Tag Archives: science

339D: Richly Illustrated Science Book

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I am looking for a children’s book from the 1980s.  It was an over size, hard cover book, (not Richard Scarry, but illustrations remind me of him).  It was a science book for children – it contained information about the human body (reproduction, digestion, etc), also information about the earth and was richly illustrated.  I also remember on one page there were pictures of the sign language for the letters of the alphabet.
I would absolutely love to try and find this book for my own kids now.

337O: Children Stories About Science

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I remember two stories, and I believe they may be from the same book.  One story is of some kids that get “hired” by a local scrap metal company to figure out how to crack open metal cannonballs.  They first try burying it in the snow, but find that the snow acts as an insulator, preventing the cannonball from getting cold enough to crack.  The kids then re-try by leaving the cannonball in the open (at least that’s what I remember), at which point the metal is cold enough to crack.
The other story also involves children, this time on a beach.  They collect up seawater, rig up a distilling system, and then boil the water to make steam.  The steam is collected up as drinkable water.
Thanks in advance!

337N: Earth History As Scenes In A Play (Solved!)

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Children's illustrated science book about earth history, in which each age (formation of the solar system, age of dinosaurs, building Egypt's pyramids, etc.) is presented as a scene on stage in a play, with curtains to the sides. Last scene is at a typical house in the present day. Might have been printed in the 1930s or 1940s, was available in a grade-school library in the late 1970s.

322K: Math History For Children

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[author role=”private”]Toby Holtz, tholtz@barnard.edu[/private]

This was a large format hardcover book from 1950’s (maybe 1960’s). Cover had picture of yellow pyramid(s) against blue sky, with drawings of Egyptian, Greek, Renaissance mathematicians. Inside had chapters about math and science (astronomy, physics, etc.) through the ages, i.e. early man looking at stars, Egyptians building pyramids, Greeks measuring land, medieval development of arithmetic, Renaissance architecture and Galileo’s physics and Newton’s calculus applied to science, etc. Pages had text and colored drawings as illustrations, and some portraits of mathematicians. Maybe title was “Lore and Legend of Mathematics.” The name “Langston” may be one of the names of one of the authors. It may have been a type of Golden book. (There was another, similar book about the history of music, with a gray cover showing a drawing of a brown violin and a gold colored brass instrument.)

289I: Scientists with Mustaches

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I owned this book in the late 1980’s. It is a science book for children. Throughout the book, there are illustrations that include little cartoon scientists with mustaches (and glasses?). The only illustration I can actually remember is a microscope with the parts labeled and little mustachioed scientists climbing on it and looking at it. It was hardcover (no book jacket, just a glossy illustrated cover) and maybe about 1. 5 cm thick. The illustrations struck me as somewhat “European”.

226E: Adventures in science (description updated)

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My husband is always talking about a series of books he read as a boy (born 1957), probably from school or city library. He remembers them being called “Adventures in…” followed by some sort of science title. The protagonists were two boys, one or both pre-teens. They would travel with their father and have what I guess were all science adventures (there could have been others, like mathematics, but my husband remembers only the two that were science oriented). The two he always talks about are the chemistry book (perhaps Adventures in Chemistry?) where the boys went to a laboratory and made toothpaste (he remembers the younger boy tasting the toothpaste and liking it) and a book about model rockets (Adventures in Rocketry, perhaps?). The boys and their dad are driving to a deserted place where they can shoot off their rockets and are stopped by the police who see all the rockets and the rocket motors in the car and are upset; maybe the dad shows them a permit to shoot off rockets or something to let the police know they are no threat. It’s our 25th anniversary coming up and I’d love to dig up one of these books, but I’ve never found them searching online.