Armchair Science is a Kindle ebook available at Amazon. It contains over 120 short mysteries of science that can be solved from a single observational clue, without the need for experimentation.
Science is not a collection of facts. Science is what facts teach us; what we can learn about our universe, and ourselves, by deductive thinking. From observations of the night sky, made without the aid of telescopes, we can deduce that the universe is expanding, that the universe is not infinitely old, and why black holes exist. Without resorting to experimentation or mathematical analysis, we can deduce that gravity is a curvature in space-time, that the particles that compose light have no mass, that there is a theoretical limit to the number of different elements in the universe, and that the earth is billions of years old. Likewise, simple observations on animals tell us much about the migration of continents, the evolutionary relationships among classes of animals, why the nuclei of cells contain our genetic material, why certain animals are long-lived, why the gestation period of humans is 9 months, and why some diseases are rare and other diseases are common. In “Armchair Science”, the reader is confronted with 129 scientific mysteries, in cosmology, particle physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. Beginning with simple observations, step-by-step analyses guide the reader toward solutions that are sometimes startling, and always entertaining. “Armchair Science” is written for general readers who are curious about science, and who want to sharpen their deductive skills.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
Clue 91. The highest that any animal can jump is on the order of six feet.
Deduction. Muscles have about the same power, regardless of animal species.
Resolution. Jumping, stripped to its most basic definition, is the action whereby a muscle lifts itself off the ground. All animals have muscles of similar composition and function (i.e., sliding actin and myosin molecules, contracting in response to nerve stimulation). Every jumping animal has the same basic job; using muscle to lift muscle. Consequently, all jumping animals are limited to about the same maximum performance. Humans can jump about six feet high. The Guinness record for a high-jumping dog is 5 feet 8 inches. Gazelle's can jump 10 feet high. An orca can jump about 15 feet, vertically, out of the water. Grasshoppers can jump about 2.5 feet high. It may seem as though there is a wide discordance between the grasshopper's jump and the orca's, but both animals jump to near-equivalent height, within an order of magnitude.
I urge you to read more about this book. There's a good "look inside" of the book at the Amazon store.
- Jules J. Berman, Ph.D., M.D.
tags: deductive science, science mysteries, deductive reasoning, ebook, general science reading, general science book, science puzzles, scientific amusements
