Search results for ""author helen czerski""

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Bubbles is a clear, surprising and entertaining introduction to the science of bubbles. Bubbles are beautiful, ephemeral, fun, fragile, jolly and slightly unpredictable. We're all familiar with them, but we don't often ask what they actually are. The great scientists of the Western world - Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Lord Rayleigh and more - studied bubbles seriously. They recognised that they had a lot to say about the nature of the physical world, and they poked, prodded and listened to find out what it was. In the years since, we've learned that this bulbous arrangement of liquid and gas does things that neither the gas or the liquid could do by itself. Written by the celebrated physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, Bubbles explores how everything from the way drinks taste to the Earth's temperature are influenced by bubbles. This book has a message: never underestimate a bubble!Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture.For an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.

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Nuestro hogar, la Tierra, es caótico, mutable y está repleto de objetos mundanos que tocamos y modificamos todos los días sin apenas reparar en ello. Pero son precisamente esos escenarios cotidianos en los que debemos fijarnos si deseamos saber qué hace que el engranaje del universo funcione.En Por qué a los patos no se les enfrían los pies?, Helen Czerski nos da las respuestas a algunas preguntas complejas del estilo de: cómo viaja el agua desde las raíces de una secuoya hasta la copa? Cómo consiguen los patos mantener los pies calientes cuando caminan sobre hielo? Por qué la leche, al echarla al té, se asemeja tanto a un remolino de nubes de tormenta? Czerski, de una forma cercana y audaz, comparte sus asombrosos conocimientos para levantar el velo de la familiaridad de lo ordinario. Es probable que después de leer este libro no volvamos a mirar nada con los mismos ojos.

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'A quite delightful book on the joys, and universality, of physics. Czerski's enthusiasm is infectious because she brings our humdrum everyday world to life, showing us that it is just as fascinating as anything that can be seen by the Hubble Telescope or created at the Large Hadron Collider.' - Jim Al-KhaliliOur world is full of patterns. If you pour milk into your tea and give it a stir, you'll see a swirl, a spiral of two fluids, before the two liquids mix completely. The same pattern is found elsewhere too. Look down on the Earth from space, and you'll find similar swirls in the clouds, made where warm air and cold air waltz. In Storm in a Teacup, Helen Czerski links the little things we see every day with the big world we live in. Each chapter begins with something small - popcorn, coffee stains and refrigerator magnets - and uses it to explain some of the most important science and technology of our time. This is physics as the toolbox of science - a toolbox we need in order to make sense of what is around us and arrive at decisions about the future, from medical advances to solving our future energy needs. It is also physics as the toy box of science: physics as fun, as never before.

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Helen Czerski was born in Manchester. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London. As a physicist, she studies the bubbles generated by breaking waves in the ocean to understand their influence on weather and climate.Helen has been a regular presenter of BBC TV science documentaries since 2011. She also hosts the Ocean Matters podcast, is part of the Cosmic Shambles network, and is one of the presenters for the Fully Charged Show. She has been a science columnist for the Wall Street Journal since 2017 and she is the author of the bestselling Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life, Bubbles: A Ladybird Expert Book, and Blue Machine: how the ocean shapes our world.

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All of Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials. In The Blue Machine, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski illustrates the mechanisms behind this defining feature of our planet, voyaging from the depths of the ocean floor to tropical coral reefs, estuaries that feed into shallow coastal seas, and Arctic ice floes. Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale—plankton—and the largest—giant sea turtles, whales, humankind. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves, to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she introduces the messengers, passengers, and voyagers that rely on interlinked systems of vast currents, invisible ocean walls, and underwater waterfalls. Most important, however, Czerski reveals that while the ocean engine has sustained us for thousands of years, today it is faced with urgent threats. By understanding how the ocean works, and its essential role in our global system, we can learn how to protect our blue machine. Timely, elegant, and passionately argued, The Blue Machine presents a fresh perspective on what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet.

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