A few days ago I was reading for review a lovely little popular maths book called 1089 and All That (highly recommended - take a look at the review ). A couple of pages into the book is an illustration of a child's book(let) called I-Spy on a Train Journey ... and on seeing it, the memories just came flooding back. For those who never encountered them, I-Spy books were a very 1950s/60s set of little books for children. (No connection with the 1990s I Spy series from Scholastic, but the originals were revamped in various decades.) The idea was they contained pictures/descriptions of all kinds of things you might see at a particular location, or during a particular activity, and you noted down as you spotted them, learning a little along the way. My favourite, ideal for wet holidays in Wales and Cornwall, was I-Spy at the Seaside with a heady mix of creatures you might see in rock pools and unlikely sights like a lifeboat being launched. It just reeked of seaside holidays. ...

You may be salt of the earth, or turned into a pillar of salt. You may be important enough to sit above the salt, or sadistic enough to rub salt into someone’s wounds – perhaps the person you are attacking is an old sea salt. You may be worth your salt, or be trying to salt away a fortune. There are few compounds that crop up as frequently in phrases and sayings as common salt, which is why I really enjoyed having it as my next compound in the Royal Society of Chemistry podcasts. You can take a listen to the podcast here , or choose it from my little list:                                             Powered by Podbean.com                

Tomorrow night is popular science's equivalent of the BAFTAs - the Royal Society Prize for Science Books will be awarded. There's a interesting  shortlist: We need to talk about Kelvin Marcus Chown Uses everyday observations to plunge into quantum theory, thermodynamics and cosmology. Great fun and very readable. Shortlist Why Does E=mc 2 Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw Explanation of the derivation of the world's most famous equation, exploration of the standard model master equation and great exposition of Higgs - but too technical for the general reader. Shortlist God's Philosophers James Hannam Highly informative and surprisingly readable book filling in just what developments were made in the history of science during the medieval period. Short list Life Ascending Nick Lane ...

The other day, as Radio 4 was being boring, I flipped through the other radio channels in the car. I usually only stay on Classic FM for a few seconds, as, by default, you tend to hit some tedious piece from the classical period, typically by someone like Mozart or Haydn. But this time I stayed, transfixed. They were playing a choral piece I would eventually find out was Cloudburst by Eric Whitacre, and it was stunning. I had to rapidly purchase the CD . It made me try to analyze why my musical tastes differ from some people. It's interesting to compare what I hear in a piece and what my wife hears. We are both singers, but she has always been a soprano, while I (apart from a brief dalliance with alto) have been a bass since my voice broke, around 40 years ago. She primarily listens to tunes. I primarily listen to harmony. It's a weakly supported hypothesis, but our respective singing parts may help explain this. Basses rarely get the tune. This seems quite a good explanati...

We occasionally get books in to review that don't fit with the remit of www.popularscience.co.uk , but are interesting in their own right. Most recent of these is Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley (see at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com ). Archeology is arguably a science, and I've happily covered books about Egyptian proto-science on the site - but this is straightforwardly an introduction to the stories that supported ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, and as such probably belongs here instead. I have to confess to being a sucker for anything about ancient Egypt. My parents took me to the Tutankhamen exhibition in London those many years ago (early 1970s) to queue all day to see those remarkable grave goods. (We were lucky - hundreds behind us never got in.) But up to now I've mostly concentrated on the architecture and archeology - Joyce Tyldesley gives us a chance to get into the minds of these remarkable people. It's decidedly worrying when, ...

It was great news when the last of the Chilean miners came up to the surface . (Or, as the BBC entertainingly put it at one point, the 'Chile miners'. I was immediately imagining a Lewis Carroll style chilli mine.) But the way it was treated by the news faintly nauseated me. Sky News, for example, simply stuck to the miners emerging with occasional split screen views of boring stuff like Prime Minister's Questions (and yes, the odd diversion to a real story). I'm sure it challenged their team of 12 on the ground in Chile and the anchors to keep coming up with something new to say. It's bad enough with the general election, where at least there's more going on at any one time, but here... Similarly, yesterday's Times had a good 12+ pages totally dedicated to the rescue. I'm afraid I didn't bother to read them. My problem is not the reporting of good news, or the human interest, but the contrast between this and the way (say) the rescue of a simi...

Quantum theory is an absolutely fundamental foundation of physics. It describes how everything works on a small scale, from atoms to photons of light. It is, arguably the most important part of modern physics. So what do we do when we teach science to children? We ignore it, and start them off with a Victorian picture of the world, which inevitably means that quantum theory will seem strange and confusing when (and if) it is eventually presented. It's as if we first taught kids that the Earth was the centre of the universe, then, later in their education, we said 'Well, actually, that's not really how modern science sees it.' I believe we ought to bite the bullet and teach the real basics of science including quantum theory in junior school. (This is partly why I wrote Getting Science , which is aimed at primary school teachers who don't have a science background to bring them up to speed on the important stuff.) I have neither time nor enough of your attention ...

Yes, music lovers - time to take cover. It's the next step on the journey through my favourite 70s prog rock bands that I am still fond of today. This is a particularly obscure taste - certainly an acquired one. Van der Graaf Generator was a Manchester band fronted by Peter Hammill whose sound was sparse, haunting and original, with songs that often verged on the depressing in theme. A particularly distinctive part of their sound was a saxaphone, usually electronically distorted. Hammill's voice ranges from a gentle sigh, through sprechsing to harsh, almost shouted lyrics. This isn't pastoral music by any stretch of the imagination - but it is music that rewards the listener. The band went through two main phases (followed by some solo work from Hammill and a couple of reunion albums) - the earlier stuff like H to He, Who Am the Only One is a bit too raw for me - I particularly like the slightly slicker albums starting from Godbluff , with my favourite being World Rec...

