Book Description

This is a carefully researched bibliography, organized by topic, of more than 2,000 children's science and math books, videos, magazines, and kits available. In addition, step-by-step activities accompany this extensive listing, providing instant ``lessons'' on the subject. Activities revolve around practical, everyday endeavors like cooking, making crafts, and observing how commonplace things work. Books and activities especially suited to a particular age group are annotated. Teachers aren't the only ones who'll benefit from this useful reference. Parents, grandparents, scout leaders, and others involved in youth activities will also find it a valuable book to have on hand. ... Read more

Book Description

If trudging through your textbook to study and complete homework assignments has become a frustrating grind, then get ready for a smooth ride to higher test scores and outstanding grades with The Princeton Review's High School Earth Science Review.


The book's text tells it to you straight, thoroughly explaining the important topics you'll need to understand to prepare for quizzes and tests, complete homework assignments effectively and earn higher grades.

The guide covers:
The Exosphere
The Earth, Moon and Sun
The Atmosphere
The Hydrosphere
The Cryosphere
The Earth's Crust: Plate Tectonics
Rocks and Minerals
Weathering and Erosion
The Earth's History

Also included are two practice exams that feature the types of questions and problems that appear on in-class tests.

... Read more

Reviews (1)

great grades
This book encouraged me to study more of my earth science. I am not very successfull in earth science but when i started using this book as a help guide i started doing better in science. i just wanted to say thank you. ... Read more

Book Description

The word truth presupposes that there are unchanging facts and laws. Are there such things or are there valid, differing truths for each person or belief system?

Reviews (2)

An excellent, concise Introduction to Critical Thinking
The intro and first two chapters serve as a handy guide that the readers can constantly refer to, even after finishing the book. Then the book applies critical thinking to a wide variety of topics, including history, environmentalism and religion.

At @ 200 pages the book is concise, written at an accessible level. Much of the book focuses on science issues, especially science vs. religion. Gets to the foundation and basics of the evolution, creation and intelligent design debates. Has concise looks at the flaws of naturalism and young-earthism.

A couple useful appendices add some additional info and the notes are full of sources where people can turn for more detail on the subjects that interest them.

This is one of the best of its type: Concise, accurate, readable and logical. No atheist evangelism like Shermer or Sagan. No cryptic rules and technical treatises like you find in textbooks or many supposedly-lay reader books on critical thought.

A few preliminary comments
This book was only just recommended to me, so I haven't gotten into it very far, but I am eager to see if it lives up to its title, which is amazingly ambitious. I am hoping it will discuss these topics on a fairly rigorous level, and not turn out to be some lightweight, quasi-philosophical nonsense like a lot of what's out there. If it does, I'll revise my review here accordingly. I give it four stars here for the benefit of the doubt, and because the author's heart (or mind) is in the right place.

I am dubious though, although I can recommend Michael Shermer's book on the subject. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is the editor of The Sceptical Enquirer magazine. I don't know if this author has similar credentials but I will find out shortly.

Speaking for myself, however, the concept of "truth" hasn't fared very well in human hands except in math and logic, where proofs are of course true if they're valid. Everything else is technically suspect, even in the hard sciences, although I don't expect physical and chemical laws such as the law of gravity to be repealed anytime soon. :-) But such laws are still based on empirical evidence that can be explained by a mathematical theory rather than logical proof in the mathematical sense. We believe such theories are "true" for several reasons, but perhaps the most important is because they can make previously unknown predictions about the real world that can also be shown to be correct--and that we wouldn't have known otherwise. But again, technically theories aren't true; they're simply valid explanations of the empirical evidence that have received considerable experimental confirmation.

For those of you well-read in the philosophy of science you will recognize the influence of Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion here, which is that nothing in science ever gets proved--things are only disproved by further experiment-- producing a science that gets at the "truth" by means of successively greater approximations to 'reality' (whatever that is). :-)

And as for areas like typical journalism and paranormal phenomena, rigorous notions of the "truth" have already gone way downhill by the time we get to those areas. And even in analytical philosophy the theory of truth hasn't done well, and all the proposals I know of have failed--for example, the correspondance theory of truth--which failed because the theory's idea of facts being true propositional statements linked to a real world observable worked well for true statements but not for statements that were false to fact.

