Olympic Sport: The Whole Muscle-Flexing Story
From the bestselling author of Why is Snot Green comes another hilarious, bonkers and brilliant science book – find out the answers to all the questions you've ever had about the Olympics and sport!
Are Olympic athletes born stronger and faster than the rest of us?
Why do tennis rackets have strings?
How do gymnasts balance on their hands?
Why do hurdlers do the splits when they jump?
From running a marathon, to beating your friends at basketball, to being the bendiest gymnast around, find out everything you've ever wanted to know about sports, and exactly what it is that makes athletes the best at what they do.
Divided into five easy-to-digest sections and packed with illustrations, Glenn Murphy's Olympic Sport is an accessible introduction to the science of sport, perfect for any young athletes and scientists.
- Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger
- In the Olympic Stadium
- Going the Distance
- He Shoots . . . He Scores!
- Balance, Flexibility and Control
Discover more funny science with Disgusting Science: A Revolting Look at What Makes Things Gross.
Glenn Murphy wrote his first book, Why is Snot Green?, while working at the Science Museum, London. Since then he has written around twenty popular-science titles aimed at kids and teens, including the bestselling How Loud Can You Burp? and Space: The Whole Whizz-Bang Story.
His books are read by brainy children, parents and teachers worldwide, and have been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian. Which is kind of awesome. In 2007 he moved to the United States and began writing full-time, which explains why he now says things like 'kind of awesome'.
These days he lives in sunny, leafy North Carolina with his wife Heather, his son Sean, and two unfeasibly large felines.