Skip to main content

Get your shades on for my new book

 I'm really pleased I've been able to follow up my science quiz book How Many Moons does the Earth Have? with a second volume - What Colour is the Sun? It was just as much fun to write - and I hope equally enjoyable to read. What's more it's a great stocking filler - on Amazon at the moment it's just £5.49.

Although it's not how most will use it, there are two pub quiz style science quizzes in there, each with six standard rounds and two bonus rounds, which combine pictorial and puzzle solving work. However, it's written to make reading through it fun. Each of the 96 main questions has the question plus some supporting factoids on one page and the answer, plus a page of further reading on the next. So you can test yourself on each question - then find out more.

These aren't the kind of question you'd get in a science exam (thankfully) - they're more the quirky kind of questions you get on QI, with the bonus that science is right more often. So you'll find out, for instance:

  • Why do hands and feet go wrinkly in the bath?
  • What is a chiliagon?
  • What is measured in slugs?
  • Which scientific term is the most commonly used noun in written English?
  • What would win in a fight between T. rex and Godzilla?
  • Who can breath metals and still survive?
  • … and many more, including, yes, What colour is the Sun? (which QI gets wrong).





In case you are of the US persuasion, you'll be pleased to know that you don't have to suffer that weirdly spelled cover - you've got the more familiar spelling.






To give a feel for how the book works, here's one of the 'question' pages with its factoids:


... and here's the start of the answer page (there's more):



To find out more or buy in either paperback or ebook form, just pop over to the book's web page.

Warning. Shades may be needed to cope with this cover.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense