Zoom

From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees: How Everything Moves

By: Bob Berman

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

From the speed of light to moving mountains - and everything in between, Zoom explores how the universe and its objects move.

If you sit as still as you can in a quiet room, you might be able to convince yourself that nothing is moving. But air currents are still wafting around you. Blood rushes through your veins. The atoms in your chair jiggle furiously. In fact, the planet you are sitting on is whizzing through space 35 times faster than the speed of sound.

Natural motion dominates our lives and the intricate mechanics of the world around us. In Zoom, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an informative and entertaining style and a knack for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2014 Bob Berman (P)2014 Hachette Audio

Love bobs books

Another great book by bob berman, he keeps your attention the entire book with some great stories that you’ve never heard before.

Solid Interesting fun and Informative.

Recommended highly. Good balance of fun and info. Good reader as well. Looking forward to a sequel.

Not bad, expecting a little more

It wasn't a bad book I think I was just expecting a little more. Most of the book was fine, it's just that I felt certain chapters were lacking. I do not regret purchasing or listening to this book. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Excellent

Where does Zoom rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Top 5.

What did you like best about this story?

Just plain interesting but the narrator really makes a difference in this one, too.

What does Dan Woren bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Exactly how to get the point across whether the point is interesting or downright humorous.

Any additional comments?

This book will captivate you with facts but Bob Berman's humor is as good as it gets.

Good info

Some really interesting stuff in here. Some stuff bared repeating to get all the info and understand it. I liked it, good stuff.

the category it was placed in on my phone

it was placed in a sexual genre that I don't understand especially considering it's about science. the speed of things, physics, etc.
other than that unrelated nonsense the book was ok.

Very interesting book about 'movement '!

I thought it would be somewhat boring, but to my surprise, it was very interested informative. I especially liked the information about snow and germs, seasons and wildlife, and the myths about water flow at the equator as well as the (actual) location of the equator to vwhich many tourists are oblivious.

I enjoyed nerding out listening to this book and dare I add, I wish the book was longer 😉

I JUST FINISHED LISTENING TO THE WHOLE THING

~ Explanative narrative tour thru life's journey & existential trek.
~ I got so addicted to listening to it that I had to listen even in my sleep, but I finally finished listening, & will listen again.
~ It helps so much that there is a PDF file to go along with it. I would have been taking notes constantly.
~ The narrator does a great job of merging the story of facts & figures so well that it is seamless in performance.
~ If you don't have the full PDF with the full text narrative then go here:
https://www.pdfdrive.com/zoom-how-everything-moves-from-atoms-and-galaxies-to-blizzards-and-bees-d166683707.html

a new way to think about old things

Berman looks at the very ordinary and well studied concept of motion and applies a novel lens. His fresh perspective made reading this book really fun. It is written for anyone with any level of education in the sciences, including no formal education.

Chapter 17 provided the best explanation of entanglement/quantum vs relativity that I have ever read. Without overwhelming his reader with extremely detailed scientific information (most of the time, I actually prefer the heavy science), Berman provides a shockingly simple and yet shockingly complete explanation of how observation affects reality, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper that mocked quantum theory, the new experiments that demonstrate how spooky action at a distance is indeed real, and how it affects our perception of speed/light speed.

I crave novelty and get really excited when an author can serve up the same old stuff on a brand new platter, and every chapter of this book did just that. It was deliciously satisfying. Some of the subjects Berman addresses are:

- Motion itself. Temperature and motion are the same thing. True motionless means reaching a state of infinite cool.
- The universe did not have a big bang as much as slow motion explosion that you are still in at this very moment.
- (I love his humor) When Newton wrote the Principia, he "proved that the sun's gravity should make planets travel in elliptical paths, **thus effectively awarding Kepler a posthumous 1600 SAT score**." (emphasis added)
- Our scientific observations themselves are very self centered. Humans can only recognize patterns that are in close rhythm with their own heartbeats. This is why we can recognize the crickets chirp as a pattern, since it only deviates from the rhythm of our heart beat by about 50%. But, we don't recognize the owl hoot as a pattern because it is not in rhythm with our own heartbeat. Mosquito sounds like it is making a constant annoying noise, that is either and a sharp or a D. The rubbing of their wings is indeed a distinct pattern but it is too fast for us to contact since it deviates to far from the rhythm of our heart beat.
- Boiling hot coffee in one state in the U.S. is not the same temp as boiling hot coffee in another state. The hottest coffee in Denver is 10 degrees cooler than the hottest coffee in Boston.
- The magic motion of hydrogen and oxygen (great chapter!)
- Unexpected facts about radiation (so entertaining)
- An excellent story of the personal life of a film/photography pioneer who set us on the road of developing the incredible movie watching experience we enjoy today
- The motion of cells, animals, and the universe at large (makes you appreciate your place in the universe)
- How we think we know space is flat (again, great, simple explanation)

My brain was so happy the entire time I read this book. A+

Fun and informative

Very enjoyable and informative. Highly recommended. An interesting perspective on the universe and motion. Recommend