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Magic To Mindfulness - A Pathway Into Science
Patricia Berwick

2020 Milton Books
ISBN 9798690136697
130 pages. Soft Cover.

Purchasing Details.
Amazon

My Comments on This Book
   The author is an anthropologist and an educator, whose first three books are novels. Her aim for this book is "to encourage young people to enter science with open minds and to enjoy the process." The book gives the life story of 9 famous scientists, of whom Rutherford is the final one and his section covers pages 100-115. She is the first author to send her draft to me for comments prior to publication and is to be commended for this. It is a pity the final draft was not sent as well. In that case, the next section would have been empty.

   A second edition has corrected almost all of these errors. Rutherford pages are now 94-109.
   One advantage of a printed-on-demand book is that these can be easily corrected. A 3rd edition now has the following section at zero. It is included just for those purchasers of ealier editions.

   Most pages have two cartoon boxes in which a butterfly asks questions concerning Rutherford and a bee responds.

Errors Noted (First Edition).
p 100 Rutherford went to England in 1895.
p 102 Typo. "blasting powder".
p 105 The implication is Rutherford went to Cambridge because he didn't like London but London is where his ship landed and he indicated in his application to the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Science Research Scholarship he planned to go to Cambridge because that is where JJ Thomson, who had written one of the text books Rutherford had used during his researches, was.
p107 Rutherford first meet Marie Curie in 1903, when he was in Canada. His old colleague from Cambridge days, Paul Langevin, threw a dinner in honour of Marie getting her doctorate. This coincidentally occurred when the Rutherford's were visiting Paris.
p108 Top Illustration. A full stop is about 0.5mm across so has about 50,000 atoms across it, not "several".
p110 re the Nobel Prize. - "so I was back in England for some time". The award was given in Dec 1908 but nominations had to be in by the end of Jan 1908. JJ Thomson's nomination of Rutherford arrived after that date so the Nobel committee had to use John Cox's late nomination of Feb 1907. His award was for work done up until Jan 1908 so was essentially for his work carried out in Canada and the nominator was from Canada. Because he was in Britain at the time of the award he is listed as a British winner.
p 111 Top Illustration. Rutherford died in 1937 so any memorials had to wait until well after the end of World War II (1939-45).
p 112 When the USA entered into WW1 (1914-1918) in 1917, Rutherford advised the US government to not waste scientific men in the trenches but to use them on scientific work associated with the war. The USA, being a democracy, declined.
p 113 Daughter Eileen had 4 children. She died two weeks after giving birth to the 4th.
p 114 "It was a stunning year for him". Best specify 1932, as the implication is given that it was still 1930.

Errors Noted (Second Edition).
p 100 Fig 12 Rutherford went to England in 1895.
p 101 Delete "in Canada and later".
p 105-6 Rutherford was knighted in the New Year's honours list for 1914. War was declared the following August.
p 110 Delete "so I was back in England for some time." Replace with "for work I had done in Canada."

Reviews
   Not known at this stage.

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