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| The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments | 
 enlarge | Author: George Johnson
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $11.88
You Save: $11.07 (48%)
New (43) Used (18) from $11.88
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 1400041015
Dewey Decimal Number: 507.8
EAN: 9781400041015
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new Book, ALL days Low Price !
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Product Description
From the acclaimed New York Times science writer George Johnson, an irresistible book on the ten most fascinating experiments in the history of science—moments when a curious soul posed a particularly eloquent question to nature and received a crisp, unambiguous reply.
Johnson takes us to those times when the world seemed filled with mysterious forces, when scientists were dazzled by light, by electricity, and by the beating of the hearts they laid bare on the dissecting table.
We see Galileo singing to mark time as he measures the pull of gravity, and Newton carefully inserting a needle behind his eye to learn how light causes vibrations in the retina. William Harvey ties a tourniquet around his arm and watches his arteries throb above and his veins bulge below, proving that blood circulates. Luigi Galvani sparks electrical currents in dissected frog legs, wondering at the twitching muscle fibers, and Ivan Pavlov makes his now-famous dogs salivate at ascending chord progressions.
For all of them, diligence was rewarded. In an instant, confusion was swept aside and something new about nature leaped into view. In bringing us these stories, Johnson restores some of the romance to science, reminding us of the existential excitement of a single soul staring down the unknown.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 A satisfying airplane read January 5, 2009
I read the collection of essays in "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" while flying in the US, and this lightweight and interesting book makes a convenient choice for travelers who like to read about the history of science. The separate essays were concise and each focused more on an experiment than on the experimenter, although key facts about people also rounded out each piece. Regarding choice of subjects, a key concept was that the experiment should have been done by only one or a few persons rather than a large group (so the Human Genome Project could not qualify), and this choice was fine with me. I have a strong science background and I found the essays interesting and easy to read. I had not heard previously the evidence from 17th century scribbled notes that appears to show that Galileo's "rolling balls" experiment was truly performed by him and was not just a "thought experiment." The book compares favorably with Rom Harre's excellent work, "Great Scientific Experiments," another book that would be of interest to readers.
 Some Deserve it, Some don't October 15, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Johnson set out with an admirable goal: to chronicle what he thought of as the ten most beautiful experiments of all time, and to a large degree he succeeds. He freely admits that "anyone, after reading this book, could come up with a different list", and that is expected due to the nature of the book,but i contested certian choices of his. Certianly some are example of scientific brilliance, such as Millikan's oil drop experiment, but for other, such as Galileo's, their inclusion is completley absurd.. In Galileo's, he says that Galileo singing to mark time is the beaiutiful experiment, but really, it is unlikely that gelileo sang. It is just theory of a modern reasearcher. What if he used a metronome? or a dripping pipe? any nuber of things could have marked his time. I undertstand this must be arbitrary, but it seems like he included Galileo not for his experiment but for his names. He claims he wants to show experiments that happen "when a curois sould poses an elegant question of the universe, and receives a clear, unambiguous answer", but what was Galvani's answer? that frog legs twitch when nerves touch? What was Pavolov's elegant question in his series of hundreds of experiments? This book, while some of the experiments are detailed beautifully, fails to stand up when it is compared against the authors own criterion. So though it is a useful read to anyone seeking a backround of the scientific method as it progresses, Johnson fails to compile a list that could even come close to being a definitive list of the ten most beautiful experiments.
the real value is the list itself October 5, 2008
I really enjoyed reading this book, but it's not obvious that I couldn't have gotten just as much information out of Wikipedia. It's a nice quick read and is definitely worth the relatively small price, but the information contained is not the result of years of investigation and research. Rather, each experiment is presented succinctly and simply.
 Delightful Reminders June 24, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
George Johnson chose experiments that "...were those rare moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied." Most of the experiments Johnson chose are familiar to science enthusiast but usually we haven't thought about them in years; this book is a delightful reminder. The ten experiments range from Galileo's determining that objects fall at the same speed no matter their weight to Robert Millikan's oil drop experiment. Except for William Harvey and Ivan Pavlov, the experiments are about physics. Johnson is interested in the equipment and methods as well as the results so he includes drawings that often came from the scientists' journals or published articles. The notes for each chapter provide a useful bibliography. It was great fun to revisit these interesting times in science.
A guiltless pleasure June 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book is a delightful surprise. I bought it mostly because I enjoy the author's unpaid appearances on bloggingheads.tv, and thought I'd show my appreciation. I've enjoyed the book more than expected. While I agree with Johnson's assessments that the experiments are truly beautiful, the book captures another important notion. By reliving the "ah ha" moments revealed by these beautiful experiments, I was continuously amazed that the simple ideas we take for granted today could be hidden from so many great minds for so long. That is, while the book is primarily a testimony to the creativity of these scientists, it is also a reminder of human limitations, of how great insights can lie so close to the surface of what we think we know.
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