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| Author: David Macaulay
Creator: Neil Ardley
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
List Price: $35.00
Buy Used: $10.45
as of 11/23/2009 16:05 CST details
You Save: $24.55 (70%)
New (42) Used (58) Collectible (7) from $10.45
Seller: rdickon3
Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 1794
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Rev Sub
Reading Level: Young Adult
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.6
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0395938473
Dewey Decimal Number: 600
UPC: 046442938471
EAN: 9780395938478
ASIN: 0395938473
Publication Date: October 26, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: cover has minor wear, pages are clean and easy to read, ships next day
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 46
Mammoth Lovers Unite!!! November 22, 2008
J. Page (Southwest USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I originally got this book back in 1988 when I was a young lad. That copy has served me well throughout high school, an college engineering curriculum, and my current employment. Just recently, my 10 year old "found" my copy and has been glued to it for weeks... and he'll be getting a copy for the holidays.
I love the wit of the author as he pushes the Woolly Mammoths through science and physics concepts. While I'm sure many factors contributed to the extinction of the mammoth, Macaulay helps provide an "alternate" analysis to the disappearance - curiosity.
A must-have for future engineers, physicists, and scientists...
This is too cool September 10, 2008
M. Hamilton
You CAN let your kids read it TOO! I'm an engineer and this book is full of stuff I now use at work - really. My eight year old doesn't have the attention span to get through a section, YET.
Husband loves it May 23, 2008
Katie Kate
My husband loves to learn about how things work. The title of the book told me this was just the book for him.
Ingenuity. Imagination. Depictions. Diagrams. May 5, 2008
Judy K. Polhemus (LA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Put these four things together--ingenuity, imagination, depictions, diagrams-- and you have a double ID toward understanding how things work. David Macaulay and Neil Ardley put together a magnificent volume for children and children at heart containing a way of understanding the laws of physics and mechanics.
The first illustration even shows God busy creating the rotation of the earth. Then they go to the earth where wooly mammoths lived and pick up one to take us through the history of mechanics, machines, and the like. Dozens of movements in five sections: waves, electricity, automation, digital domain, and machines show us just how easy these things are to understand done in drawerings.
Just as in child's play, there is no seeming order to the arrangement of items in the book. For example here are a few pages next to each other: vacuum cleaners, aqualungs or oxygen tanks, the toilet tank, the water meter, dishwasher, spray nozzle, fire extinguisher. Are you seeing an order? Yes, so am I.
Flipping over a hundred pages, I find the jet engine, rocket engines, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, fallout, nuclear reactor. OK, a definite pattern. Another hundred pages show these topics: movie camera, movie projector, printing, paper making, printing plate, printing press, bookbinding. More discernible order and logical arrangement.
One last check: scanner, bits and bytes, flash memory, magnetic storage, microchip, processor, software. We know where we are and recognize the order--a computer and its parts.
This reviewer has a suggestion for the reader. Once you have this book in hand, take it home, take it out every night and read a comfortable number of pages. If you have a child, read one page, discuss it, put this one away and take out a night-night book to read. If this is just your book, read several pages. By the time you have finished the book, you will have added dozens of operating systems to the computer banks in your own brain, making your child and/or yourself an expert in the way things work.
The KISS* Principle Illustrated April 21, 2008
Bruce Pharr (SF Bay Area, California USA)
*Keep It Short and Simple.
If you doubt that technical information can be short and simple, read this book. It was written for anyone old enough to read well, and especially designed for those who find technology intimidating. It not only provides comprehensive descriptions of the way hundreds of machines and devices work, but also gives explanations of the scientific principles behind each. The book makes liberal, effective use of graphic diagrams, and describes most of the machines and devices in 200 to 300 words on 1 or 2 pages.
Showing reviews 11-15 of 46
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