- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Viking Canada (AHC) (Oct 21 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0670893102
- ISBN-13: 978-0670893102
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #817,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Science can uncover the origins of the cosmos and the blueprints of life itself, but it can also explore some of the most inconsequential phenomena known to man. No less than three essays in this charming collection concern the spillage of breakfast foods, including the title piece on dripping honey and further investigations of why toast always falls with the buttered side down and why coffee stains are ring-shaped. Other topics probed by Ingram, host of the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet and author of The Science of Everyday Life, include the physics of coin-spinning, stone-skipping and paper-crumpling; the math talents of animals and infants; the six degrees of separation myth; and the cognitive psychology behind a range of desultory human capabilities, from catching a fly ball to working an ATM machine. Though the scientific theories Ingram unearths are fascinating, more hilarious is the disproportion between effort and importance, as with the elaborate experimental protocols scientists have developed to investigate the feeling people sometimes get of being watched. Ingram's deft, witty writing gives a real feel for science as a human process of trying to answer the questions, no matter how inane, that happen to get stuck in one's craw.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Book Description
Why do we wake up seconds before our alarm clock goes off? Why does toast fall butterside down? What’s the science behind the theory of "six degrees of separation"? In The Velocity of Honey, Jay Ingram attempts to answer these and many more daily mysteries that puzzle and perplex.
As in his bestselling books, The Science of Everyday Life, Talk, Talk, Talk and The Barmaid’s Brain, he explores the strange facts that make up our natural and physical worlds, uncovering the mysteries and curiosities within. Displaying his trademark wit and wonderment, Jay Ingram makes the science of our lives accessible and fascinating.
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4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some fascinating "why is the sky blue" kid questions!, May 14 2005
By Paul Weiss - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Velocity of Honey: And More Science of Everyday Life (Hardcover)
Jay Ingram makes the science of everyday life accessible, fascinating and readable, answering many questions that we've puzzled over since our days as children - why does it always take longer to get there than it does to come home? how do outfielders catch those fly balls? and, just how do the mosquitoes always seem to find us? My personal favourite is a hilarious but perfectly reasonable explanation as to why we're convinced the eyes in that portrait on the wall follow us around the room!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Questions Rarely Asked, April 16 2006
By J. Brian Watkins - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Velocity of Honey: And More Science of Everyday Life (Hardcover)
This was a wonderful little volume of essays on various scientific ideas buried in ordinary experience. Who would have thought to study echolocation in humans or that nagging feeling that time is going by faster and faster as we age? And what drove that Italian gentleman to pursue the answer to why stones can be made to skip on water? Frankly, the scientific aspect of the author's chosen subjects takes a clear second place to his simple expressions of wonder as to the diversity of ideas and scientific research; to the applicability of obscure research to the experience of everyday life. This kind of writing is important and relevant because it expands our understanding of the world in which we live. (I had no idea that the physics of curling were so complex and so little understood.) The author teaches his readers the value of asking the right questions and demonstrates that perhaps we don't quite understand our world as well as we think we do.Perhaps it is just my inability to find the titles, yet I believe that there is a dearth of good writing such as this book--I applaud Mr. Ingram's efforts and hope that he is able to continue to find publishers. I have little patience for those who belittle the efforts of authors who attempt the exceedingly difficult task of communicating cutting-edge scientific principles to the general readership--not every book need be the top of its field. And how is an author to hone his craft if not by steady production of work each better than the last? I highly recommend Mr. Ingram's work and find his style to be excellently suited to convey the excitement of science.
8 of 13 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent, but not great., Jun 28 2005
By Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Velocity of Honey: And More Science of Everyday Life (Hardcover)
Jay Ingram, The Velocity of Honey (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003)There is a kind of niche genre in publishing that involves taking complicated science and stripping it of all its jargon to make it (somewhat) understandable to mortal men. Some authors are good at it. Some are great. The reigning king of "great," of course, is Martin Gardner (Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?), and thus it is that, in general, all books of "stripped-down science" will eventually get compared to Gardner. And thus, we come to Jay Ingram, whose The Velocity of Honey has been all the rage among in-the-know readers for the past year or so.
Jay Ingram is good. His short pieces do a capable job of taking controversial things that require numerous long, unintelligible equations to explain and phrasing it all in such a way that the great unwashed have a chance of grasping the science behind it all. And his topics are by and large interesting, such as the title essay, on why it is that honey does that whole bending-over-on-itself thing when you drizzle it onto your morning pancakes.
But good is not great. When you stack Ingram up against Gardner, Simon Singh (Fermat's Enigma), or Mitchell Waldrop (Complexity, one of the most underrated science books of the past decade), his prose just isn't as readable. And, really, that's what stripped-down science books are all about-- readability. If you wanted its lack, you could just read the relevant articles in dusty book-bound copies of magazines in your library's reference section, right?
It's worth picking up if you're into this sort of thing, but expect to spend far more time on it than you would a comparable tome by one of the greats. **
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