Do Elephants Have Knees? PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Do Elephants Have Knees? PDF full book. Access full book title Do Elephants Have Knees? by Charles R. Ault. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Charles R. Ault
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706411
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thinking whimsically makes serious science accessible. That’s a message that should be taken to heart by all readers who want to learn about evolution. Do Elephants Have Knees? invites readers into serious appreciation of Darwinian histories by deploying the playful thinking found in children’s books. Charles R. Ault Jr. weds children’s literature to recent research in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Inquiring into the origin of origins stories, Ault presents three portraits of Charles Darwin—curious child, twentysomething adventurer, and elderly worm scientist. Essays focusing on the origins of tetrapods, elephants, whales, and birds explain fundamental Darwinian concepts (natural selection, for example) with examples of fossil history and comparative anatomy. The imagery of the children’s story offers a way to remember and recreate scientific discoveries. By juxtaposing Darwin’s science with tales for children, Do Elephants Have Knees? underscores the importance of whimsical storytelling to the accomplishment of serious thinking. Charles Darwin mused about duck beaks and swimming bears as he imagined a pathway for the origin of baleen. A "bearduck" chimera may be a stretch, but the science linking not just cows but also whales to moose through shared ancestry has great merit. Teaching about shared ancestry may begin with attention to Bernard Wiseman’s Morris the Moose. Morris believes that cows and deer are fine examples of moose because they all have four legs and things on their heads. No whale antlers are known, but fossils of four-legged whales are. By calling attention to surprising and serendipitous echoes between children’s stories and challenging science, Ault demonstrates how playful thinking opens the doors to an understanding of evolutionary thought.
Author: Charles R. Ault
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706411
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thinking whimsically makes serious science accessible. That’s a message that should be taken to heart by all readers who want to learn about evolution. Do Elephants Have Knees? invites readers into serious appreciation of Darwinian histories by deploying the playful thinking found in children’s books. Charles R. Ault Jr. weds children’s literature to recent research in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Inquiring into the origin of origins stories, Ault presents three portraits of Charles Darwin—curious child, twentysomething adventurer, and elderly worm scientist. Essays focusing on the origins of tetrapods, elephants, whales, and birds explain fundamental Darwinian concepts (natural selection, for example) with examples of fossil history and comparative anatomy. The imagery of the children’s story offers a way to remember and recreate scientific discoveries. By juxtaposing Darwin’s science with tales for children, Do Elephants Have Knees? underscores the importance of whimsical storytelling to the accomplishment of serious thinking. Charles Darwin mused about duck beaks and swimming bears as he imagined a pathway for the origin of baleen. A "bearduck" chimera may be a stretch, but the science linking not just cows but also whales to moose through shared ancestry has great merit. Teaching about shared ancestry may begin with attention to Bernard Wiseman’s Morris the Moose. Morris believes that cows and deer are fine examples of moose because they all have four legs and things on their heads. No whale antlers are known, but fossils of four-legged whales are. By calling attention to surprising and serendipitous echoes between children’s stories and challenging science, Ault demonstrates how playful thinking opens the doors to an understanding of evolutionary thought.
Author: Chris Lavers
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312303335
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why Elephants Have Big Ears is the result of one man's lifelong quest to understand why the creatures of the earth appear and act as they do. In a wry manner and personal tone, Chris Lavers explores and solves some of nature's most challenging evolutionary mysteries, such as why birds are small and plentiful, why rivers and lakes are dominated by the few remaining large reptiles, why most of the large land-dwellers are mammals, and many more.
Author: Cynthia J. Moss
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226542238
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Get Book Here
Book Description
Elephants have fascinated humans for millennia. Aristotle wrote of them with awe and Hannibal used them in warfare. This book is the summation of what's been learned from the Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) - the longest continuously running elephant research project in the world.
Author: David Feldman
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780060740917
Category : Games
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book Here
Book Description
Ponder, if you will What happens to your Social Security number when you die? Why are peanuts listed as an ingredient in plain M&Ms? Why is Barbie's hair made out of nylon, but Ken's hair is plastic? What makes up the ever-mysterious "new-car smell"? Pop-culture guru David Feldman demystifies these topics and so much more in Do Penguins Have Knees? -- the unchallenged source of answers to civilization's most perplexing questions. Part of the Imponderables® series, Do Penguins Have Knees? arms readers with the knowledge about everyday life that encyclopedias, dictionaries, and almanacs just don't have. And think about it, where else are you going to get to the bottom of how beer was kept cold in the Old West?
