[clug] [OT] book recommendations?

steve jenkin sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au
Mon Dec 23 05:20:17 UTC 2019


There are two small books, getting dated now, that I think are exemplars of the very readable “written for everyone”  genre.
And also Short, Clear, Correct and well illustrated.
Better that one of them was by eminent Australian scientist.

Does anyone have favourites or recommendations for books of this type?

Topics of interest for this list more likely to be:
	computing / security / infosec

===================

The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor,  [1968, 1st ed], JE Gordon [UK]
and
The Secrets of the Sun [1984], Giovanelli [AU]

===================

The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor
JE Gordon.

Publisher
<https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691180984/the-new-science-of-strong-materials>

[limited preview]
<https://books.google.com.au/books?id=axW-iYrhQ1YC&source=gbs_book_other_versions>

Why isn't wood weaker that it is? Why isn't steel stronger? 
Why does glass sometimes shatter and sometimes bend like spring? 
Why do ships break in half? 
What is a liquid and is treacle one? 

All these are questions about the nature of materials. 
All of them are vital to engineers but also fascinating as scientific problems. 

During the 250 years up to the 1920s and 1930s they had been answered largely by seeing how materials behaved in practice.

But materials continued to do things that they "ought" not to have done. 
Only in the last 40 years have these questions begun to be answered by a new approach. 

Material scientists have started to look more deeply into the make-up of materials. 
They have found many surprises;
 above all, perhaps, that how a material behaves depends on how perfectly - or imperfectly - its atoms are arranged. 

Using both SI and imperial units, Professor Gordon's account of material science is a demonstration of the sometimes curious and entertaining ways in which scientists isolate and solve problems.

===================

—————

<https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:16062590>
[en] The book about the sun is aimed at the non-specialist and non-scientist.
Properties of the sun, including rotation, gases and sunspots, are described; 
as well as the chromosphere, corona and flares. (U.K.)

—————

Scanned in Google Books - Click on ‘Preview this book'
<https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Secrets_of_the_Sun.html?id=Z_88AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y>

Cover photo missing, intro seems intact.

—————

Giovanelli, Ronald Gordon (1915–1984)
<http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/giovanelli-ronald-gordon-12543>

Unwell and increasingly frustrated by the inroads that his administrative duties made on his time, 
Giovanelli resigned from his position as chief in 1974 to become a full-time solar researcher, 
as a CSIRO senior research fellow until 1976 and then as an honorary research fellow. 

Despite his illness, he continued to travel and work overseas and wrote a monograph, 
Secrets of the Sun(1984), which was published posthumously. 

Survived by his wife and their daughter and son, he died of fibrosis of the lung on 27 January 1984 at Camperdown and was cremated. 

Commemorative workshops and colloquia were held in Brisbane, Sydney and Tucson, Arizona.


--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin




More information about the linux mailing list