Contemporary Authors

• Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis - 2016 Bloomsbury Sigma, New York, NY

• Laurie Winkless Home Page - http://www.lauriewinkless.com/about/

  Hello! I’m Laurie!
  I’m a writer, physicist and sci-comm consultant currently based in London. I am passionate about translating science and engineering into English… without dumbing it down. Science is not just for scientists!
  So, what’s my background? Well, I was a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory for seven years. My research area was materials, and my specialisation was thermoelectric energy harvesting. Before that, I did an MSc in Space Science from University College London, and before THAT, a BSc Physics with Astrophysics from Trinity College Dublin.
  I took a break from the lab in order to develop my science communication, writing and media skills, working first with the Nobel Foundation in their London office. I then worked part-time with a comms agency with clients such as the Royal Academy of Engineering, and The Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry. As a freelance sci-comm consultant, I’ve worked with organisations such as the Royal Society, my alma mater, the National Physical Laboratory, and SeaLife Centres. One day, I hope to find a role that lets me get back to the lab, while supporting my communication activities.
  My greatest passion is writing about remarkable science and engineering. What started off as a small science blog and too much time spent on Twitter has turned into a career. I now write regularly for Forbes, How It Works, Here360, and Materials Today. I’ve also had features in Science Uncovered, the Evening Standard, BA Business Life (in-flight magazine), Londonist, to name a few. In 2014, an editor at Bloomsbury sent me a message on Twitter that pretty much changed my life. Fast forward to August 2016, and my first book, Science and the City, has hit the bookshelves. I hope that it won’t be my last book either. It’s taken me a long time to realise that this is what I should be doing, and I’m not stopping any time soon.
  Other stuff: I’m Irish, chatty, and love travel and reading. I’m also a fan of LEGO, tunnels, gin, sewing and chocolate.
  PS: If you need to contact me, use the contact form here, or find me on Twitter@laurie_winkless

• Bloomsbury Publishing - http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/laurie-winkless/

  Laurie Winkless
  Media for author Laurie Winkless
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  Laurie Winkless is a physicist and writer, currently based in London. Following a degree at Trinity College Dublin, a placement at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre, and a masters in Space Science at UCL, Laurie worked at the National Physical Laboratory, specialising in materials. Thermoelectric energy harvesting – where heat is captured and converted into electricity – was her bag, and remains a favourite topic of conversation.

  Laurie has been communicating science to the public for more than a decade, working with schools and universities, the Royal Society, Forbes, and the Naked Scientists, amongst others. She's given TEDx talks, hung out with astronauts, and appeared in The Times magazine as a leading light in STEM. Science and the City is her first book.

  Writes: Popular Science, Science & Nature

  Author of : Science and the City
  - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/laurie-winkless/#sthash.1NMwWdpP.dpuf

• Women Are Boring - https://womenareboring.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/science-and-the-city-an-interview-with-laurie-winkless/

  SCIENCE AND THE CITY: AN INTERVIEW WITH LAURIE WINKLESS

  September 7, 2016
  Laurie Winkless is the writer of the recently published book ‘Science and the City’. Science and the City has already received fantastic reviews, with the book described as ‘fascinating, lucid and entertaining’, and ‘a wonderful source of fascinating information’. With a background in science research, Laurie now works in science communication (follow her on Twitter here). We met Laurie before the Irish launch of her book at the Science Gallery in Dublin at the end of August (The Science Gallery sold out of copies of Science and the City mere minutes after the launch ended!). Laurie was really kind and gave us a half-hour of her time during what has been a very busy month since her book was published. Read on to find out more about her book, her new-found love of London Underground tunnels, mealworms, jiggly atoms, the Mars Curiosity Rover, women in science, gendered toys, and more!

  Tom Lawson
  Laurie and her book in one of Laurie’s beloved rail tunnels in London! Photo: Tom Lawson

  SCIENCE AND THE CITY

  Women Are Boring: Congratulations on the launch of the book! It’s getting a great reception! What is your favourite fact in the book?

