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This post written by Clint The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
William Kamkwamba grew up in Malawi, a fairly poor country in southeast Africa. His family’s house didn’t have electricity. He had never seen a working computer. People in his village often went hungry. He wasn’t well educated – his family couldn’t afford $80 per year to keep him in school. Then he found a couple of books about physics and engineering in the local library. He studied them carefully – he had trouble reading English, so he looked at the diagrams and used them to help figure out the words. When he got to the one about windmills, he decided to build one of his own.
Building a windmill in rural Malawi wasn’t easy, since he didn’t have a local hardware store. People said he was crazy, but it worked. He figured out how it should work mostly by looking at pictures and he built it out of wood, scrap metal, an old bicycle, and PVC pipe, and it worked. People came from miles around to see it. What did the windmill do, other than turn? It powered a single light bulb. Pretty soon, though, he ran a wire into his house and had an electric light in his room. Eventually, he built a circuit breaker and switches and wired his whole house.
Quite a few people in his village had cell phones, but charging them was not easy. William decided he could do something about this. Again based mostly on pictures and working with spare parts, he built a step-up transformer so that the windmill could charge cell phones.
In my book, that’s amazing stuff from a homemade windmill. What really blows me away, though, was that William was only 14 when he built the windmill.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is William’s inspiring autobiography. I try not to say “inspiring” unless I really mean it, but there aren’t that many other words I can use. This book reminds you that there really are amazing people in the world, and they can do great things.
The book starts with the day William’s got his first windmill working, but then it jumps back to cover some of his earlier life, parts of which were pretty rough. It also describes many of the events that came after that windmill – news spread around Malawi, and at some point it hit the Internet (which William had never seen), and his story made it around the world. William has spoken at two TED conferences and MIT, and he has been on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. At the first TED conference, he got funding to build more windmills so he could use the electricity to irrigate the crops in his village. He didn’t stop there, though. William has also co-founded a non-profit organization, Moving Windmills, which promotes economic development and creates educational opportunities for the people of Malawi.
Check out William’s first TED conference presentation. He talks about this in the book. This was his first trip away from his home, so within 24 hours, he flew on his first airplane, saw his first laptop (and made a PowerPoint presentation), got his first e-mail account, and gave his first formal talk. He was fantastically nervous, but he managed to get his point across, and the audience really supported him.
Here is his second TED conference presentation. He’s a lot more relaxed.
Here he is on The Daily Show, where he explains how he built the circuit breaker for his house.
One week later he and Bryan Mealer give a talk at MIT. It’s about an hour long. The first few minutes are all other people talking, but then we get to the good stuff.
Finally, here is the short film Moving Windmills: The William Kamkwamba Story. William’s non-profit group has prepared a feature-length documentary based on this.
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This post written by Clint The Invention of Hugo Cabret
by Brian Selznick
[cover name=theinventionofhugocabret]
Hugo’s father used to work in a museum. That’s where he found the automaton – a clockwork human sitting at a desk, ready to write a letter. Sadly, the automaton was broken, and Hugo’s father never figured out how to repair it. When he died, Hugo inherited the mechanical man and his father’s notebooks.
Hugo also inherited his uncle’s job, sort of. His uncle used to keep all the clocks in a Paris train station wound and running okay. In exchange, he and Hugo were allowed to live in a little apartment in the station. His uncle disappeared one day, so now Hugo secretly winds all the clocks on his own. As long as nobody notices that his uncle is gone, Hugo can keep living in the station and trying to fix the automaton.
Hugo needs parts to fix the automaton, so he steals toys from a toy store in the train station. He’s not that good of a thief, though, so the shopkeeper catches him, confiscates the notes his father gave him, and makes him work to pay for everything he stole. Then things get complicated.
The story is told through a mix of pictures and words. This isn’t quite the same as most graphic novels, where pictures contain words. Instead, some pages have words and others have pictures, but the two don’t really mix. You might find thirty or forty pictures in a row with no words, so you really have to pay attention to the art if you want to understand what is going on in the story.
You can watch a slide show of the opening pictures at the author’s website.
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This post written by Clint The Soul of a New Machine
by Tracy Kidder
[cover name=thesoulofanewmachine]
The Soul of a New Machine is not about a machine. There are plenty of machines in it, but it is really about people who happen to be designing a new computer called the Eagle. The small group of people who designed the Eagle put their hearts into their work. They put their souls into it. They worked long hours for a project that hadn’t even been approved by their company, so even if they did an amazing job, the company might just throw everything away. They weren’t working for money, or even for the chance to make the world’s next popular computer. They were doing it for the pure joy of creating something.
In the 1970’s, not everybody had computers at home or on their office desks. A minicomputer could be bigger than a couch. Microsoft and Apple weren’t the biggest names in the industry back then. They were just getting started.
The Soul of a New Machine tells the story of people who work at Data General Corporation, based in Massachusetts. Data General makes minicomputers. They have a series called the Eclipse, and they have just opened a new R&D lab in North Carolina. The people who work in North Carolina are asked to design the new series that Data General will start selling, while the people still in Massachusetts are left to keep tinkering with the old Eclipses. This doesn’t make the Massachusetts people happy. They want to create something, too, so their manager, Tom West, gets them going on a new project. He didn’t really get anyone’s approval to start this new project. He’s kind of unofficially asked if the president of the company would be okay with it, and he’s kind of unofficially gotten an answer: yes, but it needs to run the same programs as the old Eclipse machines did, and it can’t have a mode bit.
