Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity |  | Author: David Bodanis
Publisher: Crown
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  28 reviews
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 537
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Amazon.com Review
Despite the fact that our lives are powered by electricity to an astonishing degree, most of us have little or no understanding of how or why it works. Instead, we rely on a blurry notion that it flows--like water--through wires to turn on our appliances. In Electric Universe, David Bodanis fools readers, by keeping them entertained and intrigued, into learning the science behind electricity. He does this by telling a series of stories, starting with how a backwoods American really invented the telegraph and how Samuel Morse stole the credit for it. From there, he works through the lives of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, and other pioneers. He shows how their experiments affected their lives--never more poignantly than with the tragic story of Alan Turing, whose early work designing computers wasn't enough to prevent him from being driven to suicide. It's surprisingly easy to identify with some of these brilliant scientists, because Bodanis relates their failures as well as their successes. In the end, although we may continue using words such as "current" to describe the "flow" of electrons, Bodanis makes certain that we see electrical energy for what it really is, at a subatomic, quantum level. Even so, there's not a single boring bit in the book. Electric Universe is an excellent scientific history, one that reveals both the progress of knowledge and the strange science of the wiggling electrons that run our lives. --Therese Littleton
Product Description
In his bestselling E=mc2, David Bodanis led us, with astonishing ease, through the worldâs most famous equation. Now, in Electric Universe, he illuminates the wondrous yet invisible force that permeates our universeâand introduces us to the virtuoso scientists who plumbed its secrets.
For centuries, electricity was seen as little more than a curious property of certain substances that sparked when rubbed. Then, in the 1790s, Alessandro Volta began the scientific investigation that ignited an explosion of knowledge and invention. The force that once seemed inconsequential was revealed to be responsible for everything from the structure of the atom to the functioning of our brains. In harnessing its power, we have created a world of wondersâcomplete with roller coasters and radar, computer networks and psychopharmaceuticals.
A superb storyteller, Bodanis weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through lucid accounts of scientific breakthroughs. The great discoverers come to life in all their brilliance and idiosyncrasy, including the visionary Michael Faraday, who struggled against the prejudices of the British class system, and Samuel Morse, a painter who, before inventing the telegraph, ran for mayor of New York City on a platform of persecuting Catholics. Here too is Alan Turing, whose dream of a marvelous thinking machineâwhat we know as the computerâwas met with indifference, and who ended his life in despair after British authorities forced him to undergo experimental treatments to âcureâ his homosexuality.
From the frigid waters of the Atlantic to the streets of Hamburg during a World War II firestorm to the interior of the human body, Electric Universe is a mesmerizing journey of discovery by a master science writer.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
 Readable account, surprising but not "shocking" August 25, 2006
Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The focus on the story of electricity here is on the scientists and inventors involved in its development and how electricity has changed our lives. It begins with "Wires" (title of the first part of the book) to "Waves" (Part II) through computers and finally to "The Brain and Beyond" in Part V.
This is not a technical book on how electricity works, instead Bodanis, who is also the author of E=MC2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation (2000), which I highly recommend, concentrates on how electricity was discovered and how it came to be understood and how it was applied to do useful work. He begins with Joseph Henry who invented the telegraph only to have its value stolen from him by Samuel Morse who knew enough to get a patent. From there Bodanis goes to Alexander Graham Bell who managed to invent the telephone partly to win the hand of his true love, Mabel Hubbard whose social and economic station was at the time much above his. Then comes Thomas Edison, who is not an entirely charming figure, and surprisingly enough was very hard of hearing, but was amazing persistent--which he needed to be to find exactly the right material to burn inside the near vacuum of the light bulb. And then comes J.J. Thomson who discovered the electron.
Once the electron is discovered, the way electricity works seems to be understood, but then along comes electromagnetic waves, invisible force fields that led to radar, radio, television, computers and Global Positioning Systems. Bodanis spends some time with Alan Turing of World War II code-breaking fame who developed the idea of a "Universal Machine" that could calculate step-by-step (almost, I think) anything. Interesting is the development of the idea and usefulness of a semi-conductor.
Bodanis finishes with "wet electricity," the electricity based on sodium ions that works within living beings. There are thirty pages of notes, a Guide to Further Reading, and an index. Bodanis's style is eminently readable with just a touch of the sardonic. He allows the personalities to come to life and he makes the science seem facile.
General audiences will benefit from this - experts won't June 26, 2006
Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
David Bodanis is one of the more skilled lay science writers around. His "E=mc2" is a brilliant exposition of Einstein's theories that a layperson can easily grasp. A trained physicist might laugh at Bodanis's expositions, but a general reader might gasp in astonishment as he realizes that he is getting it . . . he is understanding what the great Einsten theorized! That is the beauty of Bodanis: yes he waters down the science, but he makes it accessible and that is a glorious thing.
