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100 Steps for Science: why it works and how it happened
Plunge into the world of science and learn about humankind’s ten most important discoveries, including stars, wheels, numbers, light, medicine, sound, atoms, materials, energy and life.
See how early scientific observations made by ancient civilizations went on to shape our world today, and learn how technology evolved over time in ten breakthrough moments for each of the ten key discoveries.
From the invention of the wheel, which was adapted over thousands of years to power the powerful modern engines of the modern age, learn how simple steps in science led to giant leaps for mankind.
See how early scientific observations made by ancient civilizations went on to shape our world today, and learn how technology evolved over time in ten breakthrough moments for each of the ten key discoveries.
From the invention of the wheel, which was adapted over thousands of years to power the powerful modern engines of the modern age, learn how simple steps in science led to giant leaps for mankind.
64 pages, Hardcover
Published April 6, 2017
2 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 17, 2022
This had a lot of good information and I really like how it was organized into sections that roughly correlated to various branches of science. Then within each branch it took us on a journey of discoveries and inventions through history from the earliest days to present. Each invention or discover was explained simply and clearly and kiddo (8) and I both enjoyed reading it.
However there were a LOT of typos (including some really embarassing ones in a book for kids) and factual errors within the information (such as the sun being tilted on its axis and that's why there's seasons).
With another copy edit, this would have been a 5-star read.
However there were a LOT of typos (including some really embarassing ones in a book for kids) and factual errors within the information (such as the sun being tilted on its axis and that's why there's seasons).
With another copy edit, this would have been a 5-star read.
May 27, 2018
Fun and informative! The bright artwork also works really well.
August 18, 2017
Science is a far reaching subject that covers almost everything that exists in the Universe from the smallest specks to the largest space bound objects. Point at anything and there will be some sort of scientist that has studied it. Trying to fit all of this into 100 hundred steps for children is ambitious and should be lorded, but if you are going to try and do this; at least make it readable.
‘‘100 Steps for Science’’ by Lisa Jane Gillespie and Yukai Du takes a ton of scientific ideas and puts them into one book. Over the 64 pages you get a whistle stop tour of the history of science from the planets, to the discovery of DNA. Each topic is given a succinct and intelligent paragraph or two that acts as a wonderful introduction to the subject for a curious 7-10 year old and is also wonderfully illustrated. Unfortunately, there is one flaw in the book’s formatting that undermines the good work.
On a positive note, this is a very clever and beautiful science book. Du’s illustrations are used as a way of adding colour and make proceedings almost feel like art rather than science. His bold use of colour dominates the book that arrives in a very well made A4 hardback. Look closely and you will also appreciate Gillespie’s words. Although introductory, they are not condescending. The concepts that are covered require some base knowledge from a child, but they will be rewarded will plenty of new facts and figures.
Gillespie and Du have tried to marry science with art and if they had got the balance right, this would have made a wonderful book for a child, or a family’s coffee table. However, the balance is not right; it is fundamentally wrong. The choice to use bold colours really detracts from the information on each page. If one of the topics had been on colour blindness or poor sight, then perhaps the publishers may have noticed that this book is hard to read. The font is small and printed on various coloured backgrounds. At times you feel like you have to get a magnifying glass out to read. It feels like everyone’s enthusiasm for Du’s illustrations has left them forgetting that this is fundamentally a mini-encyclopaedia for a 7-10 year old.
If you have a very studious child that likes to take a book into a quiet corner and pour over a book, ‘‘100 Steps’’ will be an amazing book. They will lean in, squint a bit and learn a lot. However, to fundamentally alienate the text in favour of bold imagery means that I cannot recommend this book because it fails to fundamentally achieve its purpose – to educate. Original review on thebookbag.co.uk
‘‘100 Steps for Science’’ by Lisa Jane Gillespie and Yukai Du takes a ton of scientific ideas and puts them into one book. Over the 64 pages you get a whistle stop tour of the history of science from the planets, to the discovery of DNA. Each topic is given a succinct and intelligent paragraph or two that acts as a wonderful introduction to the subject for a curious 7-10 year old and is also wonderfully illustrated. Unfortunately, there is one flaw in the book’s formatting that undermines the good work.
On a positive note, this is a very clever and beautiful science book. Du’s illustrations are used as a way of adding colour and make proceedings almost feel like art rather than science. His bold use of colour dominates the book that arrives in a very well made A4 hardback. Look closely and you will also appreciate Gillespie’s words. Although introductory, they are not condescending. The concepts that are covered require some base knowledge from a child, but they will be rewarded will plenty of new facts and figures.
