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Overview
Grimvall's fun-to-read essays and easy-to-follow examples detail how order-of-magnitude estimation, extreme cases, dimensional analysis, and other modeling methods work. They also reveal how nonscientists absorb these concepts and use them at home, school, and work.
Grimvall's simple, elegant explanations will help you tap into your inner scientist. Read this book and enjoy your own "Aha!" moment.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780801897177 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2010 |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface ix
1 Numbers 1
1.1 Numerical Literacy 1
Babylon, Babble, and Billion 1
Prefixes 3
What Is the Point? 5
1.2 The Power of Logarithms 7
Order of Magnitude 7
Hot Air Balloons and Renard Numbers 9
Finding Fraud in Figures 11
1.3 What Is Typical? 14
The Height of an Adult 14
Social Competence and Personal Encounters 17
Hit by Returning Rocket 19
1.4 Estimates 21
Is Anybody Out There? 21
Sand, Sibyl, Olympic Medals, and Homeopathy 24
Cover the Earth with Paper 27
2 Measures 30
2.1 What Is It on a Scale? 30
The Richter Scale 30
Nuclear Incidents and Accidents 32
Natural Threats 35
2.2 Comparing Apples and Oranges 38
Human Well-Being and Poverty 38
Track and Field 40
At Scout Camp 42
2.3 Units 44
Going Metric-Inch by Inch 44
Horsepower and Manpower 46
The Loss of a Spacecraft 48
2.4 On the Road 51
Left-Hand Traffic 51
The Value of a Life 53
Gasoline Here and There 55
3 Accuracy and Significance 58
3.1 Could You Be More Precise, Please? 58
What Is Austria's Population? 58
A Slim Waist 59
Man on the Moon 62
3.2 Significant? 64
Flunking 64
A Change in Opinion 66
Error Bars 68
3.3 Limit Values 71
Will Your iPod Make You Deaf? 71
Lethal Dose 73
The Weakest Link 75
3.4 Fair Games? 79
Winning by a Small Margin 79
Accurate Timing 81
Are All Sports Venues Equivalent? 83
4 Extrapolations 86
4.1 The Dangerous Exponential 86
The Rule of 72 86
A Problematic Reward 87
Suddenly Nothing Was Left 90
4.2 The Ubiquitous Straight Line 92
Dubious Extrapolations 92
Moore's Law 94
Low Radiation Level and Cancer 96
4.3 Scaling 99
Big and Small Fish 99
Gulliver 100
Roasting a Turkey 102
4.4 Looking Ahead 104
The Law of Diminishing Returns 104
The Sign of the Second Derivative 106
Lynx and Hare 109
5 Models 112
5.1 What Are the Chances? 112
Proofreading 112
Losing a Leg 113
Sunday Traffic 115
5.2 Seeking the Optimum 117
Tax Rates and the Autobahn 117
Running to the Rescue 119
Selecting the Best Golf Club 121
5.3 Focus on the Essential 124
How Small Can a Mouse Be? 124
The Age of the Earth 126
A Loud Party 128
5.4 A Law or a Model? 130
Ohm's Law Is Not a Law 130
A Mad Pursuit 132
Is Coulomb's Law Exact? 135
6 The Real World 138
6.1 Plausible, but Not Correct 138
The Unridable Bicycle 138
Church Windows and Lead Roofs 140
The Bathtub Vortex 142
6.2 You See What You Want to See 145
Waves Are Rolling In 145
Galileo Galilei's Trial 147
Submarines and Mink 148
6.3 Suddenly Something Happens 151
Fishing Nets, Coffee Percolators, and the Web 151
Goethe and the Height of Trees 153
Supercooled Rain and Critical Mass 156
6.4 Engineering versus Science 158
Slapstick 158
Not a Schoolbook Problem 160
Hoisting a Sack 163
7 Tricks of the Trade 166
7.1 A Crash Course in Science Thinking 166
Dinghy, Anchor, and Pool 166
Up and Down the Escalator 168
The Floating Apple 170
7.2 Is the Formula Accurate Enough? 172
Obesity 172
Wind Chill Temperature 174
The Size of a Ship 176
7.3 Characteristic Quantities 178
How Deep Is Deep? 178
The Coldest Day of the Year 180
Galileo Galilei, Basketball, and Table Tennis 182
7.4 Impress Them! 184
What Is Your BMI? 184
The Aeolian Harp 186
One Trick and Two Areas 188
Epilogue: Seven Principles in Scientific Literacy 191
Notes 199
Index 211