Book Description
Chemistry is a subject that many students approach with dread. With Chemistry Success there's no reason to fear. This friendly, straightforward guide uses a series of simple 20-step lesson plans to teach students what they need to quickly grasp the essentials of this subject.
Customer Reviews:
Incomprehensible.......2007-08-17
I gave up after 2 chapters. It would explain a concept, then ask questions about it. Unfortunately, in explaining the concept, they never explain how to apply it to other situations; or it wouldn't explain it fully enough to answer the practice questions. It assumed you already knew half of what it was explaining. (Ie, they explained atomic mass and the atomic number without explaining that the number of protons is equivalent to the number of electrons. It then asked you to identify the number of protons and neutrons and electrons based on 1 number. I had to flip back and forth from the periodic table to answer and rely on my memory from high school chemistry many years ago to answer the question. There were things like this in every section, and I didn't remember the other concepts from high school at all.) It is therefore confusing, frustrating, and discouraging. I am just grateful I borrowed it from the library instead of wasting money on it myself.
Success in Chemistry? Not with this book. .......2007-04-19
I agree with the last review. The title of this book was very promising yet once I began to use it I realized I would have anything but success with Chemistry. Over all, I found this book extremely confusing. I will exchange it as soon as I can.
Not a good book.......2006-08-27
This book has several typos and does not explain things clearly. It goes back and forth between terms that mean the same thing and gives you numbers in examples without explaining where they came from. It is a poorly put together book and is a waste of money.
Amazon.com
The Burgess Shale of British Columbia "is the most precious and important of all fossil localities," writes Stephen Jay Gould. These 600-million-year-old rocks preserve the soft parts of a collection of animals unlike any other. Just how unlike is the subject of Gould's book.
Gould describes how the Burgess Shale fauna was discovered, reassembled, and analyzed in detail so clear that the reader actually gets some feeling for what paleobiologists do, in the field and in the lab. The many line drawings are unusually beautiful, and now can be compared to a wonderful collection of photographs in Fossils of the Burgess Shale by Derek Briggs, one of Gould's students.
Burgess Shale animals have been called a "paleontological Rorschach test," and not every geologist by any means agrees with Gould's thesis that they represent a "road not taken" in the history of life. Simon Conway Morris, one of the subjects of Wonderful Life, has expressed his disagreement in Crucible of Creation. Wonderful Life was published in 1989, and there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods, with radical new ideas fighting for dominance. But even though many scientists disagree with Gould about the radical oddity of the Burgess Shale animals, his argument that the history of life is profoundly contingent--as in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, from which this book takes its title--has become more accepted, in theories such as Ward and Brownlee's Rare Earth hypothesis. And Gould's loving, detailed exposition of the labor it took to understand the Burgess Shale remains one of the best explanations of scientific work around. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Book Description
"Gould has brought to light one of the least known but most spectacular paleontological discoveries of all time….a brilliant tapestry."—Martin Gardner
The Burgess Shale is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago. In it are the remains of an ancient sea that nurtured more varieties of life than can be found in all of our modern oceans. Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale reveals about evolution and the nature of history. 116 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Not Good.......2007-07-15
This book is quoted so often in the literature that I thought I was going to read something profound. It isn't. Conway Morris and others were right to criticize it. Not sure what all the fuss is about. As a well reasoned argument Gould missed the mark.
LIFE 101.......2007-03-19
I READ THIS BOOK WHEN CAME OUT YEARS AGO. NOW YOU CAN GET IT AT AMAZON AS A BARGAIN BOOK. THIS WONDERFUL STORY TELLS ABOUT AN ALTERNATE EARTH THAT NEVER MADE IT. SOMETHING DESTROYED IT UTTERLY. AND WONDERFUL LIFE FOUGHT BACK AND WITH TIME BECAME GIANT ANIMALS ROAMING THE LANDS OF THE EARTH. THE K-T EVENT. WACKED AGAIN! BUT LIFE ENDURED AND BECAME US...
READING THIS BEATS WATCHING THE FLUFF ON SATELLITE AND CABLE. AND IT MAKES YOU THINK. IT HELPS YOU PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER TO ARRIVE AT YOU!
Revolution in thinking about evolution.......2007-02-25
Burgess Shale is the most important find ever of remains of early animal life on earth. Stephen Jay Gould explains why, and also why it took almost seventy years before the true significance of this treasure trove began to dawn upon the scientific world. In Gould's view, the 1970's reappraisal of the Burgess Shale fossils represents no less than a Copernical revolution in thinking about the way life on earth has evolved. While this may be, or may not be the case, the tale of how this reappraisal came about is thrillingly and competently told.
