In 1960 Joe Kittinger fell to earth from the edge of space and lived. Inside a pressure suit, attached to a huge helium balloon, Kittinger freefell from where the earth's atmosphere met space - an appalling, hostile, environment that would freeze us, and burn us and boil us away. It is the air that Kittinger fell through that makes our lives on earth possible - the atmosphere is made up of enfolding layers of air which protect us so completely that we don't even realise the dangers of space lurking just twenty miles above us. We don't just live in the air, we live because of it.
Gabrielle Walker's new book illuminates this most extraordinary and yet most underrated substance on earth- air. Thin air miraculously transforms into food; our atmosphere soaks up flares from the sun that are more violent than a nuclear explosion; the air wraps our planet in a blanket of warmth; radio signals bounce off a layer of floating metal in the air.
An Ocean of Air reveals the story of how humanity came to understand earth's atmosphere through the stories of the people who discovered the functions of each of its layers- the Italian Renaissance scientist, disciple of Galileo, who discovered that we live at the bottom of a dense ocean of air; an arrogant Frenchman who had only just discovered how air brings us life, when the guillotine brought him death; a hapless 1920s inventor who inadvertently created chemicals that could punch a hole in the sky.
After you've read this book, you will never take air for granted again.
The Ocean of Air
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
The Atmosphere: An Ocean of Air, Teacher Manual
The Ocean of Air
Song of the Sky: An Exploration of the Ocean of Air is a fascinating book written by Guy Murchie. The book is a comprehensive exploration of the atmosphere around us, the air we breathe, and the wonders of the sky.
The Atmosphere: An Ocean of Air, Student Science Journal
This book draws on both extensive observations and theoretical principles to develop a concise description of the impact of stress, rotation, and buoyancy on the turbulence scales that control exchanges between the atmosphere and underlying ...
Global Biogeochem Cycle 16(2):1022. doi:10.1029/2011GB001445 Borges AV (2005) Do we have enough pieces of the jigsaw to integrate 28(1):3–27 CO2 fluxes in the Coastal Ocean? Estuaries Borges AV (2011) Present day carbon dioxide fluxes ...
This book is unique in bringing together the diverse concepts and ideas of meteorologists, atmospheric physicists and oceanographers into a single coherent account of the fluid environment, with emphasis on...
The text will be appreciated by meteorologists, environmentalists, students studying hydrology, and people working in general earth sciences.