Woodslane | Book - 9781421403304

Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Aha! Moment:

A Scientist's Take on Creativity

ISBN-13: 9781421403304
Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
By David Jones
Price: AUD $163.00
Stock: 0 in stock
Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 15/03/2012
Format: Hardback 280 pages Weight: 0g
Categories: Physics [PH]

Description

Table of Contents

Reviews

Google Preview

This book is about having ideas and -- a much longer haul -- making them work. David Jones, best known for his Daedalus column, tells many stories about creators and their creations, including his own fantastical-seeming contributions to mainstream science -- such as unrideable bicycles and chemical gardens in space. His theory of creativity endows each of us with a Random-Ideas Generator, a Censor, and an Observer-Reasoner. Jones applies the theory to a wide range of weird scientific experiments that he has conducted for serious scientific papers, for challenging printed expositions, and for presentations to a TV audience. He even suggests new ones, not yet tried! Creativity is as essential to science as curiosity, physical intuition, and shrewd deduction from well-planned experiments. But, says Jones, ingenuity is very uncertain -- even for the greatest inventors, about 80 percent of ideas fail. Jokiness can help, and so can lots of random data. Jones has copious clever advice that will help you have that madly brilliant private thought in the first place -- and will encourage you to take it further.Neither dense nor demanding, The Aha! Moment is engrossing, edifying, and scientifically serious; yet it is lightly written, has many jokes, and asks lots of silly questions. As Jones shows, it can often pay to take an absurd idea seriously.

Preface: Creativity in My Career
1. A Theory of Creativity
2. The Creative Environment
3. Thoughts on the Random Ideas Generator
4. Intuition and Odd Notions
5. Creativity in Scientific Papers
6. Heat and Gravity
7. Astronomical Musings
8. Rotating Things
9. Explosions and Fuses
10. Tricks with Optics
11. Properties of Materials
12. Physical Phenomena I Have Noticed
13. Odd Notions I Have Played With
14. Literary Information
15. Inventions We Need but Don't Have
16. A List of Silly Questions
17. A Short Guide to Being Creative
Notes
Index

""A fascinating insight into one man's never-ending search for ideas.""

Google Preview content

Popular Subjects

Woodslane Online Catalogues

Aha! Moment:

A Scientist's Take on Creativity