  Laurie Winkless: One thing I hadn’t realised before I started writing the book was that I am obsessed by tunnels! I get on the London Underground (the tube) pretty much every day, and I don’t tend to really think about it, but when I started hanging out with tunnel engineers I developed a real love and affection for tunnels. Somewhere deep inside me, there’s a train nerd! That is my favourite part of the ‘today’ science. As for the ‘tomorrow’ science, I’m excited about research around trying to reduce landfills by letting mealworms eat the plastic waste. This seems to be completely fine for the mealworms, and it gets rid of our non-biodegradable waste! I also spoke to an architect in Colombia who is using waste plastic to build houses. He melts down the plastic and turns it into what are almost lego blocks that clip together. The reuse of plastic is really interesting; we’re so silly with our use of plastic – it takes so long to biodegrade.

  WAB: What inspired you to write the book?

  LW: It’s been a combination of living in London, and my research background. I’ve lived in London for eleven years now and I think you get a bit obsessed with the city – even if you’re complaining about it, you’re still talking about it! Getting from A to B is a big thing for everyone in London, and that’s where my love of transport came from. My research background is in material science, which tends to be quite a practical, hands-on research area and is very applied to the real world. I kept coming across new technologies, building materials, battery technologies, the use of nanotechnology in food packaging, for example, and I thought ‘you know what? Maybe I can help people understand how cities work today, and also do some future-gazing’.

  THERMOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTING

  WAB: You’ve had a really cool career – you have a BSC in Physics with Astrophysics from Trinity College Dublin, an MSc in Space Science from University College London, you worked as a researcher at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory for seven years, and you work in science communication. Your pet topic is thermoelectric energy harvesting – tell us a bit about that.

  LW: Thermoelectric materials are solid materials, with no moving parts, but they can transform heat into electricity. They can do it because they use these two separate properties of materials that overlap. Think of a hot cup of tea in a cold cup – eventually the cup will get warm and the tea will cool down, so the temperature equalises. With thermoelectric materials, if you can keep that temperature difference – keeping the hot end hot and the cold end cold – what you end up doing is you give energy to the atoms inside the material – which is what heat does all the time. Whether you realise it or not, we live in a universe of jiggling atoms. The higher the temperature is, the more atoms jiggle. That’s basically how we measure temperature – it’s how jiggly atoms are. So, an atom will only ever stop moving at absolute zero, which we can’t really reach. When you’re giving out hot and cold you’re getting all this heat energy; the atoms are jiggling like crazy! But in thermoelectric materials, that also spits out electrons, and a stream of electrons is electricity. If you strap loads of these thermoelectric materials together – for example a square of 64, 120, or 500 of these blocks of thermoelectric materials – even though each one is only producing tiny amounts of electricity, you turn the waste heat into electricity.

  WAB: What was your own research in this area on?

  LW: My research was on the car industry in particular. It looked at how we can capture all of that waste heat in car exhausts, because car exhaust temperatures can be almost 500 degrees Celsius – that is energy that is not helping to move the car forward. It is wasting fuel. In fact, only about a third of the energy in fuel actually moves our car. Almost all of the rest is thrown away as heat. We were trying to design devices made with thermoelectric materials that we could strap on to car exhausts. Then you’d have the car exhaust hot, the air outside a bit cooler, and harness that temperature difference to have electricity being produced. We could then use that to do other things in the car, like run the radio or some of the electronics, so that fuel doesn’t need to be used for those things.

  mars-curiousity
  The Mars Curiosity Rover, which is powered by thermoelectric materials. You can follow the Rover on Twitter here! Photo: NASA

  WAB: Amazing! What else can thermoelectric materials be used for?

  LW: There are lots of other ways you can use thermoelectric materials. The Mars Curiosity Rover is powered by a thermoelectric generator. It has a tiny piece of a plutonium on the inside. Because plutonium is radioactive, it naturally decays and produces heat, and then there’s all these fins around it so the outside is much cooler, and that powers the entire Rover! They’ve been using thermoelectric materials in the space industry for a long time – we’re just catching up on Earth now!

  WAB: What do you think will be the next big application of thermoelectric materials?

  LW: One thing that people are really interested in is power plants. Most electricity plants produce heat. A lot of them will burn fuel, usually coal or gas, which heats up an enormous tank of water. That tank of water turn to steam, the steam turns a turbine, and the turbine produces electricity. So actually, a generation of electricity is all about heat. There are lots of researchers who are now asking ‘can we capture some of the heat that we’re producing to make power plants more efficient?’. We want to move away from fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, but this is a good stop-gap in between: making fossil fuels a bit more efficient until we get to the point at which people realise the value of renewables.

  SCIENCE – THE NATURAL OPTION!

  WAB: What inspired you to go into science?

  LW: I’m quite a curious person. I always have been, and I always wanted to study science – I can’t remember when I first thought ‘I want to be a scientist.’ I like taking things apart, and trying to put them back together again – I used to do that and have bits left over and think ‘oh no, I haven’t done a good job!’ I’ve always enjoyed hands-on, practical work. I like using my hands and questioning the everyday, so science was a natural option for me!

  WAB: Tell us about your career path, how did you go from working in a lab to science communication?

  LW: My career path has felt more like random leaps around! I did science communication alongside my research, and I was always visiting school, fairs and festivals to talk to the public about science. I decided to take a break from the lab to try and develop communication skills and see if I was any good, and I got the book deal out of that! I really enjoy science communication, and I think that helps. You give more of yourself to something when you enjoy it. People engage with you more. I wanted the book to be authentically myself, because as a scientist, when you’re writing papers, you are often editing your personality out – and that’s an important thing, it has to be neutral. But when I’m not writing papers, I can show a bit more of my personality. I was very nervous about doing that, to be honest. I think it was easier to be logical and very neutral, and I was very anxious about writing the way I talk because I felt it was too informal. It’s scary!

  WAB: It is scary! We were very nervous when we launched Women Are Boring, both about putting ourselves out there and wondering whether we’d be taken seriously.

  LW: Exactly! You feel like there’s a nakedness, don’t you?

  WAB: Its something you’re not used to really doing when you’re in an academic environment.

  LW: Definitely. And I think, for sure, not everyone will enjoy it. But the book helped me get braver at being myself. One of the nicest compliments I’ve had about the book has been that it sounds like I’m sitting beside you on the sofa as you read the book. That’s a hugely positive and flattering thing for me. That was the hardest thing to do.

  WOMEN IN STEM AND THE ‘LEAKY PIPELINE’

  dsc_6253_no-glasses_

  WAB: What has your experience as a woman in science been like?

  LW: I have to say, I’ve had very few negative experiences as a woman in science, and those negative experiences have almost never included my colleagues. I think a lot of my colleagues were completely gender-blind! I never felt treated any differently. The only time I did feel treated oddly was by ‘outsiders’, for want of a better word. For example, I had a situation in the lab once where we had a contractor in to install a high-voltage line for a piece of equipment that I had designed. My male colleague was in the lab with me, but it wasn’t his research project. The contractor just kept speaking to my male colleague – and my colleague was really embarrassed by this! It wasn’t his project, it wasn’t his thing. Eventually, my colleague said to the contractor ‘I really don’t know why you’re asking me this – she’s the boss.’ The contractor looked around at me and was shocked by this! Ordinarily I would be quite patient with things like that, but he got me on a bad day, and I said ‘if you could start speaking to my face, that would be great. I’d appreciate that.’ I then told him what we needed, when we needed it done by, and asked ‘do you think you can do it by this time? Because if you can’t, I can get someone else’. He was taken aback, but I shouldn’t have had to lower myself to that. But as I said, there have been so few moments like that, so experiences like that have really stood out. I’ve been lucky – others have been less lucky than I have.

  WAB: What about the issue of keeping women in science? We know there’s a dearth of women in science once we get to a certain level in many areas.

  LW: That is a big challenge. We’ve got a leaky pipeline. Like me, for example – I graduated with a STEM degree, I worked in research, and now I’ve stepped sideways from research into communication. But that decision wasn’t to do with me thinking that I couldn’t develop as a scientist – I just wanted to try this, to see if I was any good at it. However, many other women have left science careers at a similar time to me, or later, so we get to the point where we have very few female physics professors, for example. I think part of that is to do with how we can treat people as equally as possible. In an ideal world, things would be a meritocracy, but they so rarely are. That a bigger problem in STEM.

