I have been doing a lot of reading lately, mainly Natalie Angier's The Canon: A Whirlygig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. A whirlygig tour, indeed! Whether you are a science-head like me, or just a fan of fantastic prose, this is a book worth reading. Ms. Angier has a flair for the alliterative and the poetic. Reading her paragraphs is like a hyper-speed Easter egg hunt. Just when you think you've spotted every pop-cultural reference and hidden couplet, you realize, in retracing your steps, that there was one more gem hiding in plain sight. Not only do I love the book, but the book makes me love and treasure science again. The wonder of childhood magnifying glass adventures is restored, and the magic of our world is made real again. Tall order, eh? Yes, and delivered with a bow on top in this fast-paced, fluid and compact volume.
Speaking of magnifying glasses, have you seen this piece about grains of sand? It makes me want to run out and buy a magnifying glass right now. And spend all day at the beach looking at sand.
(copyrightProfessor Gary Greenberg, SWNS)Gorgeous!
I've just finished the chapter on Astronomy, and am headed into Geology (completed Statistics, Chemistry, Molecular and Evolutionary Biology and Physics). Here's something I've learned that you might not know either: at the center of the Earth, there is a moon. Rather, there is a dense, solid central core, made mostly of metals, about the size of our moon.
The original chunk was part of an orb that collided with the Earth in the early days of our planet's formation. In return for giving up a chunk of itself, this roller-derby queen of a planetary object lopped off a section of Earth that now floats in orbit around us, tethered by the gravity of our comparatively large mass, and the weight of our dense, metallic center. Like Shel Silverstein's Missing Piece, or the long-lost human halves in The Origin of Love, the pale, reflective, floating moon is doomed to circle its lost counterpart, held tight by its gravity, forever kept at a distance by its magnetism.
Isn't science beautiful?
No comments:
Post a Comment