Chasing Science: Science as a Spectator Sport

by Frederik Pohl

Join science fiction master Frederik Pohl as he takes readers on a wonder-filled non-fictional journey from the ends of the earth to the edges of the universe. Part memoir, part travel guide, and part science primer, Chasing Science is Pohl's way of sharing the thrills and excitement of his life-long love affair with science. With the skill and storytelling zest that has made his award-winning science fiction popular the world over, Pohl brings to readers of Chasing Science all the excitement and fun that he's had throughout his life, as he has observed first-hand the process of scientific discovery. From tours of museums and national laboratories to a journey into the heart of a volcano, Pohl shows readers of all ages how and where they can experience the thrill of seeing various kinds of science, up close and personal.

This book is a perfect item for visitors to any of the several hundred hands-on science museums--like The Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Field Museum in Chicago, and others--across the country, a complete list of which appears as an appendix.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Travel

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun easy read of popular science. I almost didn't finish, because the first couple of chapters are pretty basic and frankly kind of boring if you already have some kind of background in science. But it was worth it to get to the mind-blowing story about the Italian neutrino detector.

So neutrinos are super small subatomic particles. They are abundant but so small they actually pass through the empty space that is most matter (passing easily through billions of atoms without actually hitting their nuclei or electrons) and are therefore really hard to detect. But every once in awhile, by random chance, they will run right into another subatomic particle, and that collision can be detected by scientists. The problem is, it's really hard to pick out that effect from the background noise of all the other stuff going on at the earth's surface. So in order to detect neutrinos, scientists build neutrino detectors deep underground.

There was a group of Italian scientists who convinced their government to let them mooch off of the hard work of the department of transportation, which was at that time digging a tunnel through a mountain. Once you are already in the middle of the mountain, it's relatively easy to just dig a little side tunnel for your neutrino detector. But the mountain was made of granite, which emits its own radiation and could interfere with their experiments. The solution here was to line their underground chamber with lead...but lead is also radioactive, as a result of lying around on the Earth's surface picking up cosmic rays.

But serendipity! It just so happened that archeologists around that time had just discovered an ancient shipwreck. Ancient as in a trading ship that settled at the bottom of the Mediterranean a century before Christ loaded with 2,000 year old lead ingots. They'd had enough time down there to shed their cosmic-ray induced radioactivity without picking up any more.

So the 2,000 year old lead ingots were salvaged for use in a high tech cutting edge 20th century subatmoic particle detection instrument.

God I love science.

So even if you're already something of a science buff, you may just come across some cool stories in this book, which also delves into telescopes, space exploration, volcanic activity, and more in a vast overview of the sheer awesome that is science.

[Booknerd Fraser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting as a guidebook to science and the natural world. A bit simplistic in its tone, but fine for those unfamiliar with the topics. Only encountered one or two real errors (the space shuttle did not land at the deserts of Vandenberg. That's on the coast. Edwards is the one in the desert).

[Elar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good introductory and overview piece to get reader thinking about scientific research and development of technology.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

According to my 2001 booklog, this one was "C/DNF, disappointing, rudimentary, dull." I recall being surprised at how poor a book it was.