  WAB: Absolutely. We attended the L’Oréal – UNESCO Women in Science awards in London in June, and one of the things we found really interesting was that many of the nominees, and those who were awarded fellowships, felt that an important thing about that funding is that it is flexible – they could use it towards childcare. Without that, they might have had to cut back on lab hours, for example. What do you think of that?

  LW: In some research areas, a year out of research can be seen as career suicide. If you are a woman, and decide you want to have a child – which is a totally personal choice – you’re accepting the fact that you’re going to be a year out of the publications cycle, a year out of the grants cycle. That puts you back two or three years. You’re constantly on the back foot. We definitely need to be flexible around that kind of issue. But for those woman who don’t want to have children, there is also a problem that isn’t related to childcare. I don’t think its as simple as just being more flexible. I think the whole culture needs to change – which it is, slowly, but it needs to change faster!

  let-toys-be-toys

  LET TOYS BE TOYS!

  WAB: What do you think we can do to encourage more women to go into STEM? Do you think we need to start encouraging girls quite early – is it too late by the time they’re going into university?

  LW: I believe so. I volunteer for an organisation called ‘Let Toys Be Toys’, which I followed on Twitter for a long time before getting involved with them. The idea of the campaign is to stop the artificial gendering of toys. Why do we need pink aisles for girls, and blue for boys? Why can’t boys play with prams? Why do some girls think they’re weird if they play with garages? Its so silly. However different individuals are, those differences are not necessarily along gender lines – society projects much of it. By the time that children are six or seven years old, they already have independent thought. They already have their own ideas about things. If we’ve been telling them for the previous seven years that girls should play this way and boys should play that way, that will naturally influence their own view of themselves. I think the choices we make in our own homes with our children as just as important as the teachers and mentors they’re surrounded by in school and the wider educational world. I was never made to feel weird for my choice of toy. I was equally happy to play with a drill and to learn how to use hand tools as I was to play with My Little Ponies! Neither was ever questioned in any way. I felt confident enough to follow the things I enjoyed doing, rather than the things I felt I should be doing. I hope to have kids in the future, and that is something I’ll want to try really hard to pass on. I know it gave me the confidence to never question whether I could be a scientist. There was never a doubt in my mind that I could do that! I have my family to thank for a lot of that.

  INSPIRATIONAL WOMEN IN SCIENCE

  WAB: Do you have any female scientist role models? Is there anyone who you think, if you were a young girl or a woman who is interested in science, would be really good to look at for inspiration? Apart from yourself, of course!

  LW: I feel very privileged in that two of the endorsers on the back of my book are female physicists. One is Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who is originally from Northern Ireland. She’s an astrophysics professors, and she also discovered pulsars, and quite famously didn’t get the Nobel prize for it. She is a legend! To have her read my book and write a really positive comment about it was a huge, amazing moment – I almost cried, I was so excited! She is someone I’ve always respected. She has sometimes been presented as a victim, but she doesn’t see herself that way at all. She’s also been the President of the Institute of Physics, and has done lots of incredible stuff during her career, she’s written remarkable papers, and she’s also a thoroughly decent human being!

  Another would be Athene Donald, also a professor of physics. She writes a lot about gender and about being a woman in physics, in a way that I really admire. She talks about the fact that barriers exist, but she’s not weighed down by them. I think that’s a great lesson for a young female scientist – to know that its okay to talk about those barriers, and we should talk about them. I felt so lucky to have her write a quote for the book, it’s really amazing!

  There’s also an engineer called Linda Miller, who works on the London Crossrail project. I’ve been hanging out a bit with people working on that project for the past while. Linda is SO cool – as I said, she works on the Crossrail project so is rebuilding the Thames tunnel, which is very exciting. Before that, she was a civil engineer rebuilding certain sections of the Space Launch Complex at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and prior to that she was a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Air Force! She’s had two incredible careers. She’s a brilliant communicator and a huge supporter of young women in engineering.

  WAB: Are there any other science writers you recommend? We know you have further reading mentioned in your book, too.

