Science and the City - Laurie Winkless ****

A welcome trend over the past few years is the increased number of popular science books involving materials science, in part inspired (I suspect) by the success of Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik.

Laurie Winkless, a physicist and writer who has had a place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and has worked at the National Physical Laboratory, has written her first book, looking at the science of how cities function. The book has as its foundation (pun intended) the creation of a skyscraper. This skyscraper acts as a guide throughout the book to illustrate the science of materials, the accomplishments and methods of engineering involved in building superstructures, a reference for the history of construction and its technological achievements and a starting point for explanations of the science at work in the world’s cities.

The book goes into depth into various areas of the commonplace around us: how cities provide and distribute energy, water, public transport, food production, logistics and how they deal with the enormous amounts of waste produced by their citizens. Winkless does an excellent job at revealing the fascinating science behind what most of us take for granted as we make our daily commutes. I found the intricacies and complex designs underlying a regular day in a metropolis endlessly fascinating.

While describing how cities have functioned and how they function now, the author also looks at the future, based on proposed projects that various cities around the world are planning and based on research into potential solutions for providing for the increased urban populations of the future. Winkless readily admits that many of the plans are very speculative and her candour is welcome and represents science done properly; that is that she is frank about the possibilities and the limitations of science that has not been verified by experiment.

One small complaint is that some of the coverage of scientific principles, such as the explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum, is slightly confusing and would benefit from diagrams or illustrations, but I’m being picky with this criticism.

If you are interested in learning more about how science affects our everyday lives, how it can be that fresh produce is available in food stores around the world throughout the year, why there is a rush of wind when the tube arrives (and why it is necessary), how it is possible to build buildings over half a kilometer tall and many other things, then this is an excellent book to read, particularly on your daily commute.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Ian Bald

Comments

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...

Search This Blog