On the Shelf (Booklists)

Not-so-Serious Teen Books

WHAT BOOKS SHOULD STUDENTS READ BEFORE LEAVING HIGH SCHOOL?

Books to Follow A Child Called It

Shero Lit: Girls Can be Heroes, too

 

 

Physics

 

Biographies

Isaac Newton by Harry Sootin

A short biography of Newton who is credited with The Laws of Motion and inventing calculus

Galileo, First Observer of Marvelous Things by Elma Erlich Levinger

A biography of Galileo, Renaissance scientist and the first physicist

Young Thomas Edison by Sterling North

A biography of the great inventor whose creations have contributed to the comfort, convenience, and entertainment of people all over the world.
Albert Einstein by Elma Erlich Levinger

A biography of Einstein, the most well-known scientist of the 20th century.

Lise Meitner : A Life in Physics by Ruth Lewin Sime

A biography of the Austrian scientist whose discoveries in nuclear physics played a major part in developing atomic energy

Niels Bohr : Gentle Genius of Denmark by Ray Spangenburg and Diane K. Moser

A biography of the Danish physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries about the nature of the atom, saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis, and, after helping to develop the atomic bomb, campaigned for peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Stephen Hawking : Quest for a Theory of the Universe by Kitty Ferguson

Presents the life of the British theoretical physicist who has taken the study of cosmology farther than most in his field, despite the need for a wheelchair and computer in order to travel and communicate.

Einstein In Love : A Scientific Romance by Dennis Overbye (not owned by OHS)

  

Nonfiction

The Universe of Galileo and Newton by William Bixby

The Inventions, Researches, and Writing of Nikola Tesla by Thomas Commerford Martin

Includes three lectures by Tesla: I. Experiments with alternate currents of very high frequency, and their application to methods of artificial illumination, delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891.--II. Experiments with alternate currents of high potential and high frequency, delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, Feb. 3, 1892.--III. On light and other high frequency phenomena, delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Feb., 1893, and before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis, March, 1893.

The Physics of Golf by Theodore P. Jorgensen 

Explains how you can use the principles of dynamics and energy to improve your stroke, choose the best club, calculate the aerodynamics of the trajectory, and understand the complicated handicap system.

The Cartoon Guide to Physics by Larry Gonick and Art Huffman

Famed cartoonist Larry Gonick makes learning physics a blast with this animated, video-enhanced romp through Motion, Projectiles, Energy and much more. Hands-on workshops teach you about Inertia, Collisions, and Acceleration. A-Z or topical Glossary-hopping explains unfamiliar terms. A timeline of history's great scientists shows how our understanding of physics unfolded

The Science of Music by Melvin Berger

Discusses how the various musical instruments produce sound and describes how records, tapes, and disks are made and how the playback equipment for them generates sound waves.

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen W. Hawking

Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we're looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory.

 

Fiction

Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel

Everyone knows that Galileo Galilei dropped cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, developed the first reliable telescope, and was convicted by the Inquisition for holding a heretical belief--that the earth revolved around the sun. But did you know he had a daughter? In Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel (author of the bestselling Longitude) tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun, whom Galileo described as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and tenderly attached to me."

Mrs. Einstein by Anna McGrail (not owned by OHS)

Imagines what might have become of Lieserl, Einstein’s illegitimate daughter. The discarded daughter grows up with an astonishing mind and an abiding hatred for her father. Given her extraordinary mathematical ability--an ability she insists she has inherited from her mother--she resolves to haunt her father's scientific career and sets herself to master cutting-edge physics, the science of gravity and light. She will match each of Einstein's mathematical proofs with one of her own that goes beyond its conclusions or undermines its findings.