  LW: A writer I love is Mary Roach. She writes funny, popular science – I recommend everyone read Bonk, which is about the science of sex! Her and her husband had sex in an MRI machine as part of her research for the book, for example. She’s a legend! I love her too because she’s not a scientist but she takes science very seriously, and equally, she’s a brilliant storyteller. So she does that popular science interface really well. She’s very funny and very approachable, and I feel like we’re laughing together over a pint when I read her books. I love that. I’d love to aspire to that sort of work.

  ‘LOOK UP!’

  WAB: Back to your own book – what would you like the lasting result of the book to be? Would you like there to be something big that people take away from it?

  LW: I really wanted the book to be a primer on how cities work. I went for breadth rather than depth, with enough detail so that people can get their teeth into it. My hope would be that this will be the kickstart for a lot of people to start thinking about science in a different way. That would be my ultimate dream – that it makes people think ‘I live in a city, and now I know how traffic lights work, where my water comes from, where my faeces go when I flush the loo! I’ve got a better understanding of the world around me, and now I’ll read the book she recommended at the back of her own book.’ I want it to be an entry point, to help people look at the world about differently and to realise that science and engineering has built everything around us. That would be an absolute dream! If I met someone in a few years who said ‘I read your book and that led me to do this, this and this’, I would cry! I’d be delighted! It’s a first book, and I saw first because I really want to write another one! I have an idea, but its very early stages. I’ve loved writing this book, as a project and as a process, and I hope my enthusiasm comes across.

  WAB: Any final words to people as they walk around their cities?

  LW: Look up! Look up when you look around your city and think about what you see. And also be a little bit more cynical about ridiculous reports about red wine both killing you and curing cancer! I hope the book makes people a tiny bit more scientific in their approach.

  satc-laurie

  Science and the City is published by Bloomsbury (ISBN9781472913227). You can buy it here from Amazon, or here from Bloomsbury. Go buy it for yourself, and for anyone you know with the tiniest interest in science. You never know who might be inspired, and who could be the next Jocelyn Bell Burnell or Laurie Winkless!

Living for the city
Publishers Weekly. 263.29 (July 18, 2016): p198.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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How do cities work, and can we make them better?

Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis

Laurie Winkless. Sigma, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4729-1321-0

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In this cheerful addition to the how-things-work genre, physicist and science writer Winkless reminds readers that urban areas are now home to more than half the human race and use an increasing proportion of the Earth's natural resources, so it behooves people to know how they operate. Winkless enthusiastically delivers eight chapters that combine expert interviews with lucid explanations of city infrastructure (buildings, energy sources, water supply) and transportation (roads, cars, mass transport). Readers will encounter good elucidations of how skyscrapers are built, subways are dug, and sewage is carried off, but Winkless spends more time on the future in which cities must deal with overpopulation, global warming, and resource exhaustion. Tirelessly curious, she turns up an array of dazzling developments in the works, including driverless cars, pollution-free sources of locally generated energy, and an advanced "Internet of Things" in which every device anticipates personal needs. Of course, many of these are laboratory curiosities and likely to remain so. Winkless takes her material seriously, but her aim is accessibility, so her prose is dense with jokes, amusing asides, and cute footnotes befitting a "friendly science guide." Even readers who aren't enamored of her style will encounter fascinating information on how cities function and how they might do better. (Oct.)

Science and the City: The Mechanics behind the Metropolis
Henrietta Verma
Booklist. 112.21 (July 1, 2016): p9.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Science and the City: The Mechanics behind the Metropolis. By Laurie Winkless. Oct. 2016. 288p. Bloomsbury/Sigma, $27 (9781472913210). 624.

Though it aims to cover the science of cities, Winkless' behind-the-bustle tour also offers abundant facts of general interest. The author, a physicist, has worked at England's National Physical Laboratory and is an expert on thermoelectric harvesting. Her knowledge shows, and where she ventures into areas outside her realm of study, she peppers the text with lively quotes and intriguing examples from relevant experts. The work covers cities in general as well as specific places and is divided into chapters on the various forces that make metropolises what they are. "Up," for example, covers the science of skyscrapers; "Wet" discusses water, including sewage (the "ewww"-factor makes this perfect for student science reports in general); and "Connect" examines what makes information flow. Where necessary, Winkless includes diagrams of scientific processes, but this is mainly a packed-with-detail, textual work that will be a hit with both young adult and adult patrons curious about what makes cities tick.--Henrietta Verma

YA/C: A great choice for collections serving students, especially where the How Things Work titles have been popular. HV.

Winkless, Laurie. Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis
Muhammed Hassanali
Library Journal. 141.12 (July 1, 2016): p104.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Winkless, Laurie. Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis. Bloomsbury USA. Oct. 2016. 288p. index. ISBN 9781472913210. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781472913227. TECH

Physicist and materials and energy harvesting specialist Winkless explores the engineering feats that make urban lifestyles possible. The author provides an overview of the underlying science without delving into the technical details. Each chapter title is a single word that considers various essential networks that are critical to urban life. "Up" looks at housing, specifically skyscrapers, while "Switch" examines the electrical grid. Transportation is covered, too: "Way" focuses on infrastructure, "Drive" on cars, and "Loco" on trains. Chapters end with discussions of what the future will bring for these systems. The last chapter visualizes what life will be like in future cities, a view that--according to the author--is not science fantasy but something that can be achieved with today's technology. Winkless explains the complexities of the topic in broad terms, making them accessible to general readers. VERDICT Recommended for advanced middle school and high school readers and laypersons interested in appreciating the miracles of urban living.--Muhammed Hassanali, Shaker Heights, OH

"Living for the city." Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2016, p. 198. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459287558&it=r&asid=0d78e832642222c9517c4d5529da869e. Accessed 13 Mar. 2017. Verma, Henrietta. "Science and the City: The Mechanics behind the Metropolis." Booklist, 1 July 2016, p. 9. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459888855&it=r&asid=7f282d60b0b693ff3e3dcfd77dc304ab. Accessed 13 Mar. 2017. Hassanali, Muhammed. "Winkless, Laurie. Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis." Library Journal, 1 July 2016, p. 104. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA457302799&it=r&asid=ca0c5f8b74ab939114a06268045e38ce. Accessed 13 Mar. 2017.

• Got Science
  http://www.gotscience.org/2016/08/book-review-science-and-the-city/
  Word count: 1561

  Book Review: Science and the City
  August 11, 2016 Science Connected book reviews, science, urban development

  2

  Author: Laurie Winkless

  Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma

  On sale: August 11, 2016

  Best for: General audience, ages 13 and up

  Reviewed by: Jonathan Trinastic for GotScience.org, a Science Connected publication

  Reviewer’s rating: 4 out of 5

  Introduction
  Cities are quickly becoming the beating hearts of civilization. The UN estimates that over half the global population now calls urban neighborhoods home. Packed with ever more mouths to feed, bodies to transport, and skyscrapers to heat or cool, cities demand the best of human creativity and productivity to meet the needs of so many in so small a space.

  The reward for such a challenge is great. Cities set the stage for players of innumerable backgrounds to embrace differences and create a community together. Obstacles abound to achieve such a vision, including access to electricity, clean water, and efficient transportation. All these challenges will require innovative technology to make the urban landscape a clean and sustainable living space for billions.

  In Science and the City, Winkless guides you on an entertaining journey that zooms along like a maglev train.
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  In her debut book, Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis, Laurie Winkless explores the best scientific ideas and minds preparing our cities for this world of tomorrow. Winkless acts as an endlessly curious guide on an entertaining journey that zooms along as fast as a maglev train (the fastest train in the world, using magnetic levitation, as you’ll read about in the book). Thankfully, her scientific training shines through her accurate descriptions of widely ranging technologies, and her fun, free-flowing writing style will be accessible to most readers. Although the sheer number of topics covered sometimes detracts from the depth of explanations, it is easy to recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the technology that has carried cities into the present and the bold ideas that will push them into the future.

  Content
  Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis is organized into seven central chapters, each covering a primary component of the city: skyscrapers, electricity, clean water access, roads, cars, trains, and connectivity. Each chapter is subsequently divided into a “Today” section, which describes the history and technology of a particular topic, and a “Tomorrow” section, which highlights just a few of the scientific ideas that could forever change how we work, live, or play in cities. This split between past and future is a simple but very effective organizational tool to introduce readers to early technologies that serve as building blocks for inventions just around the corner. I only found myself wishing that Winkless let us spend more time with the “Tomorrow” section of each chapter, which usually ended just as her enthusiasm for all the future technological possibilities became contagious.

