Robert L. Weber

It's difficult to find a word to capture the spirit of this book, but calling it a "miscellany" gets close. It's a varied, wide-ranging collection of essays, anecdotes, joke papers, one-liners and thoughtful reflections on and by scientists - primarily physicists, but other disciplines, and engineers, get a look-in.

I'm eternally grateful to the physics teacher that brought this book to the attention of the class of 16/17 year-olds I was in at the time. It's a ideal book to leaf through at that age to make one realise that scientists are human and that science can be fun and thought-provoking and moving all at once.

There are about as many items as there are pages in the book - ranging from one-liners to essays of a few thousand words. There's the now-famous "Stress analysis of a strapless evening gown", Wood's account of the self-deception of scientists that caused them to believe in N-rays, "Standards for inconsequential trivia", and "Slidesmanship". There's limericks and songs and drawings, mock exam papers, and a proof of the theorem that Alexander the Great did not exist and rode a horse with an infinite number of legs. Something for everyone, in other words. To be appreciated by those that do science and those that don't.

An all-round excellent book.… (meer)