Showing titles in Science & Technology

In the new Mini Movers and Shakers children's book series comes a cast of characters who have failed, yet succeeded despite overwhelming obstacles. In the third volume, we meet Elon Musk. Find out what happens in this kids book about inventing things. Sometimes, we are faced with challenges that seem insurmountable. But with grit and hard work, one can achieve great things!

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history, including Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery; Michael Faraday, inventor of the electric motor; Marie Curie, famous for her work on radioactivity; Albert Einstein, creator of the theory of relativity; Alexander Fleming, discoverer of the first antibiotic; and Linus Pauling, chemist and peace activist.

For every child who has ever looked up at the stars and asked, "What are they?" comes the story of a curious boy who never stopped wondering: Carl Sagan. When Carl Sagan was a young boy he went to the 1939 World's Fair and his life was changed forever. From that day on he never stopped marveling at the universe and seeking to understand it better.

Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford started off as insatiably curious tinkerers. That curiosity led them to become inventors - with very different results. As Edison invented hit after commercial hit, gaining fame and fortune, Henry struggled to make a single invention (an affordable car) work. Witnessing Thomas' glorious career from afar, a frustrated Henry wondered about the secret to his success.

Dmitri Mendeleyev gave science one of its most important discoveries when he published his periodic table of elements. The periodic table has determined much in the way of science in the past and will continue to do so in the future. The scientist behind the table came from the barren wasteland of Siberia in 19th-century Russia and rose to world acclaim for his work in chemistry.

In the 1800s, the moist soil of the Midwest would stick to plow blades, stopping the farmers as they plowed. Young blacksmith John Deere knew about the problem, so he designed and built a self-scouring plow. With this small start, he founded the famous farm implement company Deere & Company and started down the road to success.

On the battlefields of World War I, soldiers are dying from infected wounds. A young doctor witnessing the devastation vows to find a cure. In his messy laboratory a decade later, he makes an accidental discovery – a miracle mould that kills bacteria. But try as he might, he cannot turn his amazing find into a useful medicine. This is the story of that chance discovery and the brilliant scientists who took Alexander Fleming's miracle mould and worked tirelessly to turn it into a treatment that doctors could use.

On 16th July 1969, three men sit at the top of a towering rocket. Strapped into their Command Module, the astronauts brace themselves as the engines roar into life, flames lick out from beneath the rocket, and the ground starts to tremble. They are going where no one has ever been before. This is the story of the legendary Apollo 11 mission – and the men and women on the ground who made it happen. When astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon in July 1969, they achieved humanity's oldest dream. But how did they get there?

This audiobook tells the story of Henry Ford, along with his invention, the popular Model T automobile.

Before Garrett Morgan became a successful inventor and saved countless lives with his creations, he was a little boy with a head full of ideas on how to make life better for everyone. At a tumultuous time filled with racism and discrimination, Garrett became a prominent business man and skilled inventor who produced the traffic signal, a gas mask, and others objects still used today.

Although Orville and Wilbur Wright are celebrated today as heroes for their revolutionary contributions to science and engineering - they are acknowledged as the first men to successfully achieve powered, piloted flight - their success was hard-earned. In fact, it took the self-taught engineers years of work and dozens of crashes before they managed a single 12-second flight! In this first installment of the brand new Epic Fails series, Ben Thompson and Erik Slader take listeners through the Wright brothers' many mishaps and misadventures as they paved the way for modern aviation.

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history. Contents: Edward Jenner, the man who fought the terrible disease smallpox; Florence Nightingale, the nurse known as 'the lady with the lamp'; Elizabeth Garrett, England's first female doctor; Carl Jung, the doctor who wanted to understand the human mind; Jonas Salk, who defeated the dangerous illness polio; Christiaan Barnard, the first man to replace a human heart.

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history. Contents: Antoine Lavoisier, who wrote the first modern chemistry textbook; Humphry Davy, who discovered 'laughing gas'; Charles Darwin, who changed people's ideas with his theory of evolution; Gregor Mendel, who first discovered the science of genetics; Louis Pasteur, who saved millions of lives by killing germs; Francis Crick, who helped to discover the structure of DNA.

Following the success of the first Great Scientists title in the Junior Classics range, this collection features the lives of nine more remarkable scientists, with descriptions of their discoveries. From the astronomy of Copernicus and Halley to the natural science of Linnaeus and Humboldt, and from the discoveries of Pascal, Davy, Volta, and Babbage to the harnessing of atomic power by Julius Oppenheimer, it explores the contributions made by these great scientists, and their impact on our everyday lives.

What do libraries, streetlights, and fire stations have in common? What about bifocal lenses and the odometer? Sayings like "haste makes waste?" Benjamin Franklin was a man of many talents: a scientist who experimented with electricity; a diplomat who served as envoy to France and negotiated peace with England; a mapmaker, printer, and writer famous for his Poor Richard's Almanack.

Before Carl Linnaeus began classifying organisms, before John James Audubon drew birds from the wild, before Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, there lived a 13-year-old girl named Maria Merian who loved to draw bugs. With no formal training or university education, Maria Merian took on the role of artist, adventurer, and scientist in 17th-century Europe - a time when women were rarely allowed responsibilities outside the home, and unusual interests led to accusations of witchcraft.

Jeanne Villepreux-Power was never expected to be a scientist. Born in 1794 in a French village more than 100 miles from the ocean, she pursued an improbable path that brought her to the island of Sicily. There, she took up natural history and solved the two-thousand-year-old mystery of how the argonaut octopus gets its shell. In an era when most research focused on dead specimens, Jeanne was determined to experiment on living animals. And to keep sea creatures alive for her studies, she had to invent a contraption to hold them: the aquarium.

Leonardo da Vinci was a gifted painter, talented musician, and dedicated scientist and inventor, designing flying machines, submarines, and even helicopters. Yet he had a hard time finishing things, a problem anyone can relate to. Only 13 paintings are known to be his; as for the illustrated encyclopedia he intended to create, all that he left were thousands of disorganized notebook pages. Here is an accessible portrait of a fascinating man who lived at a fascinating time - Italy during the Renaissance.

Everyone has heard of Albert Einstein - but what exactly did he do? How much do kids really know about Albert Einstein besides the funny hair and genius label? For instance, do they know that he was expelled from school as a kid? Finally, here's the story of Albert Einstein's life, told in a fun, engaging way that clearly explores the world he lived in and changed.

In 1910, Captain Robert Scott prepared his crew for a trip that no one had ever completed: a journey to the South Pole. He vowed to get there any way he could, even if it meant looking death in the eye. Then, not long before he set out, another intrepid explorer, Roald Amundsen, set his sights on the same goal. Suddenly two teams were vying to be the first to make history - what was to be an expedition had become a perilous race. In 2018, Captain Louis Rudd readied himself for a similarly grueling task: the first solo crossing of treacherous Antarctica.