Educational resource for teachers, parents and kids!

Science Rocks! is a cross between a science manual offering youngsters a variety of awe-inspiring ideas for projects that could enliven their school work, and a book of suggestions of fun things to do to fill a few spare minutes, an hour, or a day. By making use of everyday objects commonly found around the home, it is instantly accesible to all. Included are some tougher experiments to encourage family participation and group efforts, such as making outrageously large bubbles with dry ice and liquid soap. Meanwhile, the Brainwaves section features tricks and puzzles than can be carried out alone or used to test family and friends-perfect for rainy days or long car trips.

A New York Times / National Bestseller "America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again.

Winner of the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A Five Books "Best Literary Science Writing" Book of 2023 • A Smithsonian Best Science Book of 2022 • A Prospect Magazine Top Memoir of 2022 • A KCRW Life Examined Best Book of 2022 "Keen observer [and] deft writer" (David Quammen) Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own. When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of "social pain" to learn why heartbreak hurts so much—and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist’s living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe. With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.

Author, celebrity teacher and science guy Steve Spangler teaches you how to transform the ordinary into the amazing as you make everyday items ooze, bubble, fizz, pop. Make people wonder . . . How did you do that? From Flying Toilet Paper to Bin Smoke Rings, Erupting Soda to Exploding Sandwich Bags, the experiments in this book will spark imaginations and totally impress your friends. Learn how to astound kids and kids at heart with easy and inexpensive experiments like: Bubbling Lava Bottle; The Incredible Can Crusher; Eating Nails for Breakfast; The Amazing Folding Egg; Kitchen Chemistry Quicksand Goo; The Screaming Balloon; Burning Money Surprise; Flying Tea Bag Rocket. This is not your ordinary book of science experiments. This is a geek chic look at Spangler's latest collection of tricks and try-it-at-home activities that reveal the secrets of science in unexpected ways. Over 200 colour photographs accompany the step-by-step instructions, and simple explanations uncover the how-to and why for each activity. Make potatoes fly, bowling balls float, and soda explode on command. But don't try these experiments at home . . . try them at a friend's home!

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death offers readers an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a master criminal investigator. Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy grandmother, founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936 and was later appointed captain in the New Hampshire police. In the 1940s and 1950s she built dollhouse crime scenes based on real cases in order to train detectives to assess visual evidence. Still used in forensic training today, the eighteen Nutshell dioramas, on a scale of 1:12, display an astounding level of detail: pencils write, window shades move, whistles blow, and clues to the crimes are revealed to those who study the scenes carefully. Corinne May Botz's lush color photographs lure viewers into every crevice of Frances Lee's models and breathe life into these deadly miniatures, which present the dark side of domestic life, unveiling tales of prostitution, alcoholism, and adultery. The accompanying line drawings, specially prepared for this volume, highlight the noteworthy forensic evidence in each case. Botz's introductory essay, which draws on archival research and interviews with Lee's family and police colleagues, presents a captivating portrait of Lee.

"As see on the Ellen Degeneres Show"--Cover.