What Einstein Told His Barber, Robert L. Wolke
What Einstein Told His Barber, Robert L. Wolke
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What Einstein Told His Barber
More Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions

Author: Robert L. Wolke

Narrator: Stephen Hoye

Unabridged: 8 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/25/2012

Categories: Nonfiction, Science, Humor


Synopsis

What makes ice cubes cloudy? How do shark attacks make airplanes safer? Can a person traveling in a car at the speed of sound still hear the radio? Moreover, would they want to. . . ?

Do you often find yourself pondering life's little conundrums? Have you ever wondered why the ocean is blue? Or why birds don't get electrocuted when perching on high-voltage power lines? Robert L. Wolke, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and acclaimed author of What Einstein Didn't Know, understands the need to . . . well, understand. Now he provides more amusing explanations of such everyday phenomena as gravity (If you're in a falling elevator, will jumping at the last instant save your life?) and acoustics (Why does a whip make such a loud cracking noise?), along with amazing facts, belly-up-to-the-bar bets, and mind-blowing reality bites all with his trademark wit and wisdom.

If you shoot a bullet into the air, can it kill somebody when it comes down? You can find out about all this and more in an astonishing compendium of the proverbial mind-boggling mysteries of the physical world we inhabit.

Arranged in a question-and-answer format, What Einstein Told His Barber is for anyone who ever pondered such things as why colors fade in sunlight, what happens to the rubber from worn-out tires, what makes red-hot objects glow red, and other scientific curiosities.

About Robert L. Wolke

Robert L. Wolke, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, received his doctorate in chemistry from Cornell University. He is a food columnist for the Washington Post, and he has won both the James Beard Foundation's award for best newspaper column and the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Bert Greene Award for best newspaper food writing. He is the author of Impact: Science on Society and Chemistry Explained, as well as coauthor, with his wife, noted food writer Marlene Parrish, of What Einstein Told His Cook 2 and What Einstein Kept Under His Hat. Robert lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim

It's been almost 40 years since I was in high school, so the refresher was welcomed. Besides, some of what I learned was wrong, but Wolke corrected & taught me in a very easy, often humorous manner. Each topic was well structured & many of the topics were prerequisites for others. He kept the tech s......more

Il sottotitolo dice tutto. Robert L. Wolke vi guiderà, in ogni singolo paragrafo - autonomo (potete leggere questo libro al contrario, da destra a sinistra, da sinistra a destra, saltando le pagine dispari, oppure alla maniera classica come fosse un romanzo) -, alla scoperta di un mondo che noi cred......more

Goodreads review by D

This book doesn’t have anything to do with Einstein or his barber. The title is just a clever ploy to market a book about everyday science. Seeing how the author of the book is a professor at a university, he tries to capture the reader’s attention in probably the same way he would his students’ att......more

Goodreads review by Ben

This book reads like a college professor trying to engage a bored class by cracking jokes. It's good to have material that doesn't take its subject matter so seriously as to intimidate the reader (I still get hives when I think about some of the critical theory books I was forced to consume) but the......more