Air: the excellent canopy – Frank Fahy ***

Considering how important it is to us, air has had relatively little coverage in popular science. Frank Fahy’s slim book aims to set that right, exploring every aspect of this essential medium.

We begin with the nature and basic physical properties of air, going on to look at how it supports life. From there we come onto a meaty section on aerodynamics and flight, providing the most comprehensive description of all the components that go into making flight possible I’ve ever seen in a book for the general reader. We also discover a lot about sound and about meteorology, where air and its flows are responsible for vast swathes of the weather phenomena we experience. There’s even room to look at some air-based technology, notably wind instruments and pneumatics.

Along the way there are a lot of useful diagrams and photographs. These are not always particularly well reproduced – often a problem with inline printing of photographs – and I believe that an attempt is being made to improve them. Even as they are, they contribute hugely to the understanding of the information that is being put across.

There’s certainly plenty covered, despite the book’s thinness. In part this is because the text is crammed in – there’s very little white space, making it a little difficult to read. Unfortunately there are quite a few typos as well – for example the section on why the sky is blue refers to the particles of light more than once as ‘protons’. The author clearly knows better, but this kind of error can leave the reader a little confused.

The book also doesn’t quite come across as being for the general reader. In part this is pricing – £20 for a slim paperback is not mass market – and in part the way the book is written. It is in numbered sections, more reminiscent of a textbook than a popular science title, and concentrates on putting across fact, which is fine, but lacks a certain storytelling flair. This is an interesting book, with a lot crammed into it, but it is unlikely to escape from a specialist niche.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically? Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...

Search This Blog