Do Sparrows Like Bach?: The Strange and Wonderful Things that Are Discovered When Scientists Break Free
The editors at New Scientist magazine (Does Anything Eat Wasps?, 2005) are at it again, dredging up from the magazine’s archives stories that bring to life the wacky side of science and scientists. This time the organizing principle is the remarkable ingenuity shown by hard-working scientists, ingenuity that sometimes verges on, well, craziness. Think of this book as a science edition of the Darwin Awards, only (mostly) not so fatal: these are stories of hands-on research performed by dedicated, if often decidedly offbeat, individuals. Like the biologist who tried to use a remote-controlled miniature helicopter to capture freshly expelled whale snot; or the researchers who used models of turkeys to determine the “minimum stimulus it takes to excite a male turkey”; or the physician who tried to measure the weight of a human using a dying patient and a wooden beam; or the Italian fellow who told police he could determine a suspect’s guilt or innocence by examining his internal organs. A deeply fascinating and occasionally rib-tickling book. --David Pitt