Anyway, just a few comments on the checkered history of ideas about the truth, and which gives you some idea of how I'd like to see the subject treated. After I've read this book, as I said, I'll redo this review in the light of this new information--assuming it's worth it. ... Read more

Book Description

Here's an effective supplement to any primary science curriculum. Students will use this book to learn about the sun, moon and stars are like, as well as phases of the moon, eclipses, and constellations.Topics include: see the moon change, men on the moon, we need the sun, a sunny way to tell time, sky pictures, the big dipper, and more. Lessons involve identification, matching, solving riddles or puzzles, and coloring.

Also includes six activity cards suitable for science center activities. Activities include: sundial, make a crater, moon calendar, reflecting light, make a star box, and measure shadows. Clear, step-by-step instructions provided.

Simple, accurate line art illustrations throughout. Features two-sided, full-color pull-out poster about the Sun, Earth & Moon on one side and the Night Sky on the other. All 16 pages perforated for easy removal. ... Read more

Book Description

What a handy set of teaching tools! These 24 full-color, 8-1/2" x 11" picture cards accurately illustrate and explain various parts of The Human Body. Subjects covered include the major body systems: muscular, digestive, skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, urinary, brain & nervous system; and also the five senses,teeth, and the human life cycle. Printed large enough to be clearly legible to students seated around you, they serve well as teaching aids for group discussion. They may also be used center activities and bulletin board displays. Additional topical information is provided on the back of each card. Printed on durable card stock to remain a long-lasting resource for you and your students. This set makes a nice complement to EMC856 - How Your Body Works. ... Read more

Book Description

One of nature's most awesome phenomena, volcanoes are endlessly fascinating. Now you don't have to be a scientist to understand the different types of volcanoes. Teach Yourself Volcanoes explains why eruptions occur, how volcanoes are monitored, how eruptions are predicted, and more. Includes suggested destinations for viewing real-life volcanic activity.

Reviews (1)

The best volcano book for the layman, bar none
A good many folks have a passing interest in volcanoes, especially when a mountain like Kilauea or St. Helens erupts. Yet, most books on the subject are either very dry and technical, or, equally bad, overly concern themselves with the human details of a particular event, leaving the science of the thing as an abandoned stepchild. This excellent book suffers neither fault.

Simply put, if you want to learn the whys and wherefores of this most spectacular natural process, this is your book. The reading style is effortless, and not beyond the comprehension of anyone with a high school background in the sciences. The illustrations and diagrams are carefully chosen to clarify or expand upon points in the text. While reciting the individual and societal effects of volcanic activity, the book does not get bogged down in a welter of minutiae, and holds the reader's interest to the end.

The author has made every attempt to bring the text up to the state of the art in terms of scientific advances, and the reader benefits. Such concepts as plate tectonics, hot spots, and the like are well explained. Finally, for readers who live in the Western U.S., or anticipate travelling there, the book explains and illustrates a number of landforms that might elude one's attention, but for reading this fine work.

Upon concluding the book, the reader will have an understanding of volcanism, its landforms, and its effects on people superior to anyone, save a full-time geologist. I enthusiastically recommend it to all readers. ... Read more

Book Description

Why do so many biology books make our eyes glaze over? Teach Yourself Biology puts the life back into this life science by avoiding indecipherable explanations and scientific jargon. The book explores fascinating areas in biology such as cells, genetics, the origin of life, and habitats.

Book Description

If trudging through your textbook to study and complete homework assignments has becoma frustrating grind, then get ready for a smooth ride to higher test scores and outstanding grades with The Princeton Review's High School Chemistry Review.

