This week the wonderful Feed My Reads hosted a Twitter Q and A with renowned science journalist and author, David Bradley. Using #DBQuestions, twitter users were able to ask David absolutely anything they wanted. This seemed like so much fun that Unpopular Science just had to get involved! So, below are the fiendish questions users asked, as well as David’s insightful answers. @HenryGeeBooks: What gets you up in the morning? DB: Usually, a dig in the ribs from my wife expecting a cup of tea and the dulcet tones of Humphrys et al with the news headlines on the radio. And, of course, the urge to share the scientific discoveries I come across in as informative and entertaining way as I can. Oh, and our labrador always needs her breakfast and an exit to her morning constitutional. @Charli_TAW: Have you always wanted to be writer? DB: Hah, not at all. I always wanted to be a marine biologist and then a physicist, and then a guitar god …
I don’t know.’ This is the default position of science. If you ask any half-decent physicist how the universe came in to being, they will say ‘I don’t know but here are some theories.’ Likewise, if you ask any biologist what colour a baby archaeopteryx was, they will probably say ‘I don’t know, but I can speculate.’ The lack of absolutes is what makes science great and what makes the scientific process so encompassing and so (mostly) open-minded. By a happy coincidence, it also leaves a lot of mystery and a lot of room for guess work, and this is where our good friend fiction comes in … Because our scientific understanding is far from complete, authors can take a scientific concept, and flesh it out however they want. In 1963 a physicist named Hugh Everett published a new theorem, The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. His radical new idea proposed that, thanks to some incredibly clever calculations and observations, …
The Rithmatist Author: Brandon Sanderson Published: 23rd May 2013 Publisher: Orion Summary: Mountains of magical, mathematical mayhem. Maths. For so many school-goers, such a difficult subject to get to grips with. If only there was a way to make it more exciting. Maybe with laser beams, or explosions perhaps, or, even better, what if your geometric diagrams came to life to do battle with those of other students? Well, in New York Times-bestselling author Brandon Sanderson’s young adult novel, The Rithmatist, that is exactly what does occur in the classrooms of Armedius Academy. Unfortunately for the book’s protagonist, Joel, however, he’s strictly forbidden from studying the magical, mathematical art he finds so alluring. Joel is the son of a lowly, deceased chalk-maker, and is only granted attendance to the prestigious Academy because his father and the principal were such close friends. Sadly, attendance is not enough to allow Joel into the exclusive Rithmatic lectures he so desperately wants to be a …
