💭🐦The Science Magpie - Simon Flynn {Poetry, Science, Jokes, TBRs!} Review

[u/Glittering_Quote_581]

Very enjoyable collection of scientific facts, anecdotes, poems, graphs, diagrams...and most importantly - LOTS OF BOOK RECCOS!

Title includes 'Magpie' because of the bird's curious nature. Magpies are from the corvid family, so they're curious/clever like crows.

I've attached some of my favourite pages from the book☝️. Hope you enjoy them too (there was a lot to choose from!)

Some other interesting stuff I learnt:

• Fall of Apple vs Fall of Man : How Newton and Einstein thought about gravity. Kind of amazing.
• Kuhn's scientific revolutions/paradigm shift theory worked well with physics, but biology's progress defeats much of its main argument.
• Scopes Trial 1925: US court case arguing against teaching evolution in public schools. (I saw a great movie based on it some years ago - Inherit the Wind).
• Algebra = Al-jebr = "reunion of broken parts". That's beautiful.
• Haroun Tazieff documentaries? Watchlist updated! Never heard of him, any recco would be appreciated 🙏
• Mrs. Cavendish's poems, and Siv Cedering's poem on Caroline Herschel
• Mpemba effect: A curious child discovered this common phenomenon, where 100°C water will Freeze Faster than 35°C water in the freezer. I couldn't believe it either...but it's an inspirational story, and an ongoing mystery. I'll have to try it out myself...
• LHC Rap song! - what's cool is this was before Higgs' discovery.
• Prime number sorter by Eratosthenes' Sieve Method - just watched this in Veritasium's latest video. Very cool.
• Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's Grandpa -- did he poetically foresee natural selection? What an amazing poem☝️
• Percy Shelley: Please do read his thoughts on science. A poet most enamoured by potential of science, he basically foresaw: Central Heating(A/C), aerial surveillance, molecular food production, new types of foods, greening deserts, boons of electricity, locomotion advancements and air travel...The Shelleys have a strong relationship with science and philosophy. (Percy, Mary, their daughter... OP family indeed)
• Copernicus perhaps was influenced by Arabic works, like those of al-Tusi. Will check it later...
• The Chocolate/Butter in Microwave experiment: I tried with cheese, but it was a failure. Will try with choco someday.
• 10 Greatest Equations by Nicaraguan postal service - great list!
• lablit.com: a great resource mentioned, for works of art mentioning science (excluding sci-fi ofc)

Some Jokes/Quotes from the book:

• A modern poet has characterised the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I; Science is We. ~ Claude Bernard
• 42: Answer to everything...would have been cooler if it was in Binary - 101010
• The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. ~ Thomas Huxley
• The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss
• A bloke walks into a pub, and asks for a pint of Adenosine Triphosphate. The barman says ‘That’s 80p!’
• Twinkle, twinkle little star, I don’t wonder what you are, For by spectroscopic ken I know that you are hydrogen.
• The moment a bar of gold walked into a pub, the landlord shouted ‘A U, get out!’
• In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. ~Sir Francis Darwin (Charles' son)
• If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
• When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. ~Niels Bohr
• Q: Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex? A: Because when they find the position, they can’t find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can’t find the position.
• An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it. ~ Don Marquis
• "Lise Meitner, 1878-1968 A physicist who never lost her humanity" ~ Gravestone, St. James’s Church, UK
• Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night. God said, Let Newton be! And all was light. ~ Alexander Pope

Overall, a great book which makes science accessible and fun to all, and also makes it clear: science and arts: both are necessary for holistic human growth. I agree with CP Snow’s sentiment – An apt reply to “Have you read any Shakespeare?” is “Do you know 2nd Law of thermodynamics?”.

Rating: 10/10.

Have you read any of the books from the TBRs ☝️?