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Summary: Bathroom Library
Review: A special informative book on the workings of just about anything that needs explaining. Certainly for the curious. I still cannot figure out how to count binary even with the great explanations shown. I'll have to stick with the pictures that are very clear.
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Summary: WOW! Better than the first!
Review: An awesome explanation of how things work. I want the CD-ROM Interactive version!
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Summary: This book really tells you how things work!
Review: Do you think you know how a lot of things work? Yes? Well, you are probably wrong. I am a Physics Major in college and I thought I knew how a lot of things work. However, when I found this book in my physics professor's office, I fell in love with this book. I ordered for my copy on the same day. This book is good for the kids, but some of the stuff is hard to understand because there are some words like forces or angles. These are hard to understand for kids, but the pictures in this book are good for the curious kids. They may understand some of the stuff. But, I would rate this book for grownups. You will learn how locks work, how airplanes fly, how helicopters can go forward or backward. You will understand the mechanics just by looking at the pictures, but the reading the explanations also helps you understand. This is a nice book to keep at the corner of your bookshelf.
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Summary: what about the girls?
Review: does not focus on girls, i hated this book,
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Summary: Funny and fascinating
Review: Every page of this book is a delight! Follow the mammoth and his adventures in science. From learning about everyday machines to understanding the cyber world. Funny, witty and fascinating,no other books can top this!
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Summary: most educational, interesting, and fun to read book ever
Review: Few books can compare to "The Way Things Work" in the amount which they can teach the curious. Be they old or young, college educated engineers or preschoolers, everyone can pick something out of this book. Trust me; I've seen it from all ends.When I was six, I loved the mammoths...and learned about simple machines and airplane wings. When I was in high school, I appreciated the mammoths' wit...and learned about automatic transmissions and transistors. Now that I'm in college, I've read the whole thing, and it's still a great reference book, just as entertaining and informative as it was so many years ago. And the mammoths are still funny. For kids with insatiable curiosity, "The Way Things Work" can be a great and entertaining resource; for everyone who's ever wondered how their car drives, or why their computer works, or how satellite communications happen, it can be an immensely satisfying read.
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Summary: An Absolute Need for Every Household
Review: Few books can compare to "The Way Things Work" in the amount which they can teach the curious. Be they old or young, college educated engineers or preschoolers, everyone can pick something out of this book. Trust me; I've seen it from all ends. When I was six, I loved the mammoths...and learned about simple machines and airplane wings. When I was in high school, I appreciated the mammoths' wit...and learned about automatic transmissions and transistors. Now that I'm in college, I've read the whole thing, and it's still a great reference book, just as entertaining and informative as it was so many years ago. And the mammoths are still funny. For kids with insatiable curiosity, "The Way Things Work" can be a great and entertaining resource; for everyone who's ever wondered how their car drives, or why their computer works, or how satellite communications happen, it can be an immensely satisfying read.
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Summary: Good damn mamooth!
Review: good book for the school kids,and surely good present for their birthdays.after reading this book,iam not able to just pass away small things,i just stop and wonder how it works.i just did't get one thing,like why does the aurthor liked the mamooth so much?
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Summary: Good book, but not for the very young
Review: I bought this book for a boy of the age of 8. He didn't seem very interested in the text explanations of how things work. Perhaps he's a little young, but like other reviewers said, this is a book that can most definately be put on the shelf for several years and still have relevance when a few years of knowledge is gained.
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Summary: A forward outpost on the frontier of learning
Review: I bought this CD in the hope that it could help me teach my children science in general and physics in particular. I have a moderate understanding of how things work, but I am woefully undereducated in the scientific principles that underlie those workings. The New Way Things Work gives both: nuts-and-bolts explanations of things and succinct discussion of the underlying principles--and abundant links to go between the two. There are timelines of machines and their inventions, as well as their inventors. Each machine has a page with a clear picture with the working parts labeled, and sometimes a short animation to further clarify the machine's action. There is a testing feature which is useful, if a bit humbling. The "Research Answer" button posted tantalizingly right at the bottom of each test question is a spur to further research, though I worry about the ethical implications. Does that mammoth think I'm cheating? Does that guy with the mustache and mannerisms of Martin Mull keep track of how many times I "research" an answer, and does that go on my permanent record? Perhaps there should be an on/off toggle. The links on each machine page to the principles and inventors and vice versa may be where the CD has an advantage over a book, particularly for children. When I'm explaining something to my daughter and she doesn't understand part of the explanation, she wants that missing piece Right Now, and the hot links provide that immediacy. Paging to another part of a book and then loosing her original place frustrates her. That never happens with this CD, because she knows she can always hit the BACK button. It would be even better if there were a FORWARD button like on a browser, because children quickly understand this navigational technique and use it frequently. I notice they pick up and leave off and go back and forth and generally become more involved than with a book. I was disappointed that the Tele-Prompter was not one of the machines featured. Like others in the television audience in the 1980s, I gaped in wonder as politicians gave huge speeches to live audiences without glancing at their notes. I assumed the glass plates to the right and left of the speaker were security devices to block bullets and flying tomatoes. Also, it would be nice to know how a polygraph works, and whether the polygraph could be combined with a Tele-Prompter to make a more complete machine--what surveyors call a "total station". The timelines are also quite valuable. You feel better about your own limited understanding of practical things by contemplating such facts as the toilet tank being invented by a contemporary of Shakespeare. And frankly, I think that article could do with a little expansion: where did the flow of water go after it traveled from the newly invented tank of Elizabeth the First's godson? The street outside his window? The River Thames? I know that through my childhood and right up until the time I bought a house I believed that wastes were carried away in pipes in a method involving electricity. Ever since capsizing a sunfish in 1977, I've wondered how sailboats can be propelled by wind blowing from behind them, and by wind blowing directly into your face as you stand on the deck and gaze at your destination. New Way Things Work provides the answer. Another device it would be interesting to know about is carbon dating and the newer, more accurate (I'm told) argon-argon dating. I want to know the age of the rocks in my back yard. And why haven't we Americans been provided with small, affordable, personal flying devices yet? These and other questions naturally come up; like all good educational tools, this CD raises as many questions as it answers.
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