Horrible Science Books

Here's the table of contents from Chemical Chaos:

Introduction
Chaotic chemists
Chaotic kitchen chemistry
Squeaky cleaners
Dubious discoveries
Awesome atoms
Elementary chaos
Chaotic chemical changes
It's a gas!
Marvelous murderous metals
Rotten reactions
Appalling acids
Crucial crystals
Bangs and burning
Chemical chaos?

I really do like these books.  Here's an interesting tidbit from Chemical Chaos that shows why:  "Lead is dangerous.  Sixteenth-century ladies used white lead face powder to improve their complexions. After a few years the poison ruined their skin--it absorbed the lead and gave them blood poisoning.  But the ladies didn't know why their skin was ruined so they used extra lead to cover up the damage!"  Wow!  Here's another:  "Alginic (al-jin-ick) acid is found in seaweed.  It's useful for keeping cakes moist and when added to bandages helps to stop bleeding!  It's even used in ice-cream to stop the ingredients separating.  You can amuse your friends by telling them their ice-cream started off as seaweed!"  Information like that makes science interesting!  These are so much better than some of the dry textbooks that I used to have to read when I was in school.  I can barely remember anything about science from all years at school.  I'm not saying, "Throw out textbooks."  I'm saying that books like this are great for students because they show students that science is truly interesting and amazing!

While these books appear, at first glance, to be quiz/comic/joke books, they're really full of important and useful information that is also found in regular textbooks.  Nasty Nature, while full of humor and comics, also discusses such topics as Carl Linnaeus, class, family, genus, species, coelenterates, echinoderms, crustacea, arachnids, fish, amphibia, mammals, birds, bacteria, flagellate, amoebae, ciliates, Charles Waterton, Karl Van Frisch, animal communication, Charles Darwin, migration, parasites, animal defenses, food webs, and more.  So, while the books appear to be silly, they can be taken quite seriously!

You can buy all these books from Amazon.com at a discount!  I think they're worth a try--I'd check one out and see if you like their style or not.  My son is glad I did.