
The Spinning Magnet
Description
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Alanna Mitchell's globe-trotting history of the science of electromagnetism and the Earth's magnetic field--right up to the latest indications that the North and South Poles may soon reverse, with apocalyptic results--will soon change the way you think about our planet.
Award-winning journalist Alanna Mitchell's science storytelling introduce intriguing characters--from the thirteenth-century French investigations into magnetism and the Victorian-era discover that electricity and magnetism emerge from the same fundamental force to the latest research. No one has ever told so eloquently how the Earth itself came to be seen as a magnet, spinning in space with two poles, and that those poles have dramatically reversed many time, often coinciding with mass extinctions. The most recent reversal was 780,000 years ago.
Mitchell explores indications that the Earth's magnetic force field is decaying faster than previously thought. When the poles switch, a process that takes many years, the Earth is unprotected from solar radiation storms that would, among other disturbances, wipe out much and possible all of our electromagnetic technology. Navigation for all kinds of animals is disrupted without a stable, magnetic North Pole. But can you imagine no satellites, no Internet, no smartphones--maybe no power grids at all?
Alanna Mitchell offers a beautifully crafted narrative history of surprising ideas and science, illuminating invisible parts of our own planet that are constantly changing around us.
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Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface | Playing with the Universe
- Part I | Magnet
- Chapter 1 | The Beginnings of Things
- Chapter 2 | The Unpaired Spinning Electron
- Chapter 3 | Parking in the Shadow of Magnetism's Forgotten Man
- Chapter 4 | Into Whose Embrace Iron Leaps
- Chapter 5 | Revolutions on Paper
- Chapter 6 | The Earth's Magnetic Soul
- Chapter 7 | Voyage into the Underworld
- Chapter 8 | The Greatest Scientific Undertaking the World Had Ever Seen
- Chapter 9 | The Rock That Turned the World Upside Down
- Part II | Current
- Chapter 10 | Experiment in Copenhagen
- Chapter 11 | A Very Intimate Relationship
- Chapter 12 | Jars Full of Lightning
- Chapter 13 | The Apothecary's Son
- Chapter 14 | The Bookbinder's Apprentice
- Chapter 15 | Magnets Making Currents
- Chapter 16 | The Lines That Fill the Air
- Part III | Core
- Chapter 17 | The Contorting Gyre
- Chapter 18 | Shocks Inside the Earth
- Chapter 19 | Pharaohs, Fairies, and a Tar-Paper Shack
- Chapter 20 | Zebra Skins Under the Sea
- Chapter 21 | At the Outer Edge of the Dynamo
- Chapter 22 | Anomaly to the South
- Chapter 23 | The Worst Physics Movie Ever
- Chapter 24 | The Great Hazardous Spinning Sphere of Sodium
- Part IV | Switch
- Chapter 25 | Looking Up
- Chapter 26 | Horrors the Lights Foretold
- Chapter 27 | Lethal Patches
- Chapter 28 | The Cost of Catastrophe
- Chapter 29 | Trout Noses and Pigeon Beaks
- Chapter 30 | A Suit of Stiff Black Crayon
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- About the Author
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