"A Short History of Nearly Everything" entry #4

pauthor: Bill Bryson; published: 2003 & 2004

Question being considered: what was the point of this book?

The plausible reasons why Bryson wrote this book are many and varied. One of the obvious reasons that Bryson wrote this book is because he must have an interest in science. Well, he must have either an interest in science or the history behind the development of science. This is just me but personally I find the history part more interesting but science?? I know its a huge part of our world today and all- but seriously. Another part I might consider is the psychology part behind it- Bryson's make-up behind it all. Not only would I consider that Bryson might've written this book out of interest in science and history in science but also because he must've had a curiosity in it all. This curiosity drove him to write a book about science and the history of science. Yet another possibility I'm considering is that some part of Bryson's personal history might've sparked Bryson's interest in writing this book- possibly some event that occurred between him and his dad or his mother. Perhaps something in Bryson's recent history caused him to write this book- maybe something with his wife or children (if he has them), an event that caused him to hark back to his days as a child when he used to read his science book just for the fun of it, to find out the scientific history of the world in which he lived. All of these possibilities as possible but perhaps even more possible, as from speaking from personal experience- lately whenever I go online I always see articles about various events occurring all over the world from the latest gossip about tv stars to scientific discoveries. Mostly, perhaps the only time science is even remotely interesting to the point where I'm driven madly curious by it, is when its in these articles (that and a tv show called "Mythbusters"). If my personal experience is like this then its a possibility that Bryson's experience could be similar- after all I check my e-mail on yahoo, which is where I often read such articles. Considering such numerous possibilities, I conclude that Bryson was driven to write this book through his curiosity of science and the history of science through some event his personal life, whether it be recent or have occurred some time during his childhood. This event drove him to write this book.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" entry #3

author: Bill Bryson; published: 2003& 2004

The book has strangely become ever more interesting and comical. Well, comical in a kind of dark way. This section is mostly about the workings of the earth, including chemistry. Probably one of the most horrific things described in this section is about a guy named Thomas Midgley, Jr. who discovered that lead could be used to stop the "knocking" of an engine. Unfortunately, he also helped to discover the many other uses of lead including sealing cans, water storage tanks, fruit pesticide, and even part of packaging in toothpaste tubes. It's unfortunate that he discovered these things let alone that it became widely used. Also the company that produced lead for consumer usage, tried everything within their power to keep people unaware of the poisoning effects of lead. Also in this section, Bryson goes into detail about the discovery of the building blocks of matter. Personally it was kind of boring until he started to talk about how scientists thought there might be other dimensions and how on the atomic level, all of the general rules of matter that we know about the bigger world are completely different on this level. Bryson also talks about astroid and their effects that they have and have had on the planet. Probably more comically, he also talks about how most geologists avoided a theory were originally there was land mass (also known as pangea) and that many times throughout history the continents have moved and spinned around almost like a top, and so to avoid this theory geologists came up with land-bridges to explain how ancient fossils of animals ended up across an ocean, or across an ocean but on the other side of the continent facing away from the continent that also contain the ancient fossil. Wow, this is probably the funniest part in that none of the geologists could prove that these land-bridges existed. Bryson also talks about how scientists tried to understand what could have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Scientists guessed that it was caused by a giant meteor and as a result looked for a crater that would have proven to be massive enough to wipe out most of the dinosaurs. Also Bryson talked about the earth and the discovery of tectonic plates, and the layers of the earth. I assume that this topic is probably more interesting to most scientists because scientist have yet to find out exactly what is in the center of the earth or how the different mantles interact.

On a different note about the topic of the book, I am finding it difficult to answer any of the suggested topic questions from the packet- mainly because my book doesn't have a main plot line nor does it have any main characters. The only time it follows any form of a story is when Bryson talks about how a certain scientist discovered something, how and the story behind how the scientist made the discovery. I think I should've come up with better questions on my own.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" entry #2

author: Bill Bryson, published: 2003 & 2004

Surprisingly, the pace of the book picked up quite a bit- or maybe its just that because the topic changed, it became a whole lot more interesting. The topic change was that Bryson started talking about more recent scientific undertakings, things that have occurred in the last 200 years or so. Overall, probably the most fascinating thing to me is the more recent history like when Bryson starts talking about how the atom was discovered and Einstein's theories. Besides those things, Bryson also talked about the discovery and naming of dinosaurs, how certain scientists interacted, the founding of chemistry, the modernization of chemistry, radiology, several different discoveries, and radioactivity among several other things. Overall I'm finding, Bryson's audience is probably people that are interested in science and its history, although I'm not too sure about this. I am not sure about this because there are times when he gets really detailed into explaining things, but there are also times that he simplifies things quite a bit to make it easier to understand, which implies that either the people reading this have a good bit of education in science or that they like science a lot but do not necessarily have a good education in science nor do the understand the basic principles of science. Bryson does write though as if he was sitting your living room, talking with you and telling you about the history of science and various funny stories that are related to science in some way or another. Because Bryson writes like this, it draws the reader into the text more.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" entry #1

author: Bill Bryson, published: 2003 and 2004

I chose this book because I have read a book by Bill Bryson before, "A Walk in the Woods" and found it utterly amusing and I was under the assumption that this book would be funny too. I expected the book to be slightly more brief and not so dry- but this book is proving to be sleep inducing despite the varying topics that have the possibility of being interesting. Some of the topics that Bryson talks about in themselves are interesting but overall he takes far too long to explain himself and therefore you forget the point that he's trying to make by the end of a chapter because he takes so long just to get to a point. Also what makes his writing even more confusing is that he doesn't always tell you the time period when he's talking about the topic of interest so as to give you an idea of the historical period. On the positive side though, Bryson writes the book in a perspective that makes you feel like as if you are there, and witnessing things as they occur (and that's when his points or his topics prove to be interesting) or that he knew the people that he talks about really well (when you know that he couldn't have known them- because they lived hundreds of years ago).

So far Bryson has been talking about various scientific topics such as stars, how they are formed, the circumference of our planet, the weight of our planet, the possibility of life, the contributions of various scientists throughout the lifetimes, the size of our solar system, the size of our galaxy, the topics that Bryson mentions are endless as well as extremely detailed. Whenever Bryson mentions a new topic, he always goes into detail about that topic no matter how trivial that topic maybe, true fully it's mind-boggling. Bryson does a good job though explaining and simplifying scientific topics extremely well, so I am under the assumption that Bryson is writing to an audience that doesn't normally read scientific texts or journals that go into the topic of interest extensively. Because Bryson writes this way, the topic of interest makes sense in that you know what he's talking about but because he sometimes goes into too much detail, you don't always realize or understand the point he's trying to make.