Why Don't Spiders Stick to Their Webs?
Why can't we tickle ourselves? Which properties give you the best chance of winning Monopoly? What would happen if you fell into a black hole? Is it possible to hurt your brain if you think too much? In this entertaining and enlightening tour of day-to-day life, award-winning writer and scientist Robert Matthews tackles everything from the puzzling maths of odd socks to the real 'string theory' mystery: how does string acquire all those unwanted knots?
US: Robert Matthews is a visiting lecturer in science at Aston University, in Birmingham, England. He has published pioneering research in fields ranging from code-breaking to predicting coincidences, and won the internationally renowned Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for his studies of Murphy’s Law, including the reason why toast so often lands butter-side down. An award-winning science writer, he has contributed to many newspapers and magazines world-wide, and is currently science consultant for Focus magazine, a flagship BBC publication. His book 25 Big Ideas: The Science that’s Changing our World (9781851683918) is also published by Oneworld.