Zoom: How Everything Moves: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees

Bob Berman

Little, Brown, Jun 24, 2014 - Science - 336 pages

From the speed of light to moving mountains--and everything in between--ZOOM explores how the universe and its objects move.

If you sit as still as you can in a quiet room, you might be able to convince yourself that nothing is moving. But air currents are still wafting around you. Blood rushes through your veins. The atoms in your chair jiggle furiously. In fact, the planet you are sitting on is whizzing through space thirty-five times faster than the speed of sound.

Natural motion dominates our lives and the intricate mechanics of the world around us. In ZOOM, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an entertaining style and a gift for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the Earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone.

For readers who love to get smarter without realizing it, ZOOM bursts with science writing at its best.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Ma_Washigeri - LibraryThing

Plus 3/4 star for amount of work this must have been - and less 1/4 star for presentation. It is very interesting but a bit haphazard. I actually enjoyed the notes in some ways best of all. And the ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Paul_S - LibraryThing

Like Bill Bryson but more American. Tries hard to write witty asides but quips about teenagers not wanting to do house chores and wives not understand nor being interested in science are about as funny as as the author's tenuous grip on science - not very and instead really disappointing.

About the author

Bob Berman, one of America's top astronomy writers, contributed the popular "Night Watchman" column for Discover for seventeen years. He is currently a columnist for Astronomy, a host on Northeast Public Radio, and the science editor of The Old Farmer's Almanac. He lives in Willow, New York.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Zoom: How Everything Moves: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees
• Author: Bob Berman
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Little, Brown, 2014
• ISBN: 0316217409, 9780316217408
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: Science / Essays; Science / Physics / Geophysics; Science / Physics / Optics & Light