They Saw the Difference
Collected essays on how science grew
ASIN B096VB128Q, written by Peter Macinnis, published 14 June 2021 by Amazon.
Find it on Amazon here
Subjects: Science, history, mathematics, social history.
What this book is about
These are essays, written for various destinations,
including my blog, where you can read them for
free, produced over a period of almost fifty years (but fear not, they were all revised
during 2020 and 2021!)
That said, nothing much has changed in the tale of Mr Wimshurst and his Wimshurst machine (right)
during that time, and Eratosthenes' method of measuring the world. Michell's scheme for
weighing the world remains the same, and Cyril Burt's fraudulent scheme to prove that
intelligenece is inherited: there isn't much else to say there.
Then again, black holes are back in favour, though they were largely forgotten when I started
writing essays like this. The laws of naming things have changed, and our knowledge of DNA has
expanded massively. For the most part though, this is a static, retrospective look at how and
why things were discovered.
A third-person CV
Peter Macinnis has a science degree, an incomplete Arts degree and a Master's degree in peculiar
statistical matters. He learned his craft as an historian in the 1960s, and knows his material
intimately. He began working with computers in 1963; has been a park ranger; science teacher;
surrealist/anarchist bureaucrat working on computer systems; a management consultant specialising
in fraud work; a radio broadcaster; a museum educator showing young people how to interpret bones;
a teacher of computing; and since 1998, a professional writer writer who writes mainly about
social history, biology, mathematics, technology and colonial Australia. His published works for
adults include (but are not restricted to) the books listed below. For more information on these books,
see this link.
For adults
- Curious Minds, National Library of Australia, 2012, ISBN 9780642277541;
- The Lawn: a Social History, Pier 9, 2009, ISBN 9781741960396;
- 100 Discoveries, Pier 9, 2009, ISBN: 9781741961423;
- Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World, Pier 9, 2008, ISBN 9781741962796;
- Australia's Pioneers, Heroes and Fools, Pier 9, 2007, ISBN 9781741960488;
- The Killer Bean of Calabar and Other Stories, Allen and Unwin, ISBN 1559707615.
For the young
That said, he has won quite a few awards as a writer for young people. This work is aimed mainly at adults, but younger readers will gain from dipping into it as well.
Here are some of his books for younger readers:
- Australian Backyard Earth Scientist, National Library of Australia, 2019, ISBN 9780642279347;
- The Big Book of Australian History, National Library of Australia, 2013, 15, 17, 19; ISBN 9780642279491 (4th ed.);
- Australian Backyard Naturalist, National Library of Australia, 2012, ISBN 9780642277428;
- The Monster Maintenance Manual, Pier 9, 2010, ISBN 9781741968088;
- Australian Backyard Explorer, National Library of Australia, 2009, ISBN 9780642276841;
- Kokoda Track: 101 Days, Black Dog Books, 2007, ISBN 9781876372965.
Contents list
1. A bouquet of differences
A different brain
Different light: Newton and the spectrum
Different lines: the spectroscope
Different rocks: the birth of geology
A changing climate
Growth and differentiation
Different chemistry: acids and bases
2. Different numbers
Leibniz' different base
Calculus
Collatz' conjecture
More conjectures
Perfect numbers and Mersenne primes
Approximation
Difference engines
Statistics
Statistics make a difference
Accuracy
3. Different ways of measuring
A spherical planet
A different Charter
Newton's different physics
The pendulum
Weighing the planet
The changing speed of light
Making glass
4. Different ways of thinking
Being scientific
Inference
The hunt for DNA
Different sorts of proof
Falsifiability
Sense, sensation and science: different visions
The antipodes
5. Different ways of looking
Infrared
Infrared and a changing climate
Hertz and radio waves
Polarised light
Liquid crystals
Thin sections
6. Different concepts
Equilibrium and staying the same
Catalysts for fast changes
Energy, the cause of all change
Joule's experiment
James Watt and the kettle
The idea of thermodynamics
Changing ideas of gases
A different view of gases
Drifting atoms
Atoms of matter
Unchanging crystals
The different elements and their table
7. The different data snoopers
Dulong and Petit
Bode's Law
Balmer's lines
Isotopes and magic numbers
The risks in data snooping
8. Different atoms
Isotopes are different
Emu eggs and different climates
Brownian motion
Making a vacuum
Different pressures
Different matter
9. Different 'science'
The secret of phosphorus
The different mind of Fred Hoyle
Lecoq and a small self-celebration
Evolution emerges
Darwin's mistake
Polluting our genes?
Coley's mixed toxins
A quack's work
Come on in, the ultraviolet's fine!
The Baron and the lost tunnel
Blondlot's N-rays
The Delineator of William James Shearer
The crimes of Cyril Burt
10. Changing sky views
Different Earth measures
Copernicus puts the sun in the middle
Kepler's Laws of planetary motion
Measuring after Kepler
How astronomy changed
Hubble constant
Olbers' Paradox
The stars that move
The Heaviside layer
van Allen belts
Black holes
The Schwarzschild radius
11. Different electricity
Two real kinds of electricity
Galvani, frogs' legs and batteries
The Wimshurst machine
Piezoelectricity
Oersted's experiment
Cathode rays
Millikan's oil drop experiment
12. Different waves
Bending light
Entropy
The rise of quantum physics
The photo-electric effect
Light waves and light particles
More on diffraction
The Compton effect
Tachyons
Serendipity in science
Fluorescence
The X-ray story
Radioactivity discovered
Nuclear power
Cherenkov radiation
13. A changing Earth
From Ussher to the Big Bang
Sundials, klepsydra and clocks
The Coriolis effect
Showing that the Earth turns
Red sunsets
Snowball Earth
Ice Ages
Agassiz and the glaciers
Plate tectonics
The Mohorovicic discontinuity and isostasy
14. Different life
Spontaneous generation
Fighting smallpox
John Snow's cholera map
Identifying germs
Nailing down the bacteria
A bacterial backgrounder
Biofilms
Quorum sensing
A versatile bacterium
Understanding evolution
Wallace's Line
Biodiversity
Horizontal gene transfer
Growth: different life
Plumbing and innards
15. Different names for things
Early classification
Isaac Newton's birthday
Classification: based on differences
The laws of naming
Playing the name game
The strange case of Bacterium termo
16. Curious differences
William Crookes and the spiritualist
Wrong answers
Maxwell's demon
Zipf's Law
Benford's Law
Hawthorne effect
The laws of logic
This file is http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/writing/difference.htm
It was created on 20 June 2021 and last revised on 20 June 2021.
If you email me at macinnis at ozemail.com.au, you will reach a spam trap, but be read,
eventually. If you put my first name in front of that address, you will reach me direct.
This low-tech solution is to make email harvesting difficult.
The home page of this set is here.