I know cyclists and motorists are a bit like cats and dogs, and both could do with giving the other a bit more give and take - but yesterday I had a nasty experience with a bike that both left me upset and unhappy with at least one member of the cycling fraternity. I go out of my way to give bikes lots of room when I overtake them, and generally apply the rules of the road to them - and I think it's not only polite, but stupid from bicyclists not to the same. I won't go into how many cyclists I see without lights or any reflective gear at night - that's just loony. Round our way I wouldn't walk at night with lights, let alone ride a bike. But this wasn't such a cyclist. He had a helmet, all the reflective gubbins - apparently took it seriously. It was late afternoon - plenty of light - and I was pulling out of a T junction with a left filter. Let's be clear about this: the traffic lights for crossing the top of the T were red and I had a filter to pull out f...

I had a very enjoyable evening on Thursday night down in Yeovil. I've never been to Yeovil before, except when a train stopped a Yeovil Junction - and really only know this Somerset town as the home of Stephen Potter 's School of Lifemanship in the whimsical and mocking self-help books Gamesmanship, Lifemanship, One-upmanship etc, which I was rather fond of in my youth. I was invited along to be on a panel for an event quite unlike anything I've ever taken part in. It was a debate (probably more accurately a discussion) on the Man Booker Prize shortlist organized by the Yeovil Community Arts Association . Each of six panelists had one of the shortlist to read and review, then the topic was thrown open to the audience. The panel was a mix of professional writers (for example cookery writer Tamasin Day-Lewis and me) and local writing enthusiasts. What was fascinating was the way two books on the list ( In a Strange Room and The Finkler Question ) were absolut...

It's time put on your dark cloak, twirl your moustache and chuckle evily. I'm back again with the Royal Society of Chemistry's Chemistry in its Element compound podcasts , dealing with the bad guy of the chemical world, carbon dioxide. Okay, it has its problems. It's not squeaky clean. But give this simple compound a break. After all, without the greenhouse effect we wouldn't be alive. Want to hear more? Click here to hear to podcast , or select it from the baffling list of topics I've covered below:                                             Powered by Podbean.com                

As an author, I am yet to be blasé about getting a book published. It’s always very special when you get a copy of one of your books in your hands or see one on the shelf in a bookshop, or even see someone reading a copy on the train. I’ve never actually done this last, but a friend of mine has seen someone reading Infinity this way. The temptation – should you make yourself known? I think I would ask first what they thought of it before announcing this. But that’s not the point of this post. I’ve just experienced a related experience, but one that’s almost as thrilling. I was reading for a review a book called Chasing the Sun by Richard Cohen. I’m not allowed to tell you what it’s like as it’s embargoed until 1st November. I was pootling along, as you do, when suddenly I saw my name in the text, casually referenced as if everyone should know who Brian Clegg is. It was just introducing a quote from one of my books ( Light Years ), but I have to confess it really was an exciting mome...

Two of the best bloggers for writers, Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works and Nicola Morgan of Help! I Need a Publisher have recently weighed in on the subject of payment for talks, particularly at festivals. I thought I'd add my thoughts on the matter. Many overlap with Jane and Nicola, so bear with me if you've already read their remarks. Jane makes the point that many festivals (some of them big ones) take the attitude 'we won't pay for authors, because they get publicity and sell books.' Nicola picks up on the money aspect and a whole host of other suggestions for festival organizers (including the request to be given a meal but not have to talk to people during it). I also note one of the comments to Jane's post, where someone who 'organizes [academic] conferences for a living' doesn't see what the fuss is about as his speakers usually do it for free. Let's get the money thing out of the way first. An academic speaking at a con...

Here is an issue where I simply don't know the answer. At some personal pain (they made me do it), I watched the X-Factor last night. The participants in this talent show for singers had already been whittled down to 32. Now they were told which 12 would go through to the live finals and which 20 would be dumped in the dustbin of musical life. By the time they get to this stage, the contestants already feel they've made it. They are taken to 'the judges houses' (or rental properties standing in as such) and given the star treatment. The programme has ensured that they have been built up to an immense high. Several of them, in interviews before the decision announced, say things like 'This is my life, I don't know what I will do if I don't get through,' or 'My life is over if I'm not picked.' I have the genuine concern that at some point, under the immense and artificial air of pressure generated by the show to make 'good television...

On the beach, Colonsay When I was twelve I had one of the best holidays of my life. It was a school trip, or more accurately an inter-school trip arranged by an unlikely body called the Schools Hebridean Society. For two weeks, I joined a bunch of other boys and various leader types in a camp on a beach on the remote-ish island of Colonsay. It was absolutely fantastic. First there was the opportunity to experience life in a community that was probably 50 years behind the mainland. Though this wasn't in any sense a religious trip, we attended church each week (once each in the two island churches), because that's what people on the island did. Once a week we attended a caley in the island's hall - Scottish dancing compulsory, but still somehow fun. As I've discovered on other islands, you couldn't walk down a road without the next passing car stopping and offering you a lift. Most exciting (if terrifying) was getting a lift with the island's doctor. He gen...