Author: Paul Heiney
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752474200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Get Book Here
Book Description
What is ear wax for? Do bacteria have sex? How do they put stripes in toothpaste? Does your nose run in space? What are stars made of? This book answers those tantalising or perplexing questions for which you thought you'd never find an answer. A book for the naturally curious, as well as those seekers after scientific truths, it unravels both those things we take for granted, such as when you boil an egg, why does the yolk stay in the middle, or why is the sky blue, as well as questions which probe deeply, such as, what does an atom look like, or what was there before the beginning of time? if you were to write in the dust on the moon, how big would the letters have to be so you could see them from earth without a telescope? Drawing on the expertise of a team of enthusiastic scientists around the world, authoritative, entertaining, and often a touch humorous, it will appeal to anyone who's ever been curious about life on earth.
Author: John Sutherland
Publisher: Aurum
ISBN: 178131246X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Get Book Here
Book Description
Born in 1861 in French Sudan, imported to Paris as a two year old calf, then later sold to the London Zoo at Regent's Park, Jumbo the elephant delighted countless children (including Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt) with rides and treats gently taken from outstretched hands. Each night, after the children and their families had gone home, he was mistreated in an attempt to keep him docile. By the time he reached sexual maturity, the abused and isolated animal had become dangerously unstable. He was sold to showman P.T. Barnum in 1881 (despite letters from 100,000 British schoolchildren who wrote to Queen Victoria begging her to prevent the sale) and brought to America. There, in the company of other elephants and amid greater physical freedom, Jumbo stabilized and went on to become one of the most lucrative circus acts of all time - as well as the most beloved. The world mourned when his life ended in 1885, with a storied (and most likely embellished) act of animal heroism. Jumbo reportedly rushed in front of an oncoming train in an effort to save a smaller elephant – his companion "Tom Thumb" – then perished while reaching his trunk out toward his longtime handler Matthew Scott – whose intense connection with the pachyderm spawned legends of its own. Integrating the history of elephants in captivity along with the details of Jumbo's celebrity life, dramatic death, and lasting cultural legacy, John Sutherland has written the first comprehensive "biography" of this incredible animal - one whose name has given us one of our most common and hyperbolic adjectives.
Author: Patricia Thomas
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0688093388
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Get Book Here
Book Description
All the animals are in a panic. The elephant's sneeze would blow the monkeys out of the trees, the feathers off the birds, the stripes off the zebra. Even the fish and the fly, the crocodile and the kangaroo, know what a catastrophe that sneeze would be. "Please don't sneeze!" they beg. . . . The classic story of an enormous sneeze in the marking, told in sprightly nonsense verse, has been newly illustrated in full color to delight a new generation of fans.
Author: Jeanne Willis
Publisher: Andersen Press USA
ISBN: 1467779458
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Get Book Here
Book Description
When the other baby animals laugh at Elephant for not being able to jump, he sets out to prove them wrong. Hard as he tries, he just can't jump. But then he realizes that he can do something else that no other animal can do . . .
Author: Gary Kissick
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448135400
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Get Book Here
Book Description
'Her name was Felicia, a name Cullen liked. He wondered as he sipped his beer, what ancestral dance had produced such impish racoon eyes -eyes she was fond of hiding behind oversized sunglasses that only served to emphasise her nose, a perfect minature. And what, he wondered, might be the genealogy of that wickedly sullen mouth?' Cullen Kinnell, precariously employed by a small Catholic college in Honolulu, commits a fatal error. He falls for one of his students -Felicia Mattos. Cullen Kinnell is an intelligent man and old enough to know better than to play with fire. Gary Kissick's witty and richly expressive first novel explores how unsuitable love can cause an eruption of conflicting emotions, from which no one emerges unscathed.
Author: Charles R. Ault
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475859988
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book Here
Book Description
Beyond Science Standards captures a vision of science education both whimsical and serious. Ranging across examples from elementary to university level classrooms and grounded in philosophy and history, the stories address dimensions beyond the realm of bureaucratic standards. Its thesis brings into question the premise of scientific unity and its representation in school as notions of method, process, nature, and practice. Schools, no less than the sciences, profit from playful exploration—of musical instruments in fourth grade physical science, for example, and hotel lobby decorative rock in a college geology course. Aesthetic expression permeates geologic interpretation and evolutionary insight—in depicting dentition, for instance, in the history of the horse family and linking this history to changing landscapes. Participating in collecting local, high altitude weather data enhances trust in climate science, especially when the observations benefit the local farming community. Allied with historical examples of the conduct of science, Beyond Science Standards offers the reader inspiring stories of science teaching, varying from place to place, time to time, discipline to discipline, and purpose to purpose.
