Now well-established in the Christmas market, the latest in the New Scientist series of Science puzzles and trivia. As a concept it never seems to stale, due to the fact that these are readers’ queries and readers’ answers – and a genuinely questing readership it is – concerned as much with rats catching bubonic plague as horses getting travel sick.

Like for Like Reading
How to Fossilise Your Hamster & Other Amazing Experiments for the Armchair Scientist, Mick O’Hare
Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Questions, New Scientist

Synopsis

What's the storage capacity of the human brain in gigabytes? What's the farthest point on land from the sea? Why is frozen milk yellow? And why do flamingos stand on one leg? Why Can't Elephants Jump? is the latest (and the fourth) compilation of readers' answers to the questions in the Last Word column of New Scientist . The eagerly awaited successor to Does Anything Eat Wasps? (2005), Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? (2006) and Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? (2008), this is another fine collection of wise and witty answers. Yet again, some of the toughest-seeming puzzles are very simply explained - while some of the questions that seem the simplest turn out to be anything but. New Scientist 's Last Word is regularly voted the magazine's most popular section. This all-new selection again presents popular science at its most enjoyable, entertaining and enlightening. And the answer to the question? It is not that elephants are too large or heavy (hippos and rhinos can play hopscotch) - it is their knees which face the wrong way...all explained with wit and clarity in the book.

About the Author

Established in 1956, New Scientist is the world’s No. 1 science and technology magazine. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation