Physics has the reputation of being difficult to understand and remote from everyday life. Robert Ehrlich, however, has spent much of his career disproving these stereotypes. In the long-awaited sequel to Turning the World Inside Out and 175 Other Simple Physics Demonstrations, he provides a new collection of physics demonstrations and experiments that prove that physics can, in fact, be "made simple." Intentionally using "low tech" and inexpensive materials from everyday life, Why Toast Lands Jelly-Side Down makes key principles of physics surprisingly easy to understand. After laying out the basic principles of what constitutes a successful demonstration, Ehrlich provides more than 100 examples. Some of the more intriguing include: Terminal Velocity of Falling Coffee Filters; Spinning a Penny; Dropping Two Rolls of Toilet Paper; Avalanches in a Sand Pile; When to Add the Cream to Your Coffee; Deep Knee Bends on a Bathroom Scale; Recoil Force on a Bent Straw; Swinging Your Arms While Walking; Estimating the Net Force on a Moving Book; and, of course, Why Toast Lands Jelly-Side Down. The book begins with a practical introduction on how to design physics demonstrations. The benefits of designing one's own "demos" are numerous, but primary among them is an increased understanding of basic physics. For many people who teach the principles of physics, demonstrations seem dauntingly complex, filled with hard-to-find equipment and too many possibilities for failure. The demonstrations described in this book are exactly the opposite. Ehrlich describes them with characteristic candor: "You can fit many of them in your pocket, bring them to your class without any set-up required, and best of all, you need not fear that your demo will more likely illustrate Murphy's laws rather than Newton's." For anyone with even the slightest interest in physics, Why Toast Lands Jelly-Side Down is filled with learning opportunities. For everyone who is studying physics or teaching the subject at any level, from amateur scientists to professional teachers, it is an essential resource.

From housework to husbands, from lunch boxes to lingerie, a very '90s suburban wife/mother/chauffeur/financial wizard/ referee/domestic engineer skewers life in contemporary surbuban America with wit and dead-on, laugh-out-loud accuracy. Drawings.

This is an extensively revised edition of Paul Tipler's standard text for calculus-based introductory physics courses. It includes entirely new artwork, updated examples and new pedagogical features. There is also an online instructor's resource manual to support the text.

In many ways, the history of domestic humor writing is also a history of domestic life in the twentieth century. For many years, domestic humor was written primarily by females; significant contributions from male writers began as times and family structures changed. It remains timeless because of its basis on the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, houses and inhabitants, pets and their owners, chores and their doers, and neighbors. This work is a historical and literary survey of humorists who wrote about home. It begins with a chapter on the social context of and attitudes toward traditional domestic roles and housewives. The following chapters, beginning with the 1920s and continuing through today, cover the different time periods and the foremost American domestic humorists, and the humor written by surrogate parents, grown children about their childhood families, husbands, and Canadian and English writers. Also covered are the differences among various writers toward traditional domestic roles--some, like Erma Bombeck and Judith Viorst, embraced them, while others, like Caryl Kristenson and Marilyn Kentz, resisted them. Common themes, such as the isolation and competitiveness of housework, home as an idealized metaphysical goal and ongoing physical challenge, and the urban, suburban, and rural life, are also explored.

Spur Award-Winning Author, winner of the 2007 Spur Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for The Horse Creek Incident. Miss Stout Rice and Mr. Locke McTavish make an unlikely couple—but one hell of a team. The West proves wild from the get-go for gentleman farmer Locke McTavish, late of Illinois. Just off the train in Flagstaff, he steps right into a full-scale dustup. The tenderfoot with quick fists wins the brawl—but not before he loses his heart to lovely Stout Rice. She's as skilled a rider and roper as any seasoned cowhand, while a damned sight more pleasing to behold. And though Stout chuckles at McTavish's yen to set up in ranching, she agrees to give the slick-talking dandy a push in the right direction. The wagon ride to North Cut—where the Rice sisters tend their daddy's ranch—turns into a mighty tug-of-war between the mismatched duo. While Locke labors to court the feisty Stout, she busies herself trying to turn him into a competent frontiersman. Before walking arm-in-arm, though, they'll battle back-to-back against marauding Apaches and a pair of murderous outlaws with sore heads and itchy trigger fingers. Seems that when push comes to shove, it takes more than love to conquer all.... "Dusty's drawl humor makes his westerns larruping-good reads." —Suzann Ledbetter, Author of The Toast Always Lands Jelly-Side Down

A whimsical construction of an imaginary dialogue between two people intent on understanding esoteric topics that range from human sexuality to physics. Ehrlich (physics, George Mason U.) is dedicated to making the sciences fun and interesting, and though the conceit is "cute," the information it contains is dynamic and scientifically sound, posing interesting questions and speculations on life in the universe, human behavior, perception, gravity, material properties, physics, time, space, and a sample list of "What ifs?" to pursue on one's own. The answer to the title's question (we were dying to know) is that, in part, it's all a matter of probabilities. The promotional material says the cartoons are humorous. Not. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR