The Undercover Scientist

Undercover Scientist Peter Bentley is fascinated by the science of the everyday, and in this eye-opening book, organised in the form of one of those days when everything falls apart, he probes into the reasons why mishaps occur, from sleeping through the alarm to making the bathwater overflow. As he does so he explains exactly what happens when you put metal in a microwave (the electric field inside the oven causes the metal to heat up like a light bulb filament) and why getting the juice from chilli peppers in your eye is so painful (the peppers contain a chemical that fools your nerve-endings into behaving as though they've been burnt). From there he goes on to show how these simple events form part of a pattern of scientific principles that govern everything around us. If you want to find out how a diesel engine is able to run on chip fat or why lightning actually does strike the same place twice, The Undercover Scientist has all the answers.