If you mean reading an extra book or two, then I can tell you that my student had one class in high school where he read a number of real books for the year. I called it living science, but the official name of the class was "Science Survey," and I awarded credit for it. The reasoning behind this is that I think that high school science done with a textbook ends up being too far removed from the real world. With these books, he could get a feel for how real scientists work in the real world. I think it helps to make science relevant to a person ... more of a possibility instead of an abstraction. In the end, a class like this can help a student to see why textbook science can be of value.

So, anyway, picking one of these books or another book that fits in with your student's interests might be a profitable way to supplement a textbook-only science program. Of course, you could always just pick a book that looks good and read it aloud to all your students.

Here's the reading list:

Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
by Simon Singh
When Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced a solution of Fermat's last theorem in 1993, it electrified the world of mathematics. After a flaw was discovered in the proof, Wiles had to work for another year--he had already labored in solitude for seven years--to establish that he had solved the 350-year-old problem. Simon Singh's book is a lively, comprehensible explanation of Wiles's work and of the star-, trauma-, and wacko-studded history of Fermat's last theorem. Fermat's Enigma contains some problems that offer a taste of the math, but it also includes limericks to give a feeling for the goofy side of mathematicians.

Leonardo:  The First Scientist
by Michael White
Science topics:  geology, earth science
"This story deals almost exclusively with Leonardo the man and Leonardo the scientist," admits British science writer Michael White, who touches only lightly on da Vinci's more famous achievements as a painter. Providing an extensive analysis of Leonardo's notebooks, White argues persuasively that da Vinci (1752-1519) made important discoveries in the fields of optics and anatomy, particularly the anatomy of the eye, and "worked methodically and with scientific precision centuries ahead of his time in the areas of geology and geography." Only the notebooks' dispersal in pieces across Europe after Leonardo's death, White believes, kept him from being properly acknowledged as "the first scientist."

Tesla: Man Out of Time
by Margaret Cheney
Science topics:  electricity, magnetism, radio waves, AC current
Note: Tesla was the inventor of the radio.
In Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field--the basis of most alternating-current machinery--but also introduced us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost supernaturally gifted, he was also a popular man-about-town, admired by men as diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society beauties. From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered--and continue to alter--the world in which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.

The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom
by Brian Cathcart
If you want to understand how something works, you can dismantle it and study its pieces. But what if the thing you're curious about is too small to see, even with the most powerful microscope? Brian Cathcart's The Fly in the Cathedral tells the intriguing story of how scientists were able to take atoms apart to reveal the secrets of their structures. To keep the story gripping, Cathcart focuses on a time (1932, the annus mirabilis of British physics), a place (Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory), and a few main characters (Ernest Rutherford, the "father of nuclear physics," and his protégés, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton). Rutherford and his team knew that the long-accepted atomic model was held together by nothing more than trumped-up math and hope. They hoped to find out what held oppositely charged protons and electrons together, and what strange particles shared the nucleus with protons. In a series of remarkable experiments done on homemade apparatus, these Cambridge scientists moved atomic science to within an inch of its ultimate goal. Finally, Cockcroft and Walton--competing furiously with their American and German peers--put together the machine that would forever change history by splitting an atom. The Fly in the Cathedral combines all the right elements for a great science history: historical context, gritty detail, wrenching failure, and of course, glorious victory. Although the miracles that occurred at Cambridge in 1932 were to result in the fearful, looming threat of atomic warfare, Cathcart allows readers to find unfiltered joy in the accomplishments of a few brilliant, ingenious scientists.

The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number  (selections)
by Mario Livio
Throughout history, thinkers from mathematicians to theologians have pondered the mysterious relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, or 1.6180339887... This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio," was discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago because of its crucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical properties had been attributed. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishing variety of places, from mollusk shells, sunflower florets, and rose petals to the shape of the galaxy. Psychological studies have investigated whether the Golden Ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing proportion extant, and it has been asserted that the creators of the Pyramids and the Parthenon employed it. It is believed to feature in works of art from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Salvador Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper, and poets and composers have used it in their works. It has even been found to be connected to the behavior of the stock market! The Golden Ratio is a captivating journey through art and architecture, botany and biology, physics and mathematics. It tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, including the followers of Pythagoras who believed that this proportion revealed the hand of God; astronomer Johannes Kepler, who saw phi as the greatest treasure of geometry; such Renaissance thinkers as mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa; and such masters of the modern world as Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok, and physicist Roger Penrose. Wherever his quest for the meaning of phi takes him, Mario Livio reveals the world as a place where order, beauty, and eternal mystery will always coexist.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
by Dava Sobel
Science topics:  geography, mapmaking, clocks, navigation, astronomy
Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the logitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--and had been for centuries. This was no obscure, curious difficulty--without longitude, ships often found themselves so far off course that sailors would starve or die of scurvy before they could reach port. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution. When a nationally-sponsored contest offered a hefty cash prize to the person who could develop a method to accurately determine longitude, the race was on. The scientific establishment of Europe--from Galileo to Sir Issac Newton--had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. In the end, the battle of accuracy--and wills--fought between Harrison and arch-rival Maskelyne was ruthless and dramatic, worthy of a Hollywood feature film. Longitude's story is surprising and fascinating, offering a window into the past, before Global Positioning Satellites made it look easy. Longitude is a dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.
Illustrated version of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity
by Robert Cwiklik
Einstein's astonishing theory of relativity transformed every aspect of physics--from the study of atoms to the study of stars. Relativity is described here in simple, accurate language. Traces the life and work of the physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized scientific thinking. This book provides a good biography of Albert Einstein, a good introduction to the world of physics at the beginning of the 20th century, and how Einstein's theory of relativity changed it. The book traces Einstein's life from birth in Germany, his move to Switzerland where he made a name for himself while moonlighting as a patent office clerk, and his move to the USA to escape the Nazis. The book balances both Einstein's scientific achievements and his political ones too. The latter include his letter to the US president on the possibilities of nuclear weapons and his later stance of pacifism and nuclear disarmament.

Richard Feynman: A Life in Science  (selections)
Science topics:  physics
by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin
Richard Feynman was something of a rarity: a science superstar. Like another superstar who preceded him, Albert Einstein, Feynman's science was ahead of his time, but it was his qualities as a human being that caught the imaginations of ordinary people. A whole body of legend has grown up around the man--much of it promulgated by Feynman himself--and nearly 10 years after his death he remains a popular subject of memoirs, biographies, and even films. In Richard Feynman, respected science writers John and Mary Gribbin combine biography with popular science in this absorbing look at the great man's life and work. Though there's little new information about Feynman's personal life and interests here--everything from his passion for bongo drums to his fascination with the country of Tuva has been documented many times and in many places before now--the Gribbins do an exemplary job of explaining just why Feynman was such a giant among physicists. Quantum theory is the kind of subject that could give the average reader a raging headache, yet the Gribbins explain it so well that by the end of Richard Feynman even the most non-scientific among us will be able to appreciate just what a singular contribution to our world this science superstar made.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
by Richard P. Feynman
A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him.

The Physics of Star Trek
by Lawrence M. Krauss
Sure, we all know Star Trek is fiction, but warp drives and transporters and holodecks don't seem altogether implausible. Are any of these futuristic inventions fundamentally outlawed by physics as we understand it today? The Physics of Star Trek takes a lighthearted look at this subject, speculating on how the wonders of Star Trek technology might actually work--and, in some cases, revealing why the inventions are impossible or impractical even for an advanced civilization. (Example: "dematerializing" a person for transport would require about as much energy as is released by a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb). The Physics of Star Trek deserves merit for providing a refresher course on topics such as relativity and antimatter, but let's face it: the reason most people will want to read this book is simply that it's fun to poke holes in the premises of their favorite science fiction shows!

The Mystery of the Periodic Table
by Benjamin D. Wiker
When we look at these nice, neat, and straight rows of elements on the Periodic Table of the Elements we might think that it was a nice, neat, and straight road to their discovery. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was a long and difficult journey much like the perilous wanderings of Odysseus in Homer's great epic tale, The Odyssey. Of course the wanderings made it an adventure, and an adventure is always an exciting thing to retell." Author Benjamin Wiker leads the reader on a delightful and absorbing journey through the ages, on the trail of the elements of the Periodic Table as we know them today. He introduces the young reader to people like Von Helmont, Boyle, Stahl, Priestly, Cavendish, Lavoisier, and many others, all incredibly diverse in personality and approach, who have laid the groundwork for a search that is still unfolding to this day. The first part of Wiker's witty and solidly instructive presentation is most suitable to middle school age, while the later chapters are designed for ages 12-13 and up, with a final chapter somewhat more advanced.

A Brief History of Time  (selections)
by Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we're looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking, for, as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of "the mind of God."

A Briefer History of Time
by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Stephen Hawking's worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, has been a landmark volume in scientific writing. Its author's engaging voice is one reason, and the compelling subjects he addresses is another: the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, the history and future of the universe. But it is also true that in the years since its publication, readers have repeatedly told Professor Hawking of their great difficulty in understanding some of the book's most important concepts. This is the origin of and the reason for A Briefer History of Time: its author's wish to make its content more accessible to readers-–as well as to bring it up-to-date with the latest scientific observations and findings. Although this book is literally somewhat "briefer," it actually expands on the great subjects of the original. Purely technical concepts, such as the mathematics of chaotic boundary conditions, are gone. Conversely, subjects of wide interest that were difficult to follow because they were interspersed throughout the book have now been given entire chapters of their own, including relativity, curved space, and quantum theory. This reorganization has allowed the authors to expand areas of special interest and recent progress, from the latest developments in string theory to exciting developments in the search for a complete unified theory of all the forces of physics. Like prior editions of the book–-but even more so–-A Briefer History of Time will guide nonscientists everywhere in the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space.

Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World
by Amir D. Aczel
The story of the compass is shrouded in mystery and myth, yet most will agree it begins around the time of the birth of Christ in ancient China. A mysterious lodestone whose powers affected metal was known to the Chinese emperor. When this piece of metal was suspended in water, it always pointed north. This unexplainable occurrence led to the stone's use in feng shui, the Chinese art of finding the right location. However, it was the Italians, more than a thousand years later, who discovered the ultimate destiny of the lodestone and unleashed its formidable powers. In Amalfi sometime in the twelfth century, the compass was born, crowning the Italians as the new rulers of the seas and heralding the onset of the modern world. Retracing the roots of the compass and sharing the fascinating story of navigation through the ages, The Riddle of the Compass is Aczel at his most entertaining and insightful.

Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor
by Ken Silverstein
Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town's forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.

Along Came Galileo
by Jeanne Bendick
One of the most important figures to come out of the awakening world of the Renaissance was Galileo Galelei. Often referred to as the "Archimedes of his time" Galileo was forever asking questions. Is it possible to measure heat? Is it possible to weigh air? Does the earth stand still or does it move? How fast do objects fall to the earth? His questions led to some of the most important answers of the scientific world—-and to his contributions to astronomy, physics, and mathematics. Galileo also advanced the astronomical telescope and invented the compound microscope. He measured the rotation of the sun, invented the thermometer, a geometrical compass and the pendulum clock. He was a man of faith, a lover of art and an accomplished artist. He played the lute and enjoyed working in his garden. He was the first to see, through the lens of the telescope, the wonders of our galaxy—sights that moved him to profound gratitude to God. He was so ahead of his time that his discoveries caused him to be the object of persecution and injustice. Through her whimsical illustrations and her bright engaging text Bendick has provided the middle reader with Galileo's inspiring story.

The Man Who Found Time:  James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity
by Jack Repcheck
Science topics:  flight, human anatomy, optics
There are four men whose contributions helped free science from the straightjacket of theology. Three of the four—-Nicholaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Charles Darwin—-are widely known and heralded for their breakthroughs. The fourth, James Hutton, has never received the same recognition, yet he profoundly changed our understanding of the earth and its dynamic forces. Hutton proved that the earth was likely millions of years old rather than the biblically determined six thousand, and that it was continuously being shaped and re-shaped by myriad everyday forces rather than one cataclysmic event. In this expertly crafted narrative, Jack Repcheck tells the remarkable story of this Scottish gentleman farmer, and how his simple observations on a small tract of land led him to a controversial theory. Yet it was Hutton's work that ultimately made Darwin's theory of evolution possible. The Man Who Found Time is also a story of Scotland the Scottish Enlightenment, which brought together some of the greatest thinkers of the age-—from David Hume and Adam Smith to James Watt and Erasmus Darwin. Repcheck argues that Hutton's work was lost to history because he could not describe his findings in graceful and readable prose.

As for how I came up with this list ... well, it wasn't exactly all by myself ... it was basically like this: I went through our home library book by book to see which ones were real books about science. I put them in a box. Then I searched the library electronic card catalog using keywords like: biography and science. I checked out the ones that looked like they might be interesting to my student and brought them home. Then he chose from that group. Before he could get all the library books read, I had to take the library books back. I kept the check-out list and re-checked out the ones he was interested in later. At that point, I also perused the 500s area of the library and looked through the biography section for scientific-sounding titles and biographies. I think my student ended up with a pretty good grouping. But it took me a number of hours searching. I would have preferred the student to do the leg work because I think it would be more beneficial, but he had some other projects going and this saved some time.

Have you seen those Cartoon Guide to ... books? We tried The Cartoon Guide to Physics, but it didn't click with us. There are a few of them:

• The Cartoon Guide to Physics
• The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry
• The Cartoon Guide to the Environment
• The Cartoon Guide to Genetics

There's also Joy Hakim's science series. I think they are finished with the first one, but there's supposed to be a whole series. (Ed. note: Three are now currently finished.)

• Aristotle Leads the Way
• Newton at the Center
• Einstein Adds a New Dimension

As for using one of the Sonlight Teacher Guides, sure, they can be useful. I haven't used one myself, but I looked the chemistry one over fairly closely one afternoon. It would make using Apologia a whole lot easier--especially when they so helpfully list the needed materials for the experiments each week.

I suspect that I'm not quite understanding what you mean by "supplementing" though. For that, I apologize. But to go on ... :-) ... my son did make a fuel cell car. That was pretty cool. It was for Chemistry.

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