How do plate tectonics work? Learn from the experts in the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES Discover in this accessible and authoritative introduction the fundamental theory of how our dynamic planet works. You'll learn about the make up of the Earth in the past and the present, from monsoon-like currents in our planet's radioactive interior to magnetic force lines and what the planet would look like without water. You will learn about: - Our planet as an active living system - The planetary force field - Fault lines that cross continents - How plates tectonics protects life on Earth - And much more . . . Written by the celebrated geologist, academic and popular science presenter Iain Stewart, Plate Tectonics explores the Earth as a planetary machine and investigates the people and ideas that changed the way we look at the world. Learn about other topics in the Ladybird Experts series including Gravity, Quantum Physics, Climate Change and Evolution. Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture. For an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.

What is climate change? How does it work? Learn from the experts in the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES Learn about one of the most important issues facing our world today in this clear, simple and enlightening introduction. From HRH The Prince of Wales, environmentalist Tony Juniper and climate scientist Dr Emily Shuckburgh, it explains the history, dangers and challenges of global warming and explores possible solutions with which to reduce its impact. You'll learn about . . . - The causes and consequences of climate disruption - Heatwaves, floods and other extreme weather - Disappearing wildlife - Acid oceans - The benefits of limiting warming - Sustainable farming - New, clean technologies - The circular economy Learn about other topics in the Ladybird Experts series including Gravity, Quantum Physics, Climate Change and Evolution. Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture. For an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Bubbles is a clear, surprising and entertaining introduction to the science of bubbles. Bubbles are beautiful, ephemeral, fun, fragile, jolly and slightly unpredictable. We're all familiar with them, but we don't often ask what they actually are. The great scientists of the Western world - Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Lord Rayleigh and more - studied bubbles seriously. They recognised that they had a lot to say about the nature of the physical world, and they poked, prodded and listened to find out what it was. In the years since, we've learned that this bulbous arrangement of liquid and gas does things that neither the gas or the liquid could do by itself. Written by the celebrated physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, Bubbles explores how everything from the way drinks taste to the Earth's temperature are influenced by bubbles. This book has a message: never underestimate a bubble! Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture. For an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.

Part of the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES - Why is it octopuses, and not octopi or octopodes? - How did octopuses evolve to be so clever? - How can octopuses see and speak with their skin? EXAMINE these crafty hunters of the seabed - shape-shifting, skin-signalling and using complex tools - their remarkable abilities are still being uncovered. BENDY BODIES, BIG BRAINS Written by celebrated marine biologist and documentarian Helen Scales, Octopuses is an enthralling introduction to these utterly unique creatures, the myths and fiction they have inspired, and what they can tell us about the roots of intelligence.

DISCOVER THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WOMAN THAT ENGLISH HISTORY FORGOT Part of the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES. - Who was Æthelflæd? - What role did she play in the founding of England? - How has her legacy lasted to this day? DISCOVER the epic history of England's forgotten queen. Planting cities, sponsoring learning and defeating her people's enemies, Æthelflæd laid the foundations of a kingdom that lasts to this day. Tom Holland's Æthelflæd puts a spotlight on this formidable leader, pulling her out of the shadowy history of the dark ages.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Well beyond the breadth of human existence, major land masses have through the ages reformed into disparate configurations on an inevitable path toward apocalyptic continental collisions. Within that process, our present tectonic reality shows no sign of slowing. Speculation holds, for example, that the African continent will in time overrun what is now the south of Europe. As an aid to perspective, population centers such as Venice and other iconic present-day cities are unlikely to survive what is to us an interminably lengthy natural process. In the distant past, the continents were not so separate. The southern portion of the globe was at one time occupied by a "supercontinent" dubbed "Gondwana" or "Gondwanaland" that existed 600 million years ago. The mass included present-day South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica. The term "supercontinent" was coined by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, an expert on the Alps who helped lay the basis for the study of paleography and tectonics. The latter was to replace the "drifting continent" theory with "the study of the architecture of the earth's outer rocky shell." In the late Paleozoic Age between 254 to 544 million years in the past, a global supercontinent commonly known as Pangea included the entire masses of Gondwana, Eurasia, and North America as the two northern continents collided. Added to the shifting of continents away from what has been theorized as an original "supercontinent," other natural events have contributed to life's tenuous existence. The unexpected oceanic covering of dry land masses by sudden seismically-driven tsunamis is more familiar to modern societies, and the sudden destruction wrought by these errant waves brought about by either volcanic action or sub-oceanic landslides is an ever-present danger to coastal communities. But equally perilous are slower alterations caused by climate change, a subject that has only recently begun to gain more attention. On the other hand, the famed "lost city" of Atlantis has been a point of intense interest for thousands of years, and the notion of a submerged civilization is not uncommon. Inundated cities have remained a regular feature of the planet since people developed coastal enclaves a few thousand years ago. The early twentieth century theory of a floating land mass was in the decades following Suess' career eclipsed by the acceptance of tectonic plates and the effects of their relentless friction as one passes under another. Such ongoing action affects not only land masses, but the vast oceans in which they are situated. Relocation of water on a grand scale is common to geological annals as a dominant and dynamic majority element. Among the most significant water displacement phenomena in the Western world was Doggerland on the northern European continent. The notable inundation occurred in both a steady and eruptive fashion covering a vast stretch of former tundra, a land bridge between today's British Isles and the European continent. The event brought about the modern English Channel and an expanded North Sea, and unlike the early supercontinents, the inundation of Doggerland took place after the appearance of people. Incrementally submerged since roughly 18,000 years ago as the climate warmed, the patch of sea between Britain and Europe is the subject of much recent scientific scrutiny. Several fields are participating in the inquiry as to how and why the inundation took place, and the nature of the peoples that settled there. This encompasses earliest man to Neanderthals and on through the Mesolithic prototype of the modern European.