As a complete layman in the field of paleontology, I found the insets, explaining the basics and the terminology of the science very helpful. The beautiful drawings by Marianne Collins also helped me a lot to get a feel of what the amazing creatures of Burgess Shale must have been like while living.
The tale of how three British paleontologists, through their work on the fossils, arrived, much to their own surprise, upon conclusions very different from Walcott's (who first discovered Burgess Shale) is a captivating one. Gould's analysis of why Walcott in his time could not possibly have seen his find in it's true light, is something I could have done without.
But then, even if this part holds less interest for me than the main story, were it not for social obligations, I would have finished this book in one sitting!
Heartily recommended for all interested in the history of life on earth.
Elegant prose, science made accessible.......2007-01-10
I feel remiss for not writing a lengthy review of the book, but I hardly have time to do it justice as I go about my work. Instead, I will summarize the major points.
Gould is an exceptional writer who makes science accesible for all readers. I know that this book has drawn new paleontologists into the field, and it definitely encouraged me. It also inspired research programs, numerous books by detractors (e.g., Conway-Morris's "The Crucible of Creation"), which are unfortunately not nearly as well written, and helped popularize the importance of the Cambrian explosion and the lack of understanding of this crucially important time in the history of life. While some of Gould's ideas have since been proved wrong (e.g., he felt that there were more body plans, phyla, represented by Burgess Shale animals than at present but these animals have since been seen to fit into existing phyla), other ideas (e.g., that nearly all phyla arose in the same geological instant) have stood the test of time.
As with all science, the book should be approached critically. Unfortunately, there are few scientists who are able or willing to make their work accessible to the lay person so that all can have an opportunity to understand, enjoy, and contemplate.
Gould's take on the creatures of the Burgess Shale........2006-01-31
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was a very popular (and controversial) scientist/professor. He wrote several books and many articles in Natural Science magazine. In Wonderful Life, he focuses on the Pre-Cambrian fossils of the Burgess Shale in western Canada.
In doing so, he creates a book with three divisions: the biography of Charles Dolittle Walcott, a description of the creatures from that find, and his own interpretation of what they mean in evolutionary theory.
I found the narrative about Walcott interesting as he was surely a man of powerful intellect, standards and drive. But Gould does go out of his way to not just point out that Walcott never performed a serious study of the fossils, but to explain ~why~ and why his early analysis was wrong.
There is a one-hundred-plus section in which each of the specimens is described in great detail. He uses this as a means to discuss the advances in techniques and approaches to studying these fossils, how our understanding of them changed over time, replacing Walcott's ideas. The discussion of scientific approach was fine, but frankly, I was a bit overloaded with the detailed descriptions of the Burgess creatures. A set of good drawings would have gone a long way - a picture being worth a thousand words and what. This section became tedious to read.
The third section, Gould's interpretation of the data, is also a bit confusing and has turned out to be controversial and even wrong. Gould presents his thoughts on the diversity of life in the Cambrian vs modern times, and why there is such a difference. Simon Conway Morris, one of the young scientists he lauds, would later criticize him in his own book about the Burgess Shale fossils, The Crucible Of Creation (1998).
When published, Wonderful Life was a best seller and won awards. I am honestly not sure why. While it is fairly interesting, it is not a 5-star book.
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Mesoscopic Dynamics of Fracture: Computational Materials Design (Advances in Materials Research)
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 3540642919 |
Book Description
This book introduces a recent development in the theoretical research into the dynamic behaviour of fracture. This field is really a new trend in mechanical engineering and because of the interdisciplinary applications, physicists and materials scientists are also interested in the subject. The book has a review paper and about 20 high-level contributions. The main benefit to the reader is in showing how the recent development of molecular dynamics and other state-of-the-art methods can really solve the important problem of fracture from the atomic level.
Book Description
Michel Faber's short stories are markedly diverse-the voice of each is so distinct that the book reads like an anthology of different writers. But Faber's radically inventive style fastens all fifteen stories into a compelling collection deserving of the high praise it garnered in the United Kingdom. One surreal story, "Fish," projects a futuristic world populated with fish swimming in the air. As sharks hover in abandoned corners and human zealots of the Church of the Armageddon loose their fanaticism on the innocent, it's a mother's full-time job to protect her young daughter. The title story, "Some Rain Must Fall," tells of a substitute schoolteacher called on in a crisis, and as she encourages her pupils to express their feelings, we learn the source of the class's trouble: a devastating act that resonates with contemporary America. As Garth Morris wrote in the Mail on Sunday (London), "these are well-crafted pieces of quiet forlorn intensity in a very real world."
