Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers & Other Odd Events on the Way to Scientific Discovery by Stephanie Pain (Editor)

The strange mishaps behind scientific discovery

Good Condition - Wear to the corners with a small tear at the base of the spine. Foxing to the page edges, otherwise the pages are clean and readable.

Scientific progress rarely follows a tidy path, as this collection from New Scientist makes entertainingly clear. Edited by Stephanie Pain, Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers brings together stories of eccentric investigations, failed ideas, fortunate accidents and discoveries reached by unexpected routes. A doctor with an alarming theory about a centrifuge, an engineer's unlikely heated hat and a New Zealand farmer's combustible clothing belong to a world where ingenuity and absurdity frequently meet. The accounts reveal the human side of enquiry, including the setbacks and mistaken convictions that conventional histories can leave behind. Curious, surprising and often funny, the collection shows how even the least promising lines of investigation can become memorable episodes in the history of science.