trivial 5 per cent of everything. The rest is hidden. This could be the biggest puzzle that science has ever faced. Since the 1970s, astronomers have been aware that galaxies have far too little matter in them to account for the way they spin around: they should fly apart, but something concealed holds them together. That 'something' is dark matter - invisible material in five times the quantity of the familiar stuff of stars and planets. By the 1990s we also knew that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. Something, named dark energy, is pushing it to expand faster and faster. Across the universe, this requires enough energy that the equivalent mass would be nearly fourteen times greater than all the visible material in existence. Brian Clegg explains this major conundrum in modern science and looks at how scientists are beginning to find solutions to it.
Enter the invisible world of sub-atomic physics and discover the very core of existence. Cracking Quantum Physics takes you through every area of particle physics to clearly explain how our world was, and is, created, and breaks down the most complex theories into easily understandable elements. Subjects covered include: -Time travel -The Higgs field -Dark Matter -The anatomy of the elements -Enter the atom -Quantum reality -Quantum tunnelling -Electrodynamics -Accelerators and colliders -The Zeno effect An easy-to-understand guide to some of the most complex and intriguing topics: Cracking Quantum Physics is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the underlying forces and materials that make up the world as we know it.
This collection of tried and tested techniques encourages individuals and groups to make the most of their creativity, offering more than 70 quick and simple exercises to help find fresh ideas and solutions to problems.
Brian Clegg was always fascinated by Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series of books, in which the future is predicted using sophisticated mathematical modelling of human psychology and behaviour. Only much later did he realise that Asimov's 'psychohistory' had a real-world equivalent: game theory. Originating in the study of probabilistic gambling games that depend on a random source - the throw of a dice or the toss of a coin - game theory soon came to be applied to human interactions: essentially, what was the best strategy to win, whatever you were doing? Its mathematical techniques have been applied, with varying degrees of wisdom, to fields such as economics, evolution, and questions such as how to win a nuclear war. Clegg delves into game theory's colourful history and significant findings, and shows what we can all learn from this oft-misunderstood field of study.
Creativity and Innovation for Managers will appeal to any manager responsible for getting more out of a business. Creative thinking, creative problem solving and creative idea generation have become essential business drivers. This book provides an excellent executive briefing for senior management to understand what business creativity is, how it can benefit the company, and how to get the most out of it. It looks at the pitfalls on the road to innovation and the ways to avoid them, pulling together the experiences of key practitioners in the field both in the UK and the US. By concentrating on the essentials, Creativity and Innovation In Brief is a waffle-free approach to creativity, providing a quick action focused and accessible insight into a complex topic. It provides; - a practical approach to business creativity without the hype; - an agenda for making innovation happen in your business - a real world view.