Charlie McDonnell - Fun Science: A Guide to Life, the Universe and Why Science Is So Awesome

For Mum,

the inspiration behind my first Fun Science video.
(Thanks for the great genes.)

*Charlie McDonnell does not take responsibility for any existential crises that this book may cause. The universe is a big, big place man its not his fault if it makes you feel insignificant.

Publishing Director Sarah Lavelle

Junior Commissioning Editor Romilly Morgan

Creative Director Helen Lewis

Design & Photography Dave Brown, apeinc.co.uk

Illustration Fran Meneses

Design Assistant Gemma Hayden

Cover Illustration Ivana Zorn

Production Tom Moore, Vincent Smith

First published in 2016 by

Quadrille Publishing

Pentagon House

5254 Southwark Street

London SE1 1UN

www.quadrille.co.uk

www.quadrille.com

Quadrille is an imprint of Hardie Grant

www.hardiegrant.com.au

Text Charlie McDonnell 2016

Design and Layout Quadrille Publishing 2016

All illustrations Fran Meneses 2016 with exception of images; Ivana Zorn

All photography Ape Inc. Ltd 2016 with exception of pages; 17 NASA/JPL Caltech/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; 39 NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; 90 iStock.com/alexeys; 96 NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; 256 NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team).

The rights of Charlie McDonnell have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.

Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 978 184949 931 6

CONTENTS

Hello! I'm Charlie, and before we get started I need to be honest with you:

I AM NOT A SCIENTIST.

Right now youre in a bookstore, or youve dipped into the preview pages of this book online, or maybe youve already bought Fun Science, and youre only now remembering that this Charlie McDonnell guy is ultimately just another YouTuber with a book deal, and how much can he really teach you about science given that his major scientific qualifications are the As he got in his school exams.

Basically, youre judging me and I get it. I really do. Because ultimately youre only judging me because Im judging me, and youre just a person who exists inside my head (which means youre judgemental of me by default).

HOWEVER, this is supposed to be a science book

Before I attempt to make my case as to why I think non-scientists can be just as good (if not possibly better maybe very maybe) at sharing the best and most interesting scientific knowledge with the world, let me get you in the mood for some learning by answering one, seemingly very simple question:

WHAT IS SCIENCE?

Before we go any further, just take a moment to try and answer that question. If youre already well-versed in the wonders of science then its probably a pretty easy one for you, but if your interest in the topic is still relatively new you might find it slightly harder than youd expect.

And please, dont Google it. RESIST. Just for a moment

So, have you got an answer in your head? Well, if youre anything like I was in my I guess science is fine or whatever years, then you might respond like this: science is simply another group of things that you had to learn in order to not be in school anymore.

When I thought of science, I used to think of it as a subject. It was a means to a grade, another lesson in my timetable. It was an opportunity to see something blow up and then usually forget what it was I was meant to have learnt from the explosion. It was a time to nervously file away as much information as I could in case, god forbid, my biology teacher decided to pick on me for an answer, so that I didnt embarrass myself (at least in class). Well, either it was just a subject, or it was that thing that I heard about in the news something that other, smarter people made significant breakthroughs in within their area of the field.

And sadly, to many people, this is all science ever is to them. At least, thats my hunch. To be honest, I wasnt entirely sure of how the majority of people perceived science. So, instead of just trying to pass off my hunch as a fact, I did a bit of my own research by asking you guys!

Over 500 people, if youre interested.

Once upon a time I had planned to make a video on this very topic: What is science?, so I decided to ask my online audience that very question. Of all the answers I received, one response that came up time and time again was something along the lines of what @anonymous1 said:

Science is a boring subject which I am forced to suffer through at school.

In a sense, @anonymous1, youre not entirely wrong. The beauty of language is that words mean what we choose them to mean. So, if science is just a subject to you, then youre ultimately right. Like you, there were also many times when the science I learnt at school seemed to be incredibly boring and uninspiring (for whatever reason). I only really started to develop a passion for science after Id left school and started teaching myself about it.

But the definition I was searching for, the dictionary definition of science, is much more inspiring. Heres another answer from @anonymous2:

Science is a way of looking at and explaining our world. Trying to explain HOW things happen. Science is continually evolving with new theories created all the time, through never-ending trial and error and methodical experimenting.

Frankly, I couldnt have put it better myself! (Although I am now, of course, going to try to do just that.)

What @anonymous2 was describing is science as a method for figuring out how the world works, and as the body of all knowledge obtained from this very particular method.

Its a shame then that when you think of the scientific method, you might end up picturing something like this:

OBSERVATION

HYPOTHESIS

EXPERIMENT

ANALYSIS

CONCLUSION

Five words which, in that particular order, inspire an acute sense of boredom and exhaustion (in me at least!). If counting sheep doesnt do it for you, reading those words over and over again should undoubtedly do the trick.

But that feeling of boredom arises because we were taught to use these words in a certain way. To many, theyre not a guide to learning how the world works theyre a checklist of work we have to do in order to pass a class! Which means that, really, we need to change our attitude towards them.

We need some new words. How about: