The number of atoms will freak you out!

I know nothing about science. Really. Nothing. If my daughter asks me about scientific phenomena of any kind, I usually say "Magic" the "ice cube fairies" and electricity comes "from Portland General Electric, and Mommy pays a pretty penny for it every month!"

I know a vague amount about geology, the science classes I took to satisfy my science requirement for my college degree, and the reason I took it was that everyone said it was the easiest science class and was called "rocks for jocks" - so, I thought, cool, an easy science class and cute athletes- sign me up! I thought the section on volcanos was very interesting, and I a little disturbed by the plate tectonics concept- we're floating around on a very unstable "crust" here people, and not only that-- the crust is either colliding or pulling apart. I find this aspect of our planet unsettling.

So, other than cool volcano footage from Hawaii and a vaguely upset feeling about living on "crust" I have no other science knowledge.

This is changing now because I'm reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"- which is all about great science information in a readable fashion for non-science people like yours truly. It really is a great book, plus I really love Bryson's tidbits about how, oh, how shall I say this- many great scientists are also bat-shit crazy! Like Sir Isaac Newton- clearly brilliant, but one of his experiments was to jam a needle used for sewing leather into his eye socket! You know, just to see what would happen! Which lead me to think, how does this happen, you're sitting around, maybe refining your thoughts on gravity and you see a big sewing needle, and think, hey, I what if I jam this in my eye?

Perhaps that is why Newton is a great scientist, and I am not...I'm unwilling to jam a needle in my eye in the interest of science or for any other reason. If I were in charge every natural phenomena would be described as magic or caused by tribes of fairies.

Much of the stuff in the book blows my mind. Like atoms. They are incredible, they are tiny and they are everything. I love the portion of the book where Bryson explains that atoms go on probably forever. When you die your atoms will break up and turn into something else, we may have little atoms in us from Ghengis Khan, Ben Franklin or any other long dead historical figure (Bryson disappoints when he reveals Elvis hasn't be dead long enough for us to have a few Elvis atoms)

I'm made of atoms and so are you and so is the chair I'm sitting on. I'm still freaking out over the atom thing, but in a good way.