Customer Reviews:
Experiments in Form and Concept.......2005-11-23
Fictional tales in long form, novels or novellas, usually work best with strong character development and steady plotting. Short stories, on the other hand, are usually the best place to explore really experimental ideas in ways that longer works don't really allow, or to play with the form of storytelling. Michel Faber's short story collection "Some Rain Must Fall" is a nearly perfect example of what short stories can be -- these tiny nuggets of brilliance each offer up a different glimpse into the ideas that drive the author, beyond what his novels show.
"Some Rain Must Fall" is a remarkably varied collection. Some stories aren't especially interesting for their ideas, but are more experiments in form, like the marginally successful "In Case of Vertigo," the only letdown in the book. Others are sharply original and frighteningly whimsical, such as "Fish," a tale about a world in which fish of all shapes and sizes have taken to the air and left the seas empty. Some, like "Some Rain Must Fall" or "Somewhere Warm and Comfortable" are fairly simple and straightforward, but compelling and deeply disturbing in their way. Others are mindbending in concept, like "Toy Story" (a young boy who discovers a new planet that he plays with and observes in his room) and "Nina's Hand" (told entirely from the perspective of a woman's right hand on its last day). A couple can be read as political statements, such as my favorite story in the collection, the wry and heartfelt "The Tunnel of Love," a story that dares to compare feminism with pornography, with thought-provoking results.
Nearly all of the stories found in this book are clever, keenly-observed, original, and well worth reading. Those who have read Faber in long novel form (such as the excellent "Under the Skin" or "The Crimson Petal and the White") will find that this collection is different from what you might expect based on those books, but very rewarding and enjoyable. Those new to Faber's work would do well to give this book a try as a peek into what this author is capable of. This is Faber when he's a little more playful, trying on different ideas and giving us a glimpse of what he can really do.
As short story collections go, there are few by any author quite like this one.
Eclectic collection.......2005-10-23
As other reviewers have noted, this collection of serial prize-winner Michel Faber's short fiction is dazzling in its variety. Touching domestic dramas sit comfortably along side Ballard-like sci-fi; straightforward three-act storytelling suddenly switches into Calvino-style abstraction. Others, like "Sheep" and "The Tunnel of Love" could happily be extended and developed into quirky comic screenplays ("Sheep" especially). Anyone who enjoyed Faber's novels, and even those who didn't, will find plenty to smile about here. If there is a weakness it's characterization, which is often eschewed in favour of essay-like musings, cleverness in structure, or a cute narrative device. Yet, ironically, female characters are Faber's strong suit. Those stories which take an interesting woman and elaborate her inner and outer experience - such as the title story here, "Nina's Hand", "The Red Cement Truck" and his novella "The Hundred and Ninety-nine Steps" - are his best. Australian readers might also note the similarity to Peter Carey's short fiction which often leans towards the fabulist. Anyone who enjoys Faber's "The Crust of Hell" should certainly seek out Carey's "Kristu-Du" (available in his "Collected Stories" published by Faber & Faber and UQP) for a similar take on African colonialism.
Falling For Farber.......2005-05-16
Michael Faber first captivated me with his novel, The Crimson Petal and The White. In his collection of short stories entitled, Some Rain Must Fall he again demonstrates his flair for character development and incredibly descriptive writing. However, what struck me in this collection is that he writes about the modern day headlines that dog society. Obesity, eating disorders, violence in schools, and abortion. Faber goes beyond the "Jerry Springer" circus media and portrays victims as real people with lives much like our own. He constantly demonstrates to us the beauty of life and the ugliness of it all.
In his short story collection, Some Rain Must Fall, Faber also explores characters of many different ages and backgrounds. He is able as a writer to convey their mannerisms, train if thought, choice and motivations. A master of the inner mind, he is always effective.
Overall, I found these short stories to be intense snapshots of modern day peril. Farber is a master of narration. His writing is easy to read, and yet he has a contemporary style all his own, with a bit of a jagged edge to it. Like life itself - shiny and pretty sometimes; sooty and dirty too.
If you looking for a newer writer to fall for - he is it.
Short goodness from an enjoyable writer.......2004-04-25
I read Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White first, was so pleased with his style that I picked up this short story collection. I enjoyed it very much, as the stories have the same style, but show off his ability in many different arenas besides the victorian England setting of Crimson Petal. Plots ranging from the fantastical "Fish" to the grapes of wrath-ish "Accountability" to the karma deliverance in "Sheep" that I think we'd all like to hand out some times.
