Moments in Science

The stage was set for a showdown: Man v. Machine. On March 9, 2016, the AlphaGo artificial intelligence computer program played the board game, GO, against the world champion, Lee Sedol. The Game: Go is the oldest board game in the world. Games are perfect tests for A.I because they keep score. It's easy to see when the A.I. is improving. The Man: Korean Lee Sedol was the world‚ Äs top Go player. He expected to win all five games of the match. Could the A.I. teach him anything? The Machine: Developed in 2014, AlphaGo was a computer artificial intelligence program designed to play Go by using deep learning to recognize patterns in the game. It had already beaten the European champion. Could it defeat Sedol? The exciting historic meeting of minds unfolded across five difficult games. This story introduces concepts of artificial intelligence and helps kids understand the challenges and the promise of working with A.I.

People were dying! Malaria is a deadly mosquito-borne disease that causes fevers, chills and often death. In 1969, the People’s Republic of China created a task force to find a cure. Working in the 1970s, Chinese scientist Tu Youyou reviewed the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) scrolls for ideas on where to start her research. She found 640 traditional treatments, and methodically started extracting compounds and testing them against malaria. Would any of them work? Courage, resilience, and perseverance—follow the struggles of Nobel Prize scientist Tu Youyou as she works to find a cure to malaria.

WHAT MAKES A CANDLE BURN? Solid wax is somehow changed into light and heat. But how? Travel back in time to December 28, 1848 in London, England to one of the most famous juvenile science Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution. British scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) encouraged kids to carefully observe a candle and to try to figure out how it burned. Known as one of the best science experimenters ever, Faraday's passion was always to answer the basic questions of science: What is the cause? Why does it occur?" Since Faraday's lecture, The Chemical History of a Candle," was published in 1861, it's never been out of print. Oddly, till now, it's never been published as a children's picture book. Faraday originally gave seven lectures on how a candle burns. Pattison has adapted the first 6000-word lecture to about 650 words for modern elementary students.

Sound and Sound Waves What if your science experiments were so interesting that even an Emperor wanted to know more? In 1806, scientist Ernst Chladni (KLOD-nee) left Germany for a three-year road trip, entertaining Europeans with his science. He made wires, columns of air, and solids vibrate. He wrote about this in his native German language, but his French scientist friends wanted to read about it in French. How could he get the cash he needed to write his new book? In February 1809, Chladni's friends took him to the Tuliere Palace. This elementary science picture book dramatizes the exciting meeting between a German scientist and French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Like Bill Nye, the Science Guy today, Chladni popularized science. But during his work as an entertainer, he struggled to find the time and finances to do actual research. This story provides a glimpse at the life of Ernst Chladni, the Father of Acoustics. It's an amazing example of how scientists collaborate internationally. The story is based on Chladni's own description of the event.

In 1915, British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington was fascinated with Einsteins new theory of general relativity. The theory talks about how forces push and pull objects in space. Einstein said that the sun's gravity could pull and bend light. To test this, astronomers decided to photograph a solar eclipse. The eclipse would allow them to photograph the stars before and during the solar eclipse. If the star's position moved, then it was evidence that that light had bent. Eddington and his team traveled from England to the island of Principe, just off the African coast, to photograph the eclipse. In simple language, this nonfiction book explains how the push (acceleration) and pull (gravity) of space affects light. Back matter includes information on Einstein, Eddington, and the original photograph of the 1919 solar eclipse.

Junior Library Guild selection How long does it take for science to find an answer to a problem? On January 25, 1862, naturalist Charles Darwin received a box of orchids. One flower, the Madagascar star orchid, fascinated him. It had an 11.5" nectary, the place where flowers make nectar, the sweet liquid that insects and birds eat. How, he wondered, did insects pollinate the orchid? It took 130 years to find the answer. After experiments, he made a prediction. There must be a giant moth with a 11.5" proboscis, a straw-like tongue. Darwin died without ever seeing the moth, which was catalogued by entomologists in in 1903. But still no one had actually observed the moth pollinating the orchid. In 1992, German entomologist, Lutz Thilo Wasserthal, Ph.D., traveled to Madagascar. By then, the moths were rare. He managed to capture two moths and released them in a cage with the orchid. He captured the first photo of the moth pollinating the flower, as Darwin had predicted 130 years before. Backmatter includes information on the moth, the orchid, Charles Darwin, Lutz Wasserthal. Also included is Wasserthal's original photo taken in 1992.