Bøger af Stephen Webb

Around the World in 80 Ways offers a (sometimes opinionated) discussion of 80 data-driven maps of our planet. Taken together, the maps tell a story about the physical world; about the impact our species is having on the world; and about how people live in the world ¿ or at least how we lived immediately before the emergence of Covid-19. The maps lie. All maps lie. But the origins of the deceptions are explained, the data sources are signposted and referenced, and the readers are shown how to create their own maps using freely available software. The reader is thus armed with the tools needed to explore local, national or world data ¿ on topics ranging from science to society; environment to entertainment; wealth to wellbeing ¿ a valuable skill in an age when certain politicians are happy to refer to ¿alternative facts¿ and media outlets deliver data visualizations that sometimes mislead as much as inform.

Land of Liberty is a text designed to prepare beginning ESL students for the challenge of passing their USCIS Citizenship Exam. All facets of the test are included: Reading, Civics, Speaking, and Writing. First, a high-interest reading selection introduces students to America's story, told in simple, but not simplistic terms. Next, in each chapter's interview practice section, students get the chance to read a model of a prospective citizen going through his Citizenship interview and then practice with their own information. Then, students can hone their English skills with guided practice that focuses on the English grammar and vocabulary that is actually used in the test, reinforcing the information even more. Finally, there are 40 sentences for dictation practice using all the vocabulary designated for the Writing portion of the official Citizenship Exam. It's an "All-of-the-Above" approach to get students ready to become new U.S. citizens in no time!

Around the World in 80 Ways offers a (sometimes opinionated) discussion of 80 data-driven maps of our planet. Taken together, the maps tell a story about the physical world; about the impact our species is having on the world; and about how people live in the world ¿ or at least how we lived immediately before the emergence of Covid-19. The maps lie. All maps lie. But the origins of the deceptions are explained, the data sources are signposted and referenced, and the readers are shown how to create their own maps using freely available software. The reader is thus armed with the tools needed to explore local, national or world data ¿ on topics ranging from science to society; environment to entertainment; wealth to wellbeing ¿ a valuable skill in an age when certain politicians are happy to refer to ¿alternative facts¿ and media outlets deliver data visualizations that sometimes mislead as much as inform.

Seeing beyond the Big Bang. . . Although it is now almost unanimously accepted that the cosmos started with the Big Bang, we still have no plausible theory for the forces that set this creative cataclysm in motion. Some of the most profound questions of modern science arise out of the difficulties scientists have explaining how our Universe was born. What happened, indeed what was, before the Big Bang? During the past few years cosmologists have begun to develop new ideas, sometimes fantastic, that are beginning to shed light on such questions.In OUT OF THIS WORLD, Stephen Webb examines these amazing recent theories. After introducing general relativity and quantum mechnanics-the twin foundations of twentieth-century physics-he explains how they are fundamentally incompatible. Then, in a series of increasingly astonishing chapters, he introduces us to the seemingly outlandish and bizarre proposals-from almost unbelievably small particles to huge membranes that may envelope the Universe-that physicists have devised to account for this incompatibility, ultimately leading us to wholly new realms of understanding.Webb makes these strange and wonderful goings-on accessible, engaging, and enjoyable, conveying not just what theorists have begun to believe about the cosmos, but the awe and excitement felt by scientists as this new picture of the Universe slowly emerges.

Distance determination - finding out how far away different astronomical objects are - is an essential and currently highly topical subject in astronomy. A great deal of progress has been made during the last part of the 20th century. Measuring the Universe provides a unified treatment of the various techniques used for distance determination. It begins by describing methods to measure distances on Earth then gradually climbs the "distance ladder" to enable us to estimate the distance to the farthest objects, ending with a discussion of particle horizons within an expanding and inflationary universe. Aimed at first-year undergraduates of astronomy and astrophysics, the book emphasises general physical principles rather than mathematical detail. The text is enhanced and complemented by the use of many worked examples, and questions and problem solving exercises at the end of each chapter.

This book presents the reader with some of the earliest classic SF short stories - all of them published between 1858 and 1934, featuring both well-known and long-forgotten writers - dealing for the first time with topics to which science had (some) answers only at much later stages.

Lawrence Ryan is Australia's very own Evel Knievel. Legend: A Childhood Dream is Lawrence's lively autobiography which traces his progress from outback Junee (NSW) to this country's number one stuntman. As he writes: "Was there always an inner stuntman lurking in my genes? I was three when I told my dad I wanted to be a stuntman. Teacher, police officer, truck driver - these seemed okay occupations for other kids to aspire to but I knew they were tame compared to my dream." TV personality Grant Denyer remarks in his foreword: "He's part superhero, part gentlemen, part dreamer, partly psychotic. But, far more importantly, he's always entertaining." Legend is indeed an entertaining read and generously illustrated with photographic evidence of Lawrence's astounding stunts.

From the ampersat and amerpsand, via smileys and runes to the ubiquitous presence of mathematical and other symbols in sciences and technology: both old and modern documents abound with many familiar as well as lesser known characters, symbols and other glyphs.

It has been argued that science fiction (SF) gives a kind of weather forecast ¿ not the telling of a fortune but rather the rough feeling of what the future might be like. The intention in this book is to consider some of these bygone forecasts made by SF and to use this as a prism through which to view current developments in science and technology.In each of the ten main chapters - dealing in turn with antigravity, space travel, aliens, time travel, the nature of reality, invisibility, robots, means of transportation, augmentation of the human body, and, last but not least, mad scientists - common assumptions once made by the SF community about how the future would turn out are compared with our modern understanding of various scientific phenomena and, in some cases, with the industrial scaling of computational and technological breakthroughs.A further intention is to explain how the predictions and expectations of SF were rooted in the scientific orthodoxy of theirday, and use this to explore how our scientific understanding of various topics has developed over time, as well as to demonstrate how the ideas popularized in SF subsequently influenced working scientists. Since gaining a BSc in physics from the University of Bristol and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Manchester, Stephen Webb has worked in a variety of universities in the UK. He is a regular contributor to the Yearbook of Astronomy series and has published an undergraduate textbook on distance determination in astronomy and cosmology as well as several popular science books.