The Hair of the Dog: And Other Scientific Surprises

Състояние: Много добро
Забележка: Неизползвана, леко захабен външен вид.
Издателство: John Murray Publishers
Град на издаване: London
Наличност: singular
Ширина (мм): 140
Височина (мм): 205
Дебелина (мм): 25
Корици: Твърди

The symptoms of a hangover - vertigo and nausea - occur when alcohol causes a mismatch between the density of the blood and the density of the fluid in the inner ear. Having a hair of the dog the morning after restores this balance and makes you feel better.

When you eat mushrooms you may have assumed that you are eating a vegetable. But you aren’t. Fungi are actually half animal half plant.

A taxidermist had an uncanny knack for spotting rare birds. After dozens of his reports had entered the record books over forty years, his discoveries were unmasked as fraudulent by a simple mathematical technique.

Most of us think we arrive at our political views by carefully considering the issues. But scientists have recently discovered that individual political beliefs are strongly linked to our genes, and that in the depths of the brain there is a small area that may determine each person’s political outlook on the world.

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Science is full of surprises: the peculiar peepshow beginnings of baby incubators; the unexpected positive fallout from the H-bomb; the dinosaurs that caused sonic booms; the irrational nature of the number pi; the fifth taste sensation lurking in everyone’s taste buds which nobody knew about (except for the Japanese).

While shedding light on these conundrums, Karl Sabbagh shows that seemingly trivial queries or assumptions lead to a deeper understanding of how science works. Who would have thought that scientists would turn to the hypothesis ‘All swans are white’ to determine the stability of the entire universe? Or that if we choose to spend our hard-earned money on other people it might make us happier than if we spend it on ourselves?

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CONTENTS

Introduction xi

HEAVEN AND EARTH I

Is this a record ... ? 3
An Exploded View 6
Cosmic coincidence 10
Dropping in on the Big Bang 12
Henrietta’s milestone 14
All in a spin 18
‘We are stardust. . 20
Combing the universe 22
Looking for a black swan in space 25
Does intelligent life cause the universe? 28
Why is the sky dark at night? 30
How long does a light year last? 34
The world’s oldest nuclear reactor 37
Killer lakes 40
On the rocks 41
Up from the ashes 43
Mr Global Catastrophe 44
PLUS AND MINUS 47
The most important machine that doesn’t exist
Pi = 3 52

THE HAIR OF THE DOG

Stuffed in Hastings 54
Rope around the Earth 59
Mozart’s Dice Waltz 60
The ultimate ‘aide-memoire’ 61
Does i + i really equal 2? 65
It all began with a dinner party... 69
‘Knicknack Googlewhack’ or how Google works 72
My infinity is bigger than your infinity 74
Surf and serve 79
(W)rapping with Mozart 81
The Fireman Hypothesis 83
What a coincidence 85
Names that count 89

FLORA AND FAUNA 93

One leaf or two? 95
Flower power 97
My neighbour, the sticky hairy plate 98
Half animal, half plant, and good on toast Who invented the wheel? 104
Flipping crayfish 105
The oldest living organism on Earth 107
Animal magnetism 109
The bird that knows physics in How eyes evolved 113
Them dry bones 117
Curiosity killed the elephant 120
‘Caw, I never forget a face’ 122
Paper tiger, hidden faker 125
Dogged by unfairness 126
The multiplication of species 128

BRAIN AND MIND 131

Can money bring happiness... ? 133
Who moved my finger? 135
Now you don’t see it, now you do 137
Facing up to bad choices 139
You do what I do 141
Can the blind see? 144
Is your brain really necessary? 148
Are we really as clever as we think? 150
The fifth taste 153
Cave artist or cave autist? 154
Why doesn’t the Earth move when we move
our eyes? 156
Blinding with scientism 158
Gilbert was right 161

ATOMS AND MOLECULES 165

The world’s smallest musical trio 167
Unfair to Buijs-Ballot? 168
Positive fallout from the bomb 170
An uncertain future 173
Why should we fall through the floor? 175
Critical mass for Louis Slotin 178
Tall story 181
The riches of Ytterby 183
What is smashed in an atom-smasher? 184
Seeing neutrinos 186
Clock inside the rock 188

SICKNESS AND HEALTH 191

Ticking boxes saves lives 193
T love you - share my MHC’ 196
Tribes of the Inner Elbow 198
Why is DNA like a knitting pattern? 199
Some unhealthy words 202
The eyes don’t have it 203
How to live to no (100 is passé) 205
Premature peepshow 206
Many coagulations 209
‘Radiation is good for you’ 212
The hair of the dog 214
Eureka on Highway 128 216
A La Recherche du Pong Perdu 218
Sex and science 221
Which woman has made the greatest contribution
to medical research? 224
One blind baby or sixteen dead ones? The choice is yours 227
A ‘sugar scalpel’ 230
Baring your soles to X-rays 234
Stemming disease 236
Resistance is futile 239

ODDS AND SODS 243

The ship that repaired itself 245
Whips, thongs and cracks 247
What’s the difference between a hypothesis and a theory? 250
Wagon wheels 253
‘Some mute, inglorious Disney... ’ 255
Before Babel 257
ESP nuclear blast predictor 261
The Hawthorne Effect 263
Sod’s Chain 266
Answer that phone! 270
How many piano tuners in Chicago? 272
Arab science under the telescope 274
Why does a mirror reverse left and right but not top and bottom? 279
Communicating at an unknown rate 282
Swinging the lead 284
Europe to America in an hour, by train 286
Fundamental chemistry 288

Acknowledgements 291