Know It All: 132 Head-Scratching Questions About the Science All Around Us

by New Scientist, Mick O'Hare (Editor)

This is no ordinary fun-fact book: These 132 offbeat questions represent the best reader submissions to New Scientist’s beloved “Last Word” column—a rare forum for “un-Google-able” queries, now in its 21st year! The unpredictable answers—sourced from the combined brainpower of New Scientist’s sophisticated and far-reaching readership—reflect readers’ wide-ranging areas of interest and expertise—from physics, chemistry, and biology to astronomy, zoology, and beyond.

One reader wonders if our two-legged stance invites back pain, and hears back from a veterinary surgeon who has treated countless back problems in dogs, cats, and rabbits. Another learns how large raindrops can get and how fast they can fall, from a science teacher who did his own experiment at the top of a lofty stairwell. And a professor of human anatomy weighs in on whether the heart can cramp like a calf muscle.

Know It All is your ticket to a grand meeting of curious minds—and a celebration of all questions—strange, trivial, or baffling!

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 24, 2015

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume is a collection of the highest-rated questions and answers from the New Scientist magazine's Last Word column. The column, which is almost like a moderated forum for New Scientist's highly knowledgeable readership, is available freely online at:
http://www.newscientist.com/topic/las...

The goal is to provide answers to daily science questions which are not easily 'google-able.'

This does beg the question: if all of this material (and more) is already online to be read, why the book?
I think it's a valid question, however, if not for the existence of this book, I more-than-likely would still be unaware of the magazine's existence, and I undoubtedly would not yet have read all the fascinating tidbits of information here, which are nicely arranged (roughly) by topic.
As it is, I did read the whole book, and I'm considering becoming a subscriber to the magazine, which looks a lot more reliable and informative than say, 'Popular Science.'

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book and also for thus introducing me to New Scientist! As always, my opinions are my own.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.



Reading science books (almost) never fails to make me feel like a complete idiot and it’s all my fault. This book is absolutely fantastic in every way and I understood maybe…25% of it? But it’s definitely a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.”



This book is a collection of the Last Word column in the New Scientist magazine in which readers will pose random scientific questions that they want to know the answer to and scientists will write in to answer them. It’s split into thirteen different sections which cover everything from space to alcohol and many things in between. It’s an incredibly broad range with all kinds of interesting questions. Some questions have only one response while others have multiple responses that give varying levels of detail to their answers. If you were a fan of What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe but wanted less silliness and more science, this is the book for you.



Unfortunately, I have a hell of a time understanding science. I need things like comics and the most basic explanations to understand anything science related. I generally consider myself a fairly intelligent person but damn does science go over my head.

I’m giving this book four stars because I love the idea and the execution. It’s another fail on my part with a science book because as much as I wanted to understand, as soon as the scientist responding started getting detailed, my eyes started crossing and my attention started wandering. But seriously, don’t let my science mental block stop you from reading this awesome collection of questions.

If you’re a fan of science and finding out the answers to random questions like Do fish really grow in proportion to the size of their tank? and If you could journey to the centre of Earth, what would the sensation of gravity be at various points on the way down, and at the centre? then this is a book well worth picking up.

[Alistair]

Contents
Introduction - 1
1. Earth - 3
2. Space - 35
3. Physics - 46
4. Meteorology - 71
5. Chemistry - 91
6. Evolution - 99
7. Biology - 122
8. Health - 152
9. Cognition - 179
10. Alcohol - 189
11. Eating - 202
12. Transport - 219
13. The Rest - 240
Index - 253

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can magnets be spherical? (Yes. The earth is one) What makes the earth rotate? (It started way back when, and it has never stopped, but it is slowing gradually.) Do goldfish grow larger if they are put in a larger body of water? (The species of fish makes the difference in size, not the body of water they live in.) Why don't electrons collapse into the positively charged protons in an atom's nucleus? (It is explained by quantum mechanics, but few people can explain quantum mechanics.) A whole bunch of other oddball questions are asked and answered by New Scientist readers who think they can explain the problem.
Read as a bedtime book, for which it was perfect: short topics, interesting stuff, easy to put down. Much fun.

[Yolanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfect as a bedtime book: short topics, interesting questions and curious answers. Much fun.

[Megz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this book to be something in the line of XKCD’s “What If”, which is my fault for not reading the synopsis from the beginning. So if you’re planning on reading this book, let me tell you AGAIN: this book has reader-submitted answers to reader-submitted questions from New Scientist. It is not a single-author work.

To be honest, my biggest problem was that I had to read this book really quickly because my NetGalley request was only approved MONTHS after I first requested it. And this is not a book to be read quickly. It is a book to leave on your bedside table and to pick up, open at random, and read the brilliance of people around the world.

Reading it from cover to cover, as I did, just gets exhausting and a little annoying. The people who submit the answers seem to be very intelligent but most of them are not authors. Their answers are higher-grade, and sometimes a little know-it-all.

I would buy this book in hard copy for the purposes of reading a question or two a day, but I would not buy a digital copy, and I definitely would not call it light reading.

[Am Y · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book contains questions submitted by people and answers to those questions. It is never really clear who the people answering those questions are. Some have credentials printed beneath their names (e.g. Professor, ___ Department, University of ___), others have no credentials and just names, while a few don't even have names; just email addresses (which have been withheld).

With that in mind, I took with a pinch of salt everything read, not knowing, after all, how reliable or correct the answers given were. Some questions even had contradictory responses from different people.

The book's greatest merit is that some of the questions asked are curious and really make you think/wonder. They are interesting enough to make you want to read through the given answers, regardless of how accurate those answers may be. Because, well, there's always Google.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy little read and I learned a few things including: the perfect angle to skip a stone, that quinine is actually poisonous, a recipe for mouthwash, why sausages curl when cooked and why a Boomerang returns after being thrown.

[Lauren Pointer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who understands the complexity of particle physics, I found some of the terminology and wording of this book hard to understand.

[Asmi Mauskar · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting questions with disappointing answers. use google instead to save your time