David Bodanis > Quotes

“An optimist was someone who believed that however complicated or random or odd a stretching curve might seem, if we had enough insight then we could understand the simple guiding principle from which it actually came. The concept then spread from mathematics to mean anyone who believes that such an optimal path can open up in life.”
― David Bodanis, Passionate Minds

“The watcher’s eyes are likely to swivel forward in a sequence of stately turns as the screen’s pixel glows: each quarter-ounce mass of eyeball tugged by six flat muscles, in a glissando slide within the slippery fat lining the orbital cavity. The eye blinks, the widened pupils are in position, and the incoming electromagnetic waves roar in. Ripping through the thin layer of the cornea, they decelerate slightly, with their outermost edges forming a nearly flat plane as they travel inward, carrying the as-yet-undetected signal from the screen deep into the waiting human. The waves continue through the liquid of the aqueous humor and on to the gaping hole of the pupil. The human may have squinted to avoid the glare, but human reflexes work at the rate of slow thousandths of a second and are no match for these racing intruders. The pupil is crossed without obstruction. The stiff lens just below focuses the incoming waves even more, sending them into the inland sea of the jellylike vitreous humor deeper down in the eye. A very few of the incoming electric waves explode against the organic molecules in their way, but most simply whirl through those soft biological barriers and continue straight down, piercing the innermost wrapping of the eyeball, till they reach the end-point of their journey: the fragile, stalklike projection from the living brain known as the retina. And deep inside there, in the dark, barely slowed from their original 670 million mph, the waves splatter into the ancient, moist blood vessels and cell membranes, and something unexpected happens. An electric current switches on.”
― David Bodanis, Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World

“E=mc2 is even better than the best poetry: "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.”
― David Bodanis, E=mc²

“When the universe was very young, in the first moments after the Big Bang, powerful charged electrons began to pour out of the swirling furnace that filled empty space. Many became part of simple hydrogen atoms that tumbled through the cosmos and ended up within huge stars. In their long sojourn within the stars, and then even more when the stars blasted apart, multitudes of those simple atoms were squeezed together with such force that larger atoms were created. Metals such as copper, iron, and silver were born. For eons these metals, too, floated through space. In time they fell toward a new solar system, and became part of ore deposits on the North American continent. They were joined by metal atoms that had been created in other distant starbursts. Hidden deep inside each atom, as the ore lay buried, powerful electron charges remained. Mountains rose and fell. Giant reptiles hunted in fern forests; ecosystems changed, and giant mammals hunted in coniferous and broad-leaf forests. Small groups of arrow-using humans arrived from Asia; thousands of years later, more humans arrived, on giant floating vessels from Europe and Africa. There were cruel frontier wars, and new settlements arose. The soil was turned over for planting, and probed for metal ore. The hidden electron charges, unchanged for billions of years, were about to be released.”
― David Bodanis

“And are even quite polite, at first, as they discuss whose name exactly it was their son had just said.”
― David Bodanis, The Secret Family: Twenty-Four Hours Inside the Mysterious World of Our Minds and Bodies

“It was an early form of globalization”
― David Bodanis, Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World

“The Private Life of the Brain (New York: John Wiley, 2000); John McCrone’s Going Inside: A Tour Round a Single Moment of Consciousness (London: Faber and Faber, 1999) is a more easygoing, detailed exploration. David Hubel’s Eye, Brain and Vision (San Francisco: Scientific American Library, 1988) is a fine vision of what seeing entails, presented by the scientist who did much to reveal”
― David Bodanis, Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World

“Where nobody trusts anyone else, it’s impossible to work together.”
― David Bodanis, The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean