The Story of Science: Newton at the Center

I had all three books of the set a few years ago. And I give this second one Newton at the Center to my nephew when he was in high school. Now, I bought this one again to complete the set. I like the style of telling stories of the history of science. The history of science, or any history, may be a little boring and intimidating if laid out according to the timeline. Organized in stories of reasonable lengths and around famous people or events, the seemingly boring history becomes intriguing. This second book of the set is closely related what I learn from school, especially the classic physics and chemistry. That was a gold age of knowledge explosion about our world, nature, and universe. Reading this book connect the pieces of what we learn into a unified and logical system. The specific formulas are easily forgotten, but the stories of who, how, and why of those scientific discoveries may stick for longer. A good book set for students and adults as well.

I love, love, love this book and this series. I'm taking a couple of years off to home school my daughter and I am just floored by how fabulous this book is at every turn. I hold two degrees from MIT and I so wish I had had this class before I went. I teach a weekly class with 3 other home school kids and they love it. We are using the Johns Hopkins workbooks as well. In my class of 5th through 7th graders, we just finished the Law of Universal Gravitation and they all mastered the difficult concepts very easily. The book uses the history of science to build the concepts up over time. So Newtons work just seemed to flow naturally from Descartes and Galileo. And the historical narrative really makes all the science memorable. The stories really show us the people and their times. I was a little concerned about using a secular book for a Christian-based home school. But, I have been pleasantly surprised. Joy Hakim doesn't shy away from the religious controversy. I was surprised to learn that John Calvin spoke out against Copernicus, citing Psalms, "He has established the earth so that it shall not be moved." But I was equally surprised to learn that Copernicus, Galileo and Newton were all deeply committed to their faith. Because the book presents these things as historical facts, I think that both religious people and atheists can use this book to explore their beliefs and how they mesh with scientific inquiry. I wish we could get this entire series into the hands of every kid in this country. Well done, Joy Hakim! Can't wait for the biology text to come out.

I can't sing Hakim's praises enough - from her History of US series to the The Story of Science, all three volumes so far. I've been an avid science fan my whole life, but not a hard science major, and I gasped all the way through these books as I learned things I never knew, but thought I'd known, or finally understood things I'd known about but that had puzzled me. Get over the "distracting" sidebars - they didn't bother me at all and they were full of great stuff. I ate these books up and I was only reading them to preview for my homeschooler who hates math and is bored by science, but loves history. Joy Hakim has a wonderful ability to take a huge subject (all of US history, for instance, and the development and progress of scientific thought in this case) and make it manageable, new and a fun read. My daughter is discovering that science and math really are amazing and play a critical, pivotal role in the unfolding of human history.

We are using this book for our Charlotte Mason cottage school science curriculum this year. My mind is blown with how beautifully it is written! I wish so badly I could have experienced a science book like this when I was younger!!! Maybe I would have been more interested in the subject!

We have the 3 volumes and my 10 year old loved them. This is the second volume and what I like the most about these books is that it brings in the whole picture. Much of typical science teaching is the nuts and bolts of what was discovered and how it applies to life now. But this book gives the perspective. Who discovered this first and why did or didn't it see the light of day? What mistakes were made as people were trying to understand different concepts? What it did for my daughter was give her the human perspective. Sometimes society is not ready to support pure science, sometimes inventions are accidental. But in all, it wasn't like these scientists said "poof" and now I know something that's in your textbook. A human who lived a life in a certain time period where the culture had these beliefs was able to come up with this concept. Awesome for kids who want an example of how learning takes place in the great thinkers.

I love the way Hakim weaves in history and personal stories and purchased all three books! In my opinion does a better job than Tiner's series. Can't comment on Bauer's series as they came out later than Hakim's and I'm not familiar with them. The reason I didn't rate these books 5 stars are because the pages are too busy with information snippets - may be hard for many readers to stay with the main reading. Also, please be aware that even though the title is "The Story of Science" is doesn't cover biological and earth sciences so it really isn't the "full" story of science. I used traditional approach for homeschooling middle school aged children and these 3 books worked really well as my science spine, supplementing with the library, YouTube and other resource. Even though I'm done with homeschooling, have retained these books in my library as they are still fun to pick up and read. My sister who recently visited with her elementary kids picked it up and read some of the stories with her kids before bed. Given the way the book is constructed - might be good for a waiting room environment or bathroom reading.

Joy Hakim is very knowledgable, not only of how science works, but also the way in which people learn best - through stories. There is not a great deal of straight science content in this book, but it certainly is a fantastic learning tool to help remember people and scientific pedagogy. This text makes science history seem real and fresh, with the added bonus of literature and historical and mathematical factoids that connect science to the larger scope of knowledge and education.

This is a science book written by Joy Hakim that contains numerous charts, maps, diagrams, and loads of illustrations. Hakim is an excellent author for young readers that invites the student to meet the forefathers of science in a very interesting way. She goes far beyond bland scientific data, and is quite relevant to curious minds of all ages. Highly recommended.