We tell it to you straight, thoroughly explaining the important topics you'll need to understand to prepare for quizzes and tests, complete homework assignments effectively, and earn higher grades.We've carefully examined chemistry textbooks just like yours to make sure that this book includes all the material essential to a thorough review.In this guide, we cover:

*Chemical Terms & Definitions
*Formulas & Equations
*Inorganic Nomenclature
*Ideal Gases & Kinetics
*Solutions
*Equilibrium
*Acids & Bases
*Thermodynamics
*Electrochemistry

And since practicing your test-taking skills is just as important to getting good grades as knowing the material, we include two practice exams that feature the types of questions and problems that appear on in-class tests. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

I can't believe they printed this...
unless they re-released this book! It is FULL of errors. I noticed this first when doing the problems in the back of chapter 4, the Charle's Law problems. Let's think about this for a second. If air (a combination of gasses) compressed to half its volume when the temperature went from 20 degrees C. to 10 degrees C., we'd be in a far different world than we live in now. But doesn't Charles' Law say V(1)/T(1)=V(2)/T(2)? So if you had 2 L at 20 degrees C, it should be 1 L at 10 degrees? NO!!!! In this equation, you must use degrees Kelvin. But 20 problems use C. Very very bad.

Then, there is the equation for converting Fahrenheit to Centigrade. It has C = 5/9(F)-32. But, in fact, you have to subtract the 32 from the F degrees before you multiply by 5/9.

Princeton Review should be ashamed of themselves!

Helpful book.
It helped me a lot. Good book.

Mediocre Only
As a high school Junior enrolled in the standard Chemistry class, I wasn't able to use this book to the fullest. It did not coincide with my class at all, and the material it covered was very slim, and lacking in detail. No matter how I tried, I was not able to relate the text to help me study for class. Maybe this book is for a higher-level high school Chemistry course, like accelerated or AP? Don't buy if you're looking for a study aid on your average, run-of-the-mill high school Chemistry class.

Text books only go so far
Text books can only bring you so far. Yet this book can get you the "A" you have been looking for. It has simple to understand knowledge with easy to interprete diagrams. A must have for any level-one high school Chemistry student. The only visible problem with this book is it lacks some detail, in the text, and visual maps. ... Read more

Book Description

Apply these hands-on activities and fascinating demonstrations to enable students to see and understand how the science of chemistry is involved in the creation of art. Investigate such topics as color integrated with electromagnetic radiation, paints integrated with classes of matter, art forgeries integrated with qualitative analysis, and more. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An interesting take on chemistry...
This is an interesting resource for classroom teachers looking for alternative ways to get chemistry into art students. However, I found the book not very useful for my purposes homeschooling a teen interested in art. The labs are designed for school labs with expensive equipment and chemicals we can't get for home use. The presentation is not really graphic enough to appeal to my arts oriented child. However, there is a new edition of the book coming out this fall (2002), according to the publisher, and maybe it will improve some of these things. Sample labs included how to make oil paint binder. All the labs relate to the arts in some way. There is a section on colour and one on metal jewelry making. It covers a lot of high school chemistry in an art friendly way. An interesting read that both my daughter and I were disappointed we couldn't use.

Jean ... Read more

Book Description

The concept of postdoctoral training came to science and engineering about a century ago. Since the 1960s, the performance of research in the United States has increasingly relied on these recent PhDs who work on a full-time, but on a temporary basis, to gain additional research experience in preparation for a professional research career.

Such experiences are increasingly seen as central to careers in research, but for many, the postdoctoral experience falls short of expectations.

Some postdocs indicate that they have not received the recognition, standing or compensation that is commensurate with their experience and skills. Is this the case?If so, how can the postdoctoral experience be enhanced for the over 40,000 individuals who hold these positions at university, government, and industry laboratories?