Some Rain Must Fall.......2004-02-26
There's no denying that Faber is a good writer - not great, just good - but is that really enough? I enjoyed all of the short stories in this book, but only two or three really made me sit back and reflect on the quality of what I had just read.
The stories take one of two paths. They generally open up with something weird, a weird first sentence (After fours hours and seventeen minutes there was a raindrop, and Ivan sprang to life) then become normal, or they start out normal (Upstairs, a strange man was going through her things) and end up weird. Not a bad thing, certainly, but it was sort of depressing to know what style the story would take based upon its first sentence, or at the very least, the first paragraph.
The weird stories were enjoyable, but the normal ones were better. Faber has a very down-to-earth grip on reality, the dialogues, internal thoughts and actions of the characters all reflect this. Even when something very strange is going on (fish flying through the air, for example), a mother still has enough sense of order to want to arrange her daughter's clothes properly. At times this works really well in the weird stories, but it generally works phenomenally well in the normal ones. Probably the most normal - a sweet story about a man falling in love with a woman while working at a porno shop - was the best. The second last story, I put it down and said, wow. It wasn't earth-shattering, it didn't want to and won't change the world, but it was very nice and would resonate with most adults.
My main complaint would be the inconsistency. Faber has a flair for description and a broad imagination, surely then he could have written a 'weird' short story book and a 'normal' one, keeping the two flavours distinct? But they were all bunched together and I felt myself jarred out of the reading experience at the sudden and absolute change of tone, pace and style, which is never a good thing.
Overall, I enjoyed it. There were flaws, to be sure, but I never regretted a new page. Not a single story struck me as boring, or superfluous, and apart from the weird/normal inconsistency, the book was a good adventure into Faber's mind. I'm curious to see if he can pull off a larger book (especially considering one of his books is huge), as a lot of the stories didn't have traditional endings at all.
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Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
V. V. Washburn
Manufacturer: RoseDog Books
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ASIN: 0805999809 |
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Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall details a low-income disabled persons struggle for survival and the constant search for the kind of love that will last forever. The older we get, the harder we fall, but the feeling we get from loving someone is greater than the feeling we get from someone loving us. This story is written to make people aware of the bad things that can happen.
Can the characters trust what is going on behind our backs? They may be surprised. How can they be sure who is telling the truth and who is telling lies? Does fate catch up with people who do wrong?
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Some Rain Must Fall
Jan A. Queley
Manufacturer: iUniverse
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ASIN: 0595269478 |
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Devastated by a diagnosis of the early stages of multiple sclerosis, Ann leaves her career in Chicago to visit her elderly Aunt Em in Morton, Washington. Soon Ann finds herself in the role Cupid for her Aunt and discovers new ways to use her talents in the small community. She uncovers unexpected timber harvest on Em's land and takes steps to stop the apparent theft.
Ann thought she had left any chance for love behind in the city but finds romance hidden in the hills of Washington State. As her views on life and herself undergo complete change in just a few short months, she discovers that love chooses when and where it will appear. Ann came west to try and lose herself but instead she found her heart.
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Some Rain Must Fall
Isabelle Bendon
Manufacturer: Isabelle Munday
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ASIN: 0954438809 |
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Within the cadence of our lives, bad events seem to follow good events at regular intervals. Does this seemingly callus rhythm exist only to disturb our sanity from time to time, or does it exist to teach us humility and perseverance, to test our faith in many things, including ourselves?
Andy and Lynn find that true love sometimes demands hard choices be made, when suddenly, without warning, something evil steps out of Lynn's past; creating a tempest that threatens to destroy their serenity.
Their promise of unconditional love for each other is put to the test, when they face an obstacle they cannot conquer alone. Their faith in others becomes crucial to their survival.
If you enjoyed book one, Healing On The Tenfeather, you are invited to accompany Andy and Lynn on a journey to the brink. Walk with them as they discover how Spirit Guides brought them together, and how they finally understand another important reason why.
Books:
- Chemometric Techniques for Quantitative Analysis
- Coating and Drying Defects: Troubleshooting Operating Problems (Society of Plastics Engineers Monographs)
- Coatings on Glass, Second Edition
- Colour Scents: Healing With Colour and Aroma
- Composite Materials: Properties as Influenced by Phase Geometry
- Cracking the SAT II: Chemistry, 2003-2004 Edition (College Test Prep)
- Crystal Growth for Beginners: Fundamentals of Nucleation, Crystal Growth, and Epitaxy
- Current Practice of Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Chs Chromatographic Science)
- Designing the Molecular World
- Dictionary of Microscopy
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