With See for Yourself!, budding scientists can wow their teachers and classmates (and maybe win a ribbon or two) by learning: How to extract DNA from an onion How pigments from vegetables make dye How to make paper out of lint from a clothes dryer How to make a friend feel like he or she has a third hand What happens when you grow yeast in dandruff shampoo That tea and iron pills make excellent inks And much more! See for Yourself! includes experiments in the areas of chemistry, earth science, physical science, the human body, and technology, but the experiments all take their inspiration from very familiar places. The materials needed to execute the experiments can all be inexpensively purchased at the supermarket, the toy store, the hardware store, the stationery store, and the drugstore. Some of the experiments are quick and easy, while others are more challenging. Most include additional suggestions so that curious young scientists can keep on investigating.

The relationship between ignorance and surprise and a conceptual framework for dealing with the unexpected, as seen in ecological design projects. Ignorance and surprise belong together: surprises can make people aware of their own ignorance. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, a surprising event in scientific research—one that defies prediction or risk assessment—is often a window to new and unexpected knowledge. In this book, Matthias Gross examines the relationship between ignorance and surprise, proposing a conceptual framework for handling the unexpected and offering case studies of ecological design that demonstrate the advantages of allowing for surprises and including ignorance in the design and negotiation processes. Gross draws on classical and contemporary sociological accounts of ignorance and surprise in science and ecology and integrates these with the idea of experiment in society. He develops a notion of how unexpected occurrences can be incorporated into a model of scientific and technological development that includes the experimental handling of surprises. Gross discusses different projects in ecological design, including Chicago's restoration of the shoreline of Lake Michigan and Germany's revitalization of brownfields near Leipzig. These cases show how ignorance and surprise can successfully play out in ecological design projects, and how the acknowledgment of the unknown can become a part of decision making. The appropriation of surprises can lead to robust design strategies. Ecological design, Gross argues, is neither a linear process of master planning nor a process of trial and error but a carefully coordinated process of dealing with unexpected turns by means of experimental practice.

John Gribbin, author of Six Impossible Things, shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize, presents a tour of seven fundamental scientific truths that underpin our very existence. These 'pillars of science' also defy common sense. For example, solid things are mostly empty space, so how do they hold together? There appears to be no special 'life force', so how do we distinguish living things from inanimate objects? And why does ice float on water, when most solids don't? You might think that question hardly needs asking, and yet if ice didn't float, life on Earth would never have happened. The answers to all of these questions were sensational in their day, and some still are. Throughout history, science has been able to think the unthinkable - and Gribbin brilliantly shows the surprising secrets on which our understanding of life is based.

"There are few academics who write with as much grace and wisdom as Timothy Wilson. REDIRECT is a masterpiece." -Malcolm Gladwell What if there were a magic pill that could make you happier, turn you into a better parent, solve a number of your teenager's behavior problems, reduce racial prejudice, and close the achievement gap in education? There is no such pill, but story editing - the scientifically based approach described in REDIRECT - can accomplish all of this. The world-renowned psychologist Timothy Wilson shows us how to redirect the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us, with subtle prompts, in ways that lead to lasting change. Fascinating, groundbreaking, and practical, REDIRECT demonstrates the remarkable power small changes can have on the ways we see ourselves and our environment, and how we can use this in our everyday lives.

Each year the Nobel Prizes in the natural sciences reveal amazing discoveries. New milestones in the relentless advance of science are identified. The growth of knowledge and its evolution can be researched in the Nobel archives where nominations are kept secret for 50 years after the awards have been made. They represent a treasure for real-time assessment of science. Norrby's earlier book, Nobel Prizes and Life Sciences (2010) examined the unique archival records until 1959.The present book takes us up to 1962, surveying a range of dazzling discoveries. All prizes in immunology are reviewed. Their impact on our capacity to control infectious diseases and transplant organs are highlighted. The Nobel year 1962 is exceptional in recognizing the most major advance in biology since Darwin in 1859 presented his theory of evolution. This was the dramatic discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953. The era of molecular biology had begun. Its explosive development continues into the present.

Problems in theoretical physics often lead to paradoxical answers; yet closer reasoning and a more complete analysis invariably lead to the resolution of the paradox and to a deeper understanding of the physics involved. Drawing primarily from his own experience and that of his collaborators, Sir Rudolf Peierls selects examples of such "surprises" from a wide range of physical theory, from quantum mechanical scattering theory to the theory of relativity, from irreversibility in statistical mechanics to the behavior of electrons in solids. By studying such surprises and learning what kind of possibilities to look for, he suggests, scientists may be able to avoid errors in future problems. In some cases the surprise is that the outcome of a calculation is contrary to what physical intuition seems to demand. In other instances an approximation that looks convincing turns out to be unjustified, or one that looks unreasonable turns out to be adequate. Professor Peierls does not suggest, however, that theoretical physics is a hazardous game in which one can never foresee the surprises a detailed calculation might reveal. Rather, he contends, all the surprises discussed have rational explanations, most of which are very simple, at least in principle. This book is based on the author's lectures at the University of Washington in the spring of 1977 and at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, University de Paris-Sud, Orsay, during the winter of 1977-1978.

Hundreds of fascinating, flabbergasting, and sometimes freaky facts are at your disposal in this fun-sized compendium. Uncover animal oddities, including the fact that certain species of frogs can survive being frozen solid and thawed. Find out how strange people really are: Did you know that the average human produces 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime—enough to fill two swimming pools? And there are botanical surprises, such as that bananas are actually herbs, plus science tidbits about the Earth, inventions, computers, and more.