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How it Works: How the Universe Works
Filed Under (Books) by admin on 03-09-2010
Tagged Under : Universe, Works
How it Works: How the Universe Works
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Customer Rating : List Price : $24.00
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How it Works: How the Universe Works Overviews
Here is an inspiring introduction to the planets, the stars, the solar system, the whole wide, wonderful Universe. Hundreds of exciting, instructive experiments that show how the Universe actually works using everyday materials. For ages 8-14.
How it Works: How the Universe Works RelateItems
- How the Earth Works (How It Works)
- How Nature Works: 100 Ways Parents & Kids Can Share the Secrets of Nature
- How the weather works (How It Works)
- Reader’s Digest ~ How Science Works
- How Things Work: 100 Ways Parents and Kids Can Share the Secrets of Technology
How it Works: How the Universe Works CustomerReview
It was very hard to rate the books in this series, How the Universe included. In many ways, the book is excellent. The concepts and information are presented clearly and accurately, often in much more detail than usual in late elementary/early middle school. This series is produced by Dorling Kindersley, and though the organization is different (two-page spreads but with illustrated “experiments” and explanations rather that lots of picture-factoids), a flavor of the Eyewitness books remains.
HOWEVER, there are no experiments in this book. There are projects and demonstrations, but not one experiment. About 1/3rd to 1/4th of the activities are written as demonstrations that could be make into experiments with an adult’s guidence so that a child is led to hypothesis and to test his hypothesis through experimentation, but as written, none of the activities can qualify. The remaining activities are either demonstrations that can’t be easily turned into experiments or are simply projects, like making a telescope or a sundial. Some of the activities are also made ridiculously complicated and lengthy for the amount that a student would get out of it. For example, instead of sticking a sticker on a ball and turning the ball in the dark while illumated with a flashlight to show how day and night works, the child skewers a rubber ball to make an axis, uses two pieces of posterboard to place the axis at the exact right angle, paints the ball like the earth, puts a pin where he lives, and FINALLY, after several hours, uses a lamp to demonstrate something that without all the cutesy overhead would take less than a minute. Sure, you have a neat little globe as a result, but you just spent several lesson times on an activity that should have been a fraction of a lesson! The learning from the activity doesn’t justify the time spent on it. Not every activity has this problem, but enough do that the overall effect is to lower the quality of the book.
Quite simply, this book would be a great resource for a flexible, knowledgable homeschool or institutional school teacher, but its educational usefulness exactly as it is written is limited by its flaws. On the basis of its flaws, I would give it a 2, but because of its great usefulness for the knowledgable user, I’d give it a 5. A 4 is a compromise.
The main topics in this book are:
Spaceship Earth
The Moon
The Solar System
The Sun
The Stars
The Cosmos
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