'now, let's take a gulp of water from the tap - it is a pretty similar composition to the water inside our cells, so any movement of molecules through the membrane pretty much balances out.' This is so false it made my cells want to burst. Various hexaflourides and other weird things. carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds (greenhouse gases'. Talking about pollutants, the book states, '. Here is the litany of errors (that I spotted): But I wouldn't say this without being specific. These are statements in this book that I (a fellow lapsed scientist) or any number of experts could have caught and fixed, so it just seems sloppy. Finding a half-dozen full-on errors therefore pretty much ruins a book for me.

When I read science-related books (or any media where I know something about the topic) I rate my confidence on the new-to-me topics by how the book covers the topics I do know. The main problem I have are the truly troubling inaccuracies. I did like the style for the most part, and the structure was good enough. These are two of my absolute favorite topics in the whole wide world - science, and cities. I really expected to like this book, and learn a lot from it. This is her first book, written while living in her favorite city, London. She has worked at the National Physical Laboratory, specializing in functional materials and is an expert on thermoelectric energy harvesting, which involves using material science to capture and convert waste heat into electricity.

Laurie Winkless is a physicist with an undergraduate degree from Trinity College, Dublin, and a master's degree in space science from University College London. Uncovering the science and engineering that shapes our cities, Laurie Winkless reveals how technology will help us meet the challenges of a soaring world population-from an ever-increasing demand for power, water, and internet access, to simply how to get about in a megacity of tens of millions of people. SCIENCE AND THE CITY starts at your front door and guides you through the technology of everyday city life: how new approaches to building materials help to construct the tallest skyscrapers in Dubai, how New Yorkers use light to treat their drinking water, how Tokyo commuters' footsteps power gates in train stations. Can engineering provide the answer to a viable megacity future? Technological advances in fields as diverse as quantum mechanics, electronics, and nanotechnology are proving increasingly important to city life, and the urban world will turn to science to deliver solutions to the problems of the future more than 50 percent of the world's population now lives in cities, and that proportion is growing fast. Science is secretly at work behind the scenes of major cities of the world and will continue to be so.

Science and the City by Laurie Winkless