Gillespie and Du have tried to marry science with art and if they had got the balance right, this would have made a wonderful book for a child, or a family’s coffee table. However, the balance is not right; it is fundamentally wrong. The choice to use bold colours really detracts from the information on each page. If one of the topics had been on colour blindness or poor sight, then perhaps the publishers may have noticed that this book is hard to read. The font is small and printed on various coloured backgrounds. At times you feel like you have to get a magnifying glass out to read. It feels like everyone’s enthusiasm for Du’s illustrations has left them forgetting that this is fundamentally a mini-encyclopaedia for a 7-10 year old.
If you have a very studious child that likes to take a book into a quiet corner and pour over a book, ‘‘100 Steps’’ will be an amazing book. They will lean in, squint a bit and learn a lot. However, to fundamentally alienate the text in favour of bold imagery means that I cannot recommend this book because it fails to fundamentally achieve its purpose – to educate. Original review on thebookbag.co.uk
March 7, 2020
A good overview for kids of a lot of different scientific concepts. The only two small notes that I had (which caused me to rate it a 4 rather than a 5) is:
First it has some pages where the black text is printed on dark background color and it can be a bit hard to read in those sections.
And Second it has a couple small errors for example on page 16 It says "The Ishango Bone, found in Africa, is the oldest-known counting record at over 20,000 years old. But exactly what its owner counted is a mystery." and also says "As early as 1800 BC, early humans made tally marks on cave walls on stone, and on pieces of bone." So which is it? Are we making tally marks on bones in 1800 BC (which would be approximately 4800 years ago or were we making tally marks 20,000 years ago which would be the equivalent of approximately 18,000 BC? I believe it is the older reference and the more recent reference is a mistake perhaps caused by loosing some zeros in writing the year or in the fact that on page 17 it says "In 1800 BC the ancient Babylonians had a way of writing numbers down by pressing reeds into clay tablets and leaving them to dry in the sun. They had symbols for numbers and counted in groups of 60." So perhaps somehow they mistakenly grabbed the date from this fact, but this fact about the Babylonians illustrates that the earlier fact was wrong. If humans could write numbers we were far beyond just making tally marks. There are other small errors like page 8 where they say that "the tides is linked to the moon's orbit of the sun" I believe they mean the moon's orbit of the earth and in fact in the accompanying illustration they do show the moon orbiting earth. The errors are rare, but if you are using this book to education children be sure to keep your eyes out for them and correct them where you can.
First it has some pages where the black text is printed on dark background color and it can be a bit hard to read in those sections.
And Second it has a couple small errors for example on page 16 It says "The Ishango Bone, found in Africa, is the oldest-known counting record at over 20,000 years old. But exactly what its owner counted is a mystery." and also says "As early as 1800 BC, early humans made tally marks on cave walls on stone, and on pieces of bone." So which is it? Are we making tally marks on bones in 1800 BC (which would be approximately 4800 years ago or were we making tally marks 20,000 years ago which would be the equivalent of approximately 18,000 BC? I believe it is the older reference and the more recent reference is a mistake perhaps caused by loosing some zeros in writing the year or in the fact that on page 17 it says "In 1800 BC the ancient Babylonians had a way of writing numbers down by pressing reeds into clay tablets and leaving them to dry in the sun. They had symbols for numbers and counted in groups of 60." So perhaps somehow they mistakenly grabbed the date from this fact, but this fact about the Babylonians illustrates that the earlier fact was wrong. If humans could write numbers we were far beyond just making tally marks. There are other small errors like page 8 where they say that "the tides is linked to the moon's orbit of the sun" I believe they mean the moon's orbit of the earth and in fact in the accompanying illustration they do show the moon orbiting earth. The errors are rare, but if you are using this book to education children be sure to keep your eyes out for them and correct them where you can.
November 16, 2020
Great overview, good for probably 8-13 year olds, but in many cases the print was really hard to distinguish from the dark colored background.
April 12, 2018
Le dieci Scoperte che hanno cambiato il mondo, così recita il sottotitolo, in altrettante complesse declinazioni evolutive di ciascuna. Luce, suono, vita, ruota, DNA, numeri e una carrellata di protagonisti da Lavoisier, Da Vinci, Galileo, Pitagora ai Curie e Mandeleev seguono il percorso umano tra tentativi, successi e futuri scenari possibili. Non è una strada che si interrompe bruscamente, il progresso prosegue.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews