Best Reads 2015 at BCIT Library: Science

Is it better to build skyscrapers like wobbly jellies or stacks of biscuits? * Can you burn your house down with an electric drill ? * How many atoms would you have to split to power a lightbulb? Atoms under the Floorboards answers all these questions, and hundreds more. You'll never look at your home the same way again ...

Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone--age 5 to 105--who has ever wondered how things work, and why.

What should we preserve of wilderness as we hurtle toward a future in which technology is present in nearly every aspect of our lives? How can we co-exist with species when our existence and their survival appear to be pitted against one another?
**A Library Journal Best Book of 2015 **

The Only Woman in the Room shows us the struggles women in the sciences have been hesitant to admit, and provides hope for changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that could bring far more women into fields in which even today they remain seriously underrepresented.

Women Scientists portrays scientists from different backgrounds, different geographical regions-eighteen countries from four continents-and leaders from a variety of professional backgrounds, including eight Nobel laureate women.

Prize winner. "In just a few decades, we humans have altered our world beyond anything it has experienced in its 4.5 billion-year history – we have become a force on a par with earth-shattering asteroids and planet-cloaking volcanoes. As a result, our planet is said to be crossing a geological boundary – from the Holocene into the Anthropocene, or Age of Man. Gaia Vince decided to travel the world at the start of this new age to explore what all these changes really mean, especially for the people living on the frontline. This book looks at how we are reshaping our living planet and explores how we might engineer Earth for our future." From the Royal Society

"Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Bringing together first-hand experience of science at the cutting edge of science with unparalleled gifts of exposition and explanation, Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal the hitherto missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics and the strange phenomena that lie at the heart of this explosive new field." From the Royal Society

"The discovery of the Higgs boson was the culmination of the largest experiment ever run, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. It made headlines around the world and resulted in a Nobel Prize. For the first time, this book presents an inside account of the hunt for the Higgs from the people who were really there. It is the story of what happens when the world's most expensive experiment blows up, of neutrinos that may or may not travel faster than light, and the reality of life in an underground bunker in Switzerland. This book will also leave readers with a working knowledge of the new physics and what the discovery of the Higgs particle means for how we define the laws of nature." From The Royal Society

This book tells the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, interweaving science, biography and anecdote. Cobb describes cooperation and competition among some of the twentieth-century's most outstanding and eccentric minds, moves between biology, physics and chemistry, and shows the part played by computing and cybernetics. It is both thrilling science and a fascinating story about how science is done." From the Royal Society

"In this captivating fusion of science, history and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions. David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and this book is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about mental illness." From The Royal Society

From the bestselling author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland , a dazzling new book that turns even the most complex maths into a brilliantly entertaining narrative