Any book that explains how ducks don’t freeze to death with their bare feet dangling in icy water, I’m all for. Szerski does a great job of segueing from ordinary things to the physics that explains them. I found that she lost her way in later chapters when she wandered into philosophy. Scientists are best off leaving that stuff to the philosophers, I think. ( )

This book is great - interesting, accessible, informative. I did not give it the attention it deserves. Instead I mostly half-listened while doing some very boring work. I find Chloe Massey's narration very relaxing and when I say I'd listen to her narrate anything, I'll now use the example of a discussion on egg-spinning. Really though I'd recommend this book and will either read or listen to sections again to get what I should from them. ( )

Reading Storm in a Teacup - The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski is akin to dipping your toe into the world of physics and thankfully Czerski provides a steady hand for the layperson. Czerski looks at everyday occurrences like why a buttered piece of toast will usually fall butter side down when dropped and what happens when you add milk to coffee informs the book's title.

The audiobook was expertly read by Chloe Massey who shares her northern accent with actress Joanne Froggatt - who plays Anna Bates from Downton Abbey - which is to say I loved listening to her narration.

I found many of the topics interesting including how coffee rings develop and why it's hard to get tomato sauce out of the bottle until all of a sudden it comes glugging out. I was also curious to learn why pigeons bob their heads when they walk.

The author references a study of pigeons that was undertaken in order to understand why these birds bob their heads forwards and backwards when they walk. When the pigeon was walking on a treadmill, the researcher noticed it wasn't bobbing its head.

"The bird obviously didn't need to do it in order to walk, so it wasn't anything to do with the physics of locomotion. The head bobbing was about what it could see. On the treadmill, even though the pigeon was walking, the surroundings stayed in the same place. If the pigeon held its head still, it saw exactly the same view all the time. That made the surroundings nice and easy to see. But when a pigeon is walking on land, the scenery is constantly changing as it goes past. It turns out, these birds can't see fast enough to catch the changing scene. So they're not really bobbing their heads forwards and backwards at all, they thrust their head forward and then take a step that lets their body catch up and then thrust their head forwards again. The head stays in the same position throughout the step so the pigeon has more time to analyse this scene before moving on to the next one." Chapter 5

Fascinating isn't it? I've been wanting to observe this for myself, but the only pigeon I've seen since finishing this audiobook was asleep. Hopefully I'll have better luck soon.

Coming in at a listening time of 10 hrs and 14 mins, Storm in a Teacup took me a while to get through and when I got to the end and did a stocktake of the notes I'd written in preparation for this review, I noticed pickings were slim.

While I've never been one for physics, I was in safe hands here. Storm in a Teacup - The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski was a nice jumping off point that held my attention throughout, despite not knowing much about the topics covered.

Czerski's enthusiasm for physics shines through and this was an informative listen. ( )

physicist, principles-of-physics, science, nonfiction, applied-physics****

I first met applied physics in nursing school and knew enough to use it in patient care, but this goes well beyond that and is great fun as well! Welcome to physics in your own world!
Chloe Massey is a fine voice artist and really sounds interested. ( )

2018: I re-read this book as part of the Flat Book Society's group read. I don't want to review it twice, so I'm re-posting my original review. My feelings about this book stand, and moreover, it holds up on re-reading very well.

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2017: A pretty excellent book for anyone who gets a bit giddy about science and the everyday ways that science is part of everyone's life.

Czerski has a very accessible voice and a very clear way of explaining what are at times complex topics, and she covers the gamut: electromagnetism, water tension, viscosity, plate tectonics, and Newton's laws of motion (I'm old-school) among them. I learned so much about so many things and those that I had a basic understanding of, she elucidated in ways that really brought the concepts to life in better detail. I had no idea that an electromagnet was what held down the tray in my toaster - did y'all know that? That's why the tray doesn't stay down when the toaster is unplugged.

So much of this book got read out loud to MT, who is not a lover of science, but even he found the bits I shared fascinating (he was equally surprised about the toaster), and there were so many suggestions throughout the book that can easily be done at home; I plan to do several of them with my nieces when next they are here - including building our own trebuchet.

Honestly, anyone interested in science but might feel intimidated by the often tedious or complex explanations, or anyone who just thinks the science involved in the every day fascinating will get a lot out of this book. Czerski often gets auto-biographical with her narrative, but she is a physicist, so why wouldn't she use her own experiences to illustrate her points? (For the record, MT and I both think she and her friends got totally screwed on the whole trebuchet debacle.)

Overall, a lot of fun.

PS: oh, yes, the trebuchet will happen! ( )