Dr. Joe & What You Didn't Know: 177 Fascinating Questions & Answers about the Chemistry of Everyday Life

Forside
ECW Press, 1. okt. 2003 - 244 sider
The mythbuster and bestselling popular science author of A Grain of Salt tackles questions that show the scientific underpinnings of our culture.
 
Dr. Joe & What You Didn’t Know acts as both the source and satiation of scientific curiosity through a series of 177 chemistry-related questions and answers designed to both inform and entertain. From the esoteric to the everyday, the topics Dr. Joe Schwarcz tackles range from Beethoven’s connection to plumbing to why rotten eggs smell like rotten eggs.
 
How did a sheep, a duck, and a rooster usher in the age of air travel? What does Miss Piggy have to do with the World Cup? And is there really any danger in eating green potatoes? The answers to these whimsical questions and more are revealed in this collection in an accessible scientific fashion.
 
“Only Dr. Joe can turn the world’s most fascinating questions into a compelling journey through the great scientific mysteries of everyday life.” —Paul Lewis, former president and general manager, Discovery Channel
 
“A book with an incredibly high ‘Did you know that. . . ?’ quotient . . . Completely captivating.” —New Brunswick Reader

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Side 220 - COMMENT: one calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.
Side 24 - Since the solubility of a gas in a liquid is proportional to the pressure of the gas...
Side 64 - Where in your families will you find a young man whose curiosity and interest will not immediately be awakened when you put into his hands a potato, when with that potato he may produce sugar, with that sugar alcohol, with that alcohol, ether and vinegar...
Side 71 - I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated dreamlike condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.
Side 71 - Even worse than these demonic transformations of the outer world, were the alterations that I perceived in myself, in my inner being. Every exertion of my will, every attempt to put an end to the disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of my ego, seemed to be wasted effort. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul.
Side 25 - In thus adducing an important new physical principle Einstein uncovered at the same time one of the deepest and most troubling enigmas of nature. No one doubts today that all matter is made up of atoms which in turn are composed of even smaller building blocks called electrons, neutrons, and protons. But Einstein's notion that light too may consist of discontinuous particles clashed with a far more venerable theory that light is made up of waves. There are indeed certain phenomena involving light...
Side 16 - The empirical law, exact only for an ideal gas. which states that the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure at constant temperature.
Side 66 - The ant has made himself illustrious Through constant industry industrious So what? Would you be calm and placid If you were full of formic acid?
Side 148 - Improved blood supply sent to the pelvic organs and tonic effects upon the nervous system generally result in a great improvement in the sex organs,
Side 8 - But it didn't take long for me to figure out what was going on over there with Ehrlichman and Haldeman. It was getting blocked.

Om forfatteren (2003)

Dr. Joe Schwarcz directs the Office of Science and Society at McGill University. He is the author of That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles; Radar, Hula Hoops and Playful Pigs; and The Genie in the Bottle. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel and is the winner of the American Chemical Society's Stack-Grady Award for interpreting science to the public. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

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