Curiosity

"The second edition supports a stronger awareness of Indigenous approaches to environmental learning. It offers an encounter with Indigenous perspectives that challenge us to think in very differnet ways about our place in the world. The Indigenous lens in the edition provides a starting point in a conversation that opens educators' eyes to Indigenous perspectives as their students build lasting connections with the natural world." --back cover.

The latest from Ian Leslie, the author of Born Liars, a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, is a fascinating look at the human characteristic of curiosity — our extraordinary capacity to take pleasure in discovering, learning, and understanding. Curious shows how the practice of “deep curiosity” — persistent, self-reflective seeking of knowledge and insight — is key to the success of our careers, the happiness of our children, the strength of our relationships, and the progress of societies. But it also argues that it is a fragile quality, which wanes and waxes over time, and that we take it for granted at our peril. Ian Leslie proposes that the Internet is opening up a “curiosity gap,” by exacerbating the divide between those with a large cognitive appetite, and those happy knowing no more than they have to know; between the curious and the incurious. He draws on many sources and stories to illustrate his points: Benjamin Franklin at Portsmouth Harbour studying the effect of oil on choppy waters; a bored Galileo distracting himself in a Pisa cathedral by observing the swinging of a recently lit lamp; Leonardo da Vinci doodling ideas in his notebook; Google co-founder Larry Page’s thoughts on the perfect search engine; the invention of the microwave oven; the advantages of your local bookseller over Amazon’s algorithms; a reassessment of Donald Rumsfeld’s defense strategy, and many more. Rich, textured, and exciting, Curious is a new take on the most absorbing human trait of all.

"Looking closely at the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Ball vividly brings to life the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. In this entertaining and illuminating account of the rise of science as we know it, Ball tells of scientists both legendary and lesser known, from Copernicus and Kepler to Robert Boyle, as well as the inventions and technologies that were inspired by curiosity itself, such as the telescope and the microscope. The so-called Scientific Revolution is often told as a story of great geniuses illuminating the world with flashes of inspiration. But Curiosity reveals a more complex story, in which the liberation--and subsequent taming--of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade, and empire. Ball also asks what has become of curiosity today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged for consumption, how well it is being sustained, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may continue to ask"--OCLC

“A handsome and engaging children’s book. . . . This accessible look at interplanetary exploration will appeal to a broad range of young space enthusiasts.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) On August 6, 2012, the rover Curiosity touched down on the rocky surface of Mars—and now she’s ready to guide you through her journey. From idea to creation and beyond, this fact-filled, stylish book introduces readers to Curiosity and her mission: to discover more about the red planet and search for evidence of life. How did Curiosity get her name? What tools does she use to carry out her tasks? The popular NASA rover narrates how and why she traveled more than 350,000,000 miles to explore a planet no human has ever visited . . . and what she has been doing there for the past decade or so. Markus Motum brings Curiosity’s story to life in vivid color: the deep blues of space set off the warm, rusted hues of Mars’s dusty red surface, marking this lovable rover and her mission as something special—truly a world apart.

In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.

LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE MARGARET LAURENCE AWARD FOR FICTION A QUILL & QUIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR Award-winning novelist Joan Thomas blends fact and fiction, passion and science in this stunning novel set in nineteenth-century Lyme Regis, England—the seaside town that is the setting of both The French Lieutenant's Woman and Jane Austen's Persuasion. More than forty years before the publication of The Origin of Species, twelve-year-old Mary Anning, a cabinet-maker's daughter, found the first intact skeleton of a prehistoric dolphin-like creature, and spent a year chipping it from the soft cliffs near Lyme Regis. This was only the first of many important discoveries made by this incredible woman, perhaps the most important paleontologist of her day. Henry de la Beche was the son of a gentry family, owners of a slave-worked estate in Jamaica where he spent his childhood. As an adolescent back in England, he ran away from military college, and soon found himself living with his elegant, cynical mother in Lyme Regis, where he pursued his passion for drawing and painting the landscapes and fossils of the area. One morning on an expedition to see an extraordinary discovery—a giant fossil—he meets a young woman unlike anyone he has ever met . . .

Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio investigates perhaps the most human of all our characteristics—curiosity—in this “lively, expert, and definitely not dumbed-down account” (Kirkus Reviews) as he explores our innate desire to know why. Experiments demonstrate that people are more distracted when they overhear a phone conversation—where they can know only one side of the dialogue—than when they overhear two people talking and know both sides. Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation? “Have you ever wondered why we wonder why? Mario Livio has, and he takes you on a fascinating quest to understand the origin and mechanisms of our curiosity. I thoroughly recommend it.” (Adam Riess, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, 2011). Curiosity is not only at the heart of mystery and suspense novels, it is also essential to other creative endeavors, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity. In the ever-fascinating Why? Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects? An astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience, Livio has firsthand knowledge of his subject which he explores in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.

This book describes the most complex machine ever sent to another planet: Curiosity. It is a one-ton robot with two brains, seventeen cameras, six wheels, nuclear power, and a laser beam on its head. No one human understands how all of its systems and instruments work. This essential reference to the Curiosity mission explains the engineering behind every system on the rover, from its rocket-powered jetpack to its radioisotope thermoelectric generator to its fiendishly complex sample handling system. Its lavishly illustrated text explains how all the instruments work -- its cameras, spectrometers, sample-cooking oven, and weather station -- and describes the instruments' abilities and limitations. It tells you how the systems have functioned on Mars, and how scientists and engineers have worked around problems developed on a faraway planet: holey wheels and broken focus lasers. And it explains the grueling mission operations schedule that keeps the rover working day in and day out.