This is a Big History book presenting perspectives that have helped thousands of Christians deepen their understanding of nature. Accessible and enlightening, the book explores nature in a way that accommodates both scientific and religious viewpoints. Topics include answers to these questions: ● How do we identify truth, and are scientific discoveries true? ● What produced the order we see in nature? ● How do atoms, stars, and planets form, and how did the Universe develop? ● How was Earth organized, and how did it become habitable? ● What made organisms the way they are, and how do bodies and species form? This is a great book for Christians striving to understand scientific discoveries. (This title is also available in paperback through Amazon.)
The Story of Us Humans explains human nature and human history, including the origins of our species, emotions, behavior, morals, and society. It explains what we are, how we got here, and where we are today by describing the origin, history, and current ways of our neighborhoods, religion, government, science, technology, and business. Written in plain language, it explains what astronomy, physics, geology, biology, chemistry, anthropology, history, religion, social science, and political science tell us about ourselves. Most everyone feels that human success is measured in terms of healthy and happy children and communities. Human thoughts and actions involve little besides love and children, spouse and family, community and justice because we are parenting mammals and social primates. Each of us simply wants to laugh and joke with our family and friends, pursue life, raise children and strive to be a valued and contributing member of our community. We have made incredible progress building civilization in just a few hundred generations using nothing except our animal minds. Have you wondered: * What are the laws of nature and how many laws are there? * How did molecular life begin and then evolve into worms fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, primates, and humans? * What are the differences between these animals? * How did we get from the Big Bang to bacteria and on to Christianity, democracy, and globalization? * What is life like for gatherer-hunters? * When did we first become farmers and first build cities, and what was life like at those times? * What was life like in Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Athens, 13th-century Cahokia, Medieval China and Europe, 19th-Century New England, Yoruban villages, and in the U.S. during the 1920s? * What was the Industrial Revolution and how has it changed our lives? * What are the Hindu, Muslim, Confucian, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Humanist religions and world views? * How have our wages, infant mortality rates, lifespans, crime rates, and poverty and inequality rates varied through the ages? * What are the biggest economic and social secrets in the U.S. today? * What are some meaningful goals and priorities for our civilization and how can we measure the success of our attempts to reach those goals? Includes questions, index, bibliography, and 1,200 internet links taking you to images, videos, and discussed documents.
A fact packed celebration of science from the clever people who bring you AQUILA magazine. The Book of Big Science Ideas introduces young readers, aged 8 and up, to 15 brilliant science ideas and more than 50 ingenious thinkers who have helped shape our understanding of the world. What is everything made of? What is our place in space? Can machines think? And why does your hat come hurtling back down after you've chucked it into the air? This book has the answers! Readers will learn all about established ideas such as atoms, electricity and the solar system, as well as ideas that are still evolving such as gravity, energy and classification, right up to recent discoveries like AI and genetics. Each big idea is explored over two double-page spreads: the first explains the idea in rich detail and with plenty of bright and engaging illustrations and diagrams, while the second spread introduces readers to the key scientists and thinkers who helped shape the idea with fun portraits for each one. Thinkers include, Wang Zhenyi, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, James Joule, Rosalind Franklin, Charles Darwin, Aristotle, Edith Clarke, Isaac Newton, Grace Hopper, Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace and many, many more! Spreads on why ideas matter, the scientific method, future ideas and even more scientists to discover are also included, and a detailed timeline and glossary of scientific terms ensure that readers have the tools to really get to grips with the concepts. This is the perfect book for science-loving kids everywhere.
The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.
'Gets right to the heart of what makes us what we are. Read it!' Angela Saini, author of Inferior and Superior: The Return of Race Science The popular science equivalent of Who Do You Think You Are? Popular science master Brian Clegg's new book is an entertaining tour through the science of what makes you you. From the atomic level, through life and energy to genetics and personality, it explores how the billions of particles which make up you - your DNA, your skin, your memories - have come to be. It starts with the present-day reader and follows a number of trails to discover their origins: how the atoms in your body were created and how they got to you in space and time, the sources of things you consume, how the living cells of your body developed, where your massive brain and consciousness originated, how human beings evolved and, ultimately, what your personal genetic history reveals.
This text enables readers to see everyday events and experiences in their lives from a fresh perspective untainted by the conditioning, hidden agendas or esoteric mystique that so often distorts or buries empowering knowledge in the past so that readers can transform themselves.
Living with the Stars tells the fascinating story of what truly makes the human body. The body that is with us all our lives is always changing. We are quite literally not who we were years, weeks, or even days ago: our cells die and are replaced by new ones at an astonishing pace. The entire body continually rebuilds itself, time and again, using the food and water that flow through us as fuel and as construction material. What persists over time is not fixed but merely a pattern in flux. We rebuild using elements captured from our surroundings, and are thereby connected to animals and plants around us, and to the bacteria within us that help digest them, and to geological processes such as continental drift and volcanism here on Earth. We are also intimately linked to the Sun's nuclear furnace and to the solar wind, to collisions with asteroids and to the cycles of the birth of stars and their deaths in cataclysmic supernovae, and ultimately to the beginning of the universe. Our bodies are made of the burned out embers of stars that were released into the galaxy in massive explosions billions of years ago, mixed with atoms that formed only recently as ultrafast rays slammed into Earth's atmosphere. All of that is not just remote history but part of us now: our human body is inseparable from nature all around us and intertwined with the history of the universe.
Jim Baggott explores how our understanding of the nature of matter, and its fundamental property of mass, has developed, from the ancient Greek view of indivisible atoms to quantum mechanics, dark matter, the Higgs field, and beyond. He shows how the stuff of the universe is proving more elusive and uncertain than we ever imagined.
Atoms and molecules are the basic building blocks of matter. Matter is every physical thing around us in the universe, including our own bodies! In Explore Atoms and Molecules! With 25 Great Projects, readers ages 7 to 10 investigate the structure of atoms and learn how atoms fit together to form molecules and materials. If everything is made out of atoms and molecules, why do people look different from dogs and doorknobs? In Explore Atoms and Molecules, readers discover that the characteristics of a material are determined by the way the atoms and molecules connect, and study how chemical reactions change these connections to create everything we know. This book discusses the elements on the periodic table and why they are grouped into families, encouraging the exploration of meaningful classification systems. States of matter and mixtures and compounds round out the exploration of atoms and molecules! This book supports the maker movement with lots of hands-on activities that illuminate the concepts of chemistry. Readers build 3-D models of molecules and create a periodic table guessing game. Fascinating sidebars offer opportunities for readers to connect the text with real-world science, and cartoon illustrations provide a fun foundation for learning.
