Author

Publication

2005 - MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, Massachusetts

Language

English

Word Count

65,500 words, Guess

Page Count

262 pages

Identifiers

and 2 more
  • LibraryThing502130
  • Goodreads2503208

Classifications

  • DDC500
  • LCCQ125 .P475 2005

Description

"Children ask, "Why is the sky blue?" but the question also puzzled Plato, Leonardo, and even Newton, who unlocked so many other secrets. The search for an answer continued for centuries; in 1862 Sir John Herschel listed the color and polarization of sky light as "the two great standing enigmas of meteorology." In Sky in a Bottle, Peter Pesic takes us on a quest to the heart of this mystery, tracing the various attempts of science, history, and art to solve it. He begins with the scholars of the ancient world and continues through the natural philosophers of the Enlightenment, the empiricists of the scientific revolution, and beyond. The cast of characters includes Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Descartes, Euler, Saussure, Goethe, Rayleigh, and Einstein; but the protagonist is the question itself, and the story tells how we have tried to answer it."--Jacket.

Subjects

Genres

  • Popular works.
  • History.

Other Editions

  • Sky in a bottleMIT Press2005-01-01

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