This new book offers its assessment of the postdoctoral experience and provides principles, action points, and recommendations for enhancing that experience. ... Read more

Book Description

The BioQUEST Library is a peer-reviewed collection of software modules (simulations, tools, datasets) assembled to help students learn biology in a computer-based laboratory environment. By simulating and solving problems using the same methodologies and reasoning skills that research scientists use, students gain insight into ecology, evolution, genetics, molecular biology, physiology, developmental biology, botany, and neurobiology. The BioQUEST tools and simulations, while not intended to replace actual laboratory or field experience, can make it possible for students to engage in simulated scientific research. New, powerful, and engaging modules have been added to the sixth volume, as well as new cross-platform versions of earlier BioQUEST modules

* *BioQUEST VI is the premier tool on the market
* *New, powerful, and engaging modules have been added to the sixth volume
* *New cross-platform versions of earlier BioQUEST modules
* *BioQUEST VI is Mac and PC compatible ... Read more

Book Description

Change in education is too often a process which enthusiasts, ranging from top policy makers to groups of teachers, plan and drive forward, but in which they all find unexpected pitfalls. Drawing from twenty-three case studies of material, the authors reflect on the various strategies adopted to cope with or bring about change.The book offers valuable insights to advisors, developers, policy makers and practitioners, both in schools and outside. ... Read more

Book Description

Within this text, the authors explore the main aspects of physical and life sciences and will show how to integrate these scientific principles into everyday life and events. The reader/student will examine such issues as human health, technology, environmental concerns and more. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Good intentions with conceptual problems
The book covers a lot of subjects with the intention of providing abasic aproach to science. There are, however, conceptual mistakes or lack of precise characterization of important concepts. For instance, it confuses heat with internal energy ( not heat as internal energy in transit). Also it does not defines mass adequatetly as a measure of inertia, which may cause confusion when one studies relativity. These were problems detected at first sight. The book is in neeed ofa complete revision. I suggest to by, through Amazon, "Integrated Science", by Tillery, Enger and Roos, from Mc Graw Hill, to get a general view of fundamental science with a more clear, and rigorous definition of terms.

Great for non-Science major
As a business major, satisfying a Science requirement, I have found this book to be informative, interesting and great fun.I believe it to be will written and thorough.Information is wonderfully balanced byillustrations, fyi's and interesting supplemental facts.I have onesignificant complaint to register with the authors/publishers of this text. The review and discussion questions should be answered either at the endof the book or in the review book.It is extremely disappointing thatthese answers are not available.As a student with a 3.86 average, I takemy education very seriously and find it discouraging and somewhat insultingthat I can not check my own work.I would STRONGLY suggest that thoseanswers are made available within the text or on web.Thanks! ... Read more

Book Description

The visualization of fluid flow has played a major role in the development of fluid dynamics and its applications, from the evolution of flight to tracking weather, and understanding the flow of blood. The Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physical Society sponsors an annual competition for outstanding images of fluid flow. This volume includes a selection of winners from 1985 to the present. Each image is accompanied by some explanatory text, making the volume an important acquisition for anyone involved in fluid flow research. ... Read more

Book Description

The Nobel Prizes have long been the most prestigious awards in the world of science. Established according to the wishes expressed in the will of Alfred Nobel (1895), the annual awards began in 1901. The Nobel Archives preserve the detailed study of the inner workings of the prize committees, and the archival documents, available for historical research since 1974, open the door to important new scholarship in the history and sociology of the prizes. Elisabeth Crawford was one of the first to gain access to the Nobel Archives at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in this book she analyzes the early history of the prizes in physics and chemistry. Crawford sets out in detail the story of the intricate inner workings of the process whereby the prizewinners were selected. A fascinating picture of the contemporary international scientific establishment emerges, one shedding light on how the developing Nobel institution became enmeshed in speciality and other networks, notably those of Arrhenius and Mittag-Leffler, the two Swedish scientists who were best known internationally at the time. While the general development of disciplines and the standing of scientists in international and national communities heavily influenced the selection process, the cases presented in this book show that the specific choices of specialities, discoveries, and people to be honored were determined by the Swedish participants in the process. The question of how, after some initial uncertainties, the Nobel Prizes became synonymous with the highest achievements in science and culture is also addressed. This detailed study of the birth of what have become science's highest accolades will interest historians and scientists alike. ... Read more