  Indeed, Winkless’s insatiable curiosity and unabashed love for all things science resonate as the pulsing heartbeat of the book. Her curiosity is infectious as she asks simple questions about things we take for granted (why do skyscrapers have revolving doors?) and explores them in a way that reveals ingenious engineering choices and teaches us some science along the way. Winkless makes both the awe-inducing and mundane aspects of city life engaging, thanks to her excitement about every topic covered. Science and the City will take you from a massive pendulum at the top of a skyscraper that withstands earthquakes all the way to the burrowing of subway tunnels beneath your feet. You’ll learn about self-cleaning windows, fog-sucking nets modeled after the biology of beetles, and the technology behind driverless cars. Even tunnels become a fascinating engineering marvel under Winkless’s guidance, as she confesses to be a “closet train and tunnel nerd. Writing about them has unleashed a monster of epic proportions.” This playful, charming tone permeates the book and should easily draw readers in to share her adventure.

  Science and the City: The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis is not merely a list of technologies. Winkless incorporates quick physics and chemistry lessons to help readers understand the science behind each technology. Readers will receive a crash course on the physical concept of resonance while learning about earthquake-resistant skyscrapers. A discussion about solar cells and batteries takes a detour into energy conservation. Learning about train locomotion requires an understanding of gravity and friction. Such scientific discussions show respect for the reader’s intelligence and encourage citizens to be informed about how their gadgets operate. Winkless’s scientific background shines in these sections as she provides concise and accurate accounts of the scientific principles behind most technologies.

  The author’s training in physics also stops her from viewing every future technology with rose-colored glasses. A healthy scientific skepticism seeps into many discussions, ranging from the environmental friendliness of electric cars to research on water use in agriculture. In some cases, she even performs back-of-the-envelope calculations to validate or refute claims by innovators that a certain technology will be cheap or revolutionary. This skeptical perspective increases my confidence in Winkless as a guide through such a vast number of scientific disciplines, from engineering to biology to chemistry, that support the modern cities of today and tomorrow.

  Winkless’s greatest challenge probably lies in trying to cover so much material on so many interesting topics in just under 300 pages. This all-encompassing approach works well in cases when the topic is narrow by definition (the first chapter on skyscrapers works well) but stumbles in others. For example, the chapter on electricity speeds through a discussion of transformers, the grid, solar cells, wind turbines, and batteries, and even squeezes in a physics lesson on electrons. Only several pages are spent on each topic, so that by the end the reader is left exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information. This approach also oversimplifies certain scientific explanations to fit so much material into one chapter. In the end, Science and the City works best as a broad survey that will leave readers wanting to search for more information about a particularly fascinating technology from other sources.

  This broad approach also causes the narrative focus to sometimes shift away from cities. The chapters about skyscrapers and trains are most engaging because they always maintain their connection to city-specific challenges and technical solutions. In contrast, the chapters about electricity and roads cover physical concepts and technologies that could apply to cities or rural areas, losing the precise focus on cities suggested by the title. The discussion of these technologies is still informative and engaging, but readers who are looking for a more specific discussion of city-specific challenges may be disappointed at times.

  Conclusion
  In Winkless’s own words, Science and the City is her “scientific love-letter to the great cities of the world,” and she largely succeeds in injecting this curiosity and passion into the readers as we follow her whirlwind journey from skyscrapers to sewers. The book is packed with information, highlighting both historical context and the most exciting innovations on the horizon. Every chapter balances entertainment and education thanks to the author’s wit, scientific background, and colloquial tone. The book takes a sky-high view of most topics, covering as many different technologies as possible in a relatively small space. This choice creates a rapid pace that should generate curiosity among readers, but which will also leave them with more questions than answers since the book cannot cover any one topic in great detail. The end result is an engaging survey of the incredible technologies fueling the chaotic cohesiveness of cities today and tomorrow, leaving readers with a desire to search for more information once they’re done with this exhilarating ride.