Here, Bodanis turns his attention to electricity, "the invisible force that permeates our universe" and tries to make it understandable. He does an excellent job and I personally wish that his books were required for teen readers who might be led to consider careers in science and technology.
Bodanis has received substantial criticism for not including a number of major figures in the theoretical and commercial development of electricity, such as Tesla. The critics have a point, but not necessarily a very strong one.
Bodanis's goal is not authoring a complete history, but rather educating the lay reader in the basics. And this he does extremely well. He does it with stories of significant points where the nature, potential and application of electricity were discovered and applied. For example, he compares and contrasts the Henry and Morse, both of whom contributed in their own ways to the development of the telegraph. He spends a good deal of time on the development and implementation of radar. He demystifies the operation of electricity in all living things. He broadly deals with the intricacies of computing theory, the development of the transistor and other subjects as well.
On the whole, he educates in a painless and broad way. His goals are not to create a masterly text or cover every person who contributed to the development and practice of electricity, but to educate the masses who may know surprisingly little or nothing.
And this goal he accomplishes wonderfully well. Bodanis keeps what might be a dry, mystifying subject interesting and entertaining. As I said, this book and others like should be given to bright teens: it's the kind of book that may awaken an interest and shape a life.
Jerry
What a wonderfully literate book on the science of electricity... March 30, 2006
K. L Sadler (Freedom, Pa. USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I wish I had had this book years ago, but then I am not sure I could have appreciated not only the science in this book, but the extremely well-written format that Bodanis uses. It's funny, I started out being interested in biology especially as it is used in the human body; and more intricately, in the human brain. When I got to college the second time around...I insisted on being placed in biology, though the idiot advisor told me a deaf person could not possibly achieve anything there.
Couple of years later I changed to neuroscience, which along with all my chemistry and physics classes introduced me to electricity. I remember thinking that all this information in these classes seemed so similar. Electricity seemed to run everything. But no one seemed able to recognize this one general idea. Electricity runs through insulated cables to deliver electric ions and charges to various equipment in our homes, just as electric charges run through our insulated neurons (insulated by Schwann cell's which when degenerate cause diseases like MS and muscular dystrophy). Same ideas, different means of accomplishing basically the same thing, and at increasingly faster speeds.
All of this combined with information about artificial intelligence and computers, led me to the conclusion that one of the basic blocks that lay between a computer being as capable as a brain is the inability of a computer to adapt its electrical problems in the way the brain does. If a person cannot hear, the brain is capable of rearranging itself to accommodate. They've found in MRIs that the normal areas in the brain used for aural (sound) abilities, change in people who are born deaf to adjust to those things they can do and do well, such as sight. An epileptic whose brain needs to be surgically removed in parts, can often adapt by using the remaining brains for the tasks usually alloted to that part of the brain removed.
Bodanis writes a clear and significant book, that I would and will gladly recommend to my students so they can understand the relationship between electricity and so much else in the world. Finally, someone put into lucid words the very things I've been thinking for years. Not only is the book fun to read, but Bodanis gives more cool information in the back including on those people he had talked about in his text. The cute little story about Alexander Graham Bell and his wife trying out his new hydrofoil in their old age in Nova Scotia, changed my view of Bell (he was a problem for the deaf in that he supported eugenics, but was very naive about what he was supporting...)
Great trivia in the index which is always enjoyable in a book.
I cannot emphasize how much I enjoy this book!
Karen Sadler
Chemistry
Science Education
CCAC
Audio Book December 2, 2009
Cypress Green (Cleveland Ohio)
Other reviewers have pointed out that there's much missing from this book that would have improved it. Plus, this audio version was abridged. I normally avoid abridged books (as other reviews of mine note), but I had 5 minutes in the library to choose a book and I didn't look when I got it.
*However*...this book is very entertaining! The voice talent has a nice sound to him. (That was an awkward sentence!) The concepts in the text are made to be easily understandable.
I just finished it yesterday, but this morning I popped in disc 1 when I drove my 9 yr old to school. He is riveted!
It is NOT my intention to imply this book's information is written on a child's level. He's going to get lost sooner or later. But the book opens with a discussion of the first electro magnets being built from scratch and picking up anvils and the like. Very cool stuff for "kids" of any age. I'm glad a smart 9 yr old can get something out of it and enjoy it while doing so.
This book is definitely worth a read...or a listen. I will follow up by reading that Unabridged book!!! And the author's book on E+MC2..
I give it 4 ½ , thus 5, stars.
Electricity August 23, 2010
LEONARD SPARKS (ORCHARD PARK, NY United States)
An excellent explanation of electricity. Dave Bodanis makes it easy to follow from its' earliest discovery. This book is well researched and written in simple language. The best explanation of the nature of electricity I have read.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
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