The Elements
Theodore Gray, Murdoch Books, $35.00
Theodore Gray spent 5 years photographing every known element in its pure form to produce his striking take on the periodic table. Released in 2009, his collection of images of elements under extreme conditions, such as liquid oxygen at –183°C, has spawned various spinoffs.
After a photographic card deck and a smartphone app, Gray has now released a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (RRP $24.95). Besides its beauty, the puzzle is a way to get children interested in chemistry and for students to learn the periodic table in an enjoyable way.
*****
Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future
John MacCormick, Princeton University Press, $39.95
If you have no capacity for computer programming, but feel you ought to know something about how the devices that are changing our world work, this book may be a place to start. John MacCormick is a professor of computer science at Dickinson College, and describes in lay language the methods that make data compression and page ranking possible.
*****
Capturing the Essence: Techniques for Bird Artists
William T. Cooper, CSIRO Publishing, $34.95
William Cooper is responsible for some of the astonishing paintings of birds that adorn ornithologists’ field...