  About the Author
  Provided by Bloomsbury Publishing (www.bloomsbury.com/author/laurie-winkless). Laurie Winkless is a physicist and writer, currently based in London. Following a degree at Trinity College Dublin, a placement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, and a master’s in Space Science at UCL, Laurie worked at the National Physical Laboratory, specialising in materials. Thermoelectric energy harvesting—where heat is captured and converted into electricity—was her bag, and remains a favourite topic of conversation. Laurie has been communicating science to the public for more than decade, working with schools and universities, the Royal Society, Forbes, and the Naked Scientists, amongst others. She’s given TEDx talks, hung out with astronauts, and appeared in The Times magazine as a leading light in STEM. Science and the City is her first book.

  About the Reviewer
  Dr. Jonathan Trinastic earned his PhD in physics at the University of Florida and will be an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in Washington, DC, beginning in September. He is interested in renewable energy technology and sustainable energy policies, as well as living by Ernst Schumacher’s mantra that “small is beautiful.” Read more of Jonathan’s work at his personal blog, Goodnight Earth, and follow him on Twitter @jptrinastic.

  GotScience.org translates complex research findings into accessible insights on science, nature, and technology. For more science news sign up for our eNewsletter.

• Chemistry World
  https://www.chemistryworld.com/review/science-and-the-city-the-mechanics-behind-the-metropolis/1017277.article
  Word count: 572

  Science and the city: the mechanics behind the metropolis
  BY ROSS STEWART21 SEPTEMBER 2016

  Save Article
  Hot town

  Laurie Winkless
  Bloomsbury Sigma
  2016 | 282pp | £15.29
  ISBN 9781472913210
  Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk

  science and the city
  It’s no surprise that today’s cities can induce a sense of wonder: crowds swarm, skyscrapers loom, subterranean networks sprawl. With more than half the world’s population now living in urban areas, the immensity of the modern metropolis is astonishing. To consider the vast quantities of power, water, and food needed to support city life, and the amount of waste produced, can be a near-overwhelming experience.

  For me, it was descending for the first time into London’s underground that impressed upon me the sheer scale of the modern urban environment: entering a labyrinthine tunnel system, I was a young adult confronted with the complexity of metropolitan engineering.

  But it’s there that the curiosity can stop – with no guide to the complexity, no one to turn to for an explanation, wonder can get left behind and travelling the underground can become just another moment of transition when the eyes glaze over.

  What I could have used then, as an awestruck teen, was a teacher travelling with me, someone to direct my curiosity and guide my search for understanding. An urban school trip with a science teacher. This, more or less, is what you get with Science and the city.

  SATC, as it’s referred to within its own pages, tackles the sprawl of modern cities with themed chapters: ‘Switch’ takes us into the power grid, ‘Up’ into skyscrapers, ‘Loco’ onto the rails. Grouping diverse topics in this way can feel tenuous at times, but as a structural conceit it’s undeniably effective for an introductory read.

  SATC is certainly aimed at teen readers – and whoever else might benefit from introductory science pitched at the intelligent uninformed. We’re introduced, for example, to electrons, geostationary orbits and nuclear fusion – nothing unfamiliar to a secondary school science class. The style is chatty, entirely without pretension, and messy with comic asides, narratorial self-consciousness, and – a warning to those expecting a serious read – a vocabulary dominated by the word ‘poo’ (‘stop giggling at the back, please’).

  There’s a lesson repeated throughout SATC – ‘we can’t get rid of energy, we can only change it into another form’ – and Winkless’s energy in writing the book has two clear sources: a genuine sense of wonder at the modern metropolis and a lively speculative imagination.

  It’s the speculative moments that make this more than topic-themed urban science for kids. Each chapter has a section devoted to ‘tomorrow’, taking emerging research and envisioning its impact on the future of urban life. Developing technologies, such as smart glass and self-driving cars, are introduced with optimism and excitement, and the final chapter – an imagined day-in-the-life of a future city dweller – is a highlight and a neat synthesis of the preceding chapters.

  With the basics introduced and ample suggestions for further reading, including links to unusual online resources (such as a map of the planet’s live marine traffic), this is an ideal gateway text for those curious about science, open to wonder, and ready for the world of popular science writing.

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