Not sure how this book got there but I found it on my To Be Read Pile. I sometimes suspect someone puts them there while I’m not looking, either that or I do it myself and simply forget. Having found it there I thought I’d read it and see how I go.

This book is a series of articles by eminent scientists of the day including two by Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1962 it’s even older than me and looking far more ragged. Each article has been republished from a previous publication and has often been reduced to make it fit the pages or to simplify it for younger readers, not sure which.

As some of the articles stem back to 1929 the science in them could be rather outdated but some of the principles remain the same. The editor presents you with the article and then some activities, questions and further reading. I found some of rather interesting and some my brain just skated right over…I suspect that’s a problem with me not understanding, nor being really interested in, science. An example of the age is in the article ABC of the Atom by J. Bronowski, he talks about 103 known elements, there are now 114!

If you look at this photo you can see an example of some of the further reading and discussion you can do after reading the article on outer space. When this article was originally written in 1958 most of this list hadn’t happened yet and now most of them have. It would be interesting to do some research to find out when each had happened, or in the case of Venus and Mars commenced. I’d be interested to see what people would add to this list of outer space activities they’d like to see, comments below please!

There is an article about eyes and vision. Without doing lots of further reading and at risk of having my eyes glaze over with an overload of science I haven’t checked if it’s out of date. It did help explain about shortsightedness and astigmatism so I now have a better understanding of what my glasses do for my vision and why they help.