What does this mean? Well, you can’t just copy a program from your iPhone to your PC and expect it to run. Back in the 1970’s, pretty much every time you got a new computer, you had to throw out all your old software and get new stuff. This new computer that Tom West’s people might be allowed to build has to run all the old programs that the old computers could run.
The “mode bit” is basically an easy way to make this happen. It’s a sort of switch. Flip it on, and the new computer works just like the old one. Flip it off and the new computer gets to run like its new, awesome, shiny, super-fast self. If Tom’s group had any chance of getting their project approved, they had to find a way to make their computers run old software without this little switch.
So off the engineers went, working hard on a project that might not even be approved. They called their new machine the Eagle, and they were darned proud of it.
The Soul of a New Machine talks about their struggles. Corporate politics was part of it, but they also had to deal with tight deadlines, try things nobody had tried before, and push themselves hard to make the best computer they could possibly make. The book is also about the people themselves: their personalities, their quirks, and their hopes and dreams. You get to meet some really amazing people this way.
The time they spent on the Eagle project isn’t all hard work. You can’t work as hard as these people doand not take breaks, so we also get to see a bit of computer geek culture. One of the games the engineers play is called Adventure, and it’s pretty famous. You can play it online if you want to see what all the fuss was about.
If you are worried about having to read computer mumbo jumbo, you can relax. Yeah, there is some. The author generally does a good job of explaining it in terms that normal people can understand, but you can skip it if you want. The book isn’t about technical details. It’s about the people.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
If you are interested in the history of computers, you might want to check out the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
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This post written by Clint The Physics of Superheroes
by James Kakalios
[cover name=thephysicsofsuperheroes]
James Kakalios teaches a class called “Everything I Know About Science I Learned from Reading Comic Books.” Seriously. It’s basically a regular physics class, except that instead of all the stupid examples they use in regular physics classes, he uses crazy examples from superhero comics. The Physics of Superheroes does much the same thing, although it is not a textbook.
The book stats with a short history of superhero comics. Then it looks at different superheroes and superpowers and uses them to talk about different physics topics. Fortunately, the author is a huge comic book fan, so he does not start off the section on Superman by saying, “There’s no way Superman could do any of the stuff you see in the comics. It’s not possible, and here’s why.” Instead, he tells us how (in comic book world) Superman got is powers, focuses on “leaping tall buildings in a single bound,” and uses Newton’s laws to figure out just how strong Superman would have to be to jump that high. He doesn’t just connect superheroes with the basic laws of physics, though. He also works in modern technology, basically using superheroes and supervillains to explain how things like airbags and microwaves work.
The author says you don’t need to know anything about physics (or comic books) to read this. That’s probably true. He also says that, basically, all you need to know about math is
- 1/2 + 1/2 = 1
- so 2 times 1/2 = 1
- and whatever you do to one side of that equation, you have to do to the other.
You might encounter more complicated stuff than this, but the author claims you can skip it. That may be true, too, but I’m not sure. One thing that you should know that he doesn’t warn you about is that he writes like a college teacher. He is much easier to read than any of your college textbooks, but it’s more complicated than Harry Potter. Fortunately, he has good sense of humor and some really interesting topics.
You can read an excerpt online at the author’s website. Or, if you have a student or employee ID for LMC, DVC, or CCC, you can read the whole thing online. Neat!
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This post written by Clint The Dragons of Babel
by Michael Swanwick
[cover name=thedragonsofbabel]
The Dragons of Babel is set in a fantasy world that includes some bits of the real world. You’ll find assault weapons, Vespa scooters, and Mohammad Ali mixed in with elves, dwarves, centaurs, and dragons. There is a war going on, with mechanical dragons fighting basilisks. One day a dragon is shot down near the village where the main character, Will le Fey, lives. Even though the dragon is badly damaged and cannot fly, it is still powerful enough to take over the village. It makes Will its servant and uses him to identify people who might cause trouble. Naturally, since Will’s job is to spy on his friends, people start to hate him, and he is eventually thrown out of the village.
Will ends up in a “refugee camp,” and from there is put on a train and taken to Babel, a sort of fantasy version of New York City. On the train he meets Nat, a con artist, and Esme, a woman who has traded all of her memories for eternal youth. Once he gets to Babel, he gets involved with a gang and becomes a hero to the poor who live in tunnels underneath the city. Eventually he meets and falls in love with Alcyone, a noblewoman. Then Nat comes up with an elaborate scheme that, in addition to making a lot of money, might help Will and Alcyone get together.
You should keep in mind that this world is not the real world and the people are not humans, so they do things that seem strange to us. For example, when Will had a good day fishing, he would smear fish on his great-great-great-grandmother’s feet to show respect. Sex is also mentioned in the story, and since the characters are not human, one or two scenes might seem a little weird. However, all of these details and many more make a really interesting, elaborate world. It’s a very different world, but it’s one that can easily pull you in.
You can read some of it online through Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Fullmetal Alchemist
by Hiromu Arakawa
[cover name=fullmetalalchemist]
Fullmetal Alchemist is set in a fantasy version of Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Edward and Alphonse are studying alchemy, a sort of magical chemistry, and decide to use it to resurrect their dead mother. This ends badly: Edward ends up with a prosthetic leg and arm, while Alphonse needs to have his entire body replaced with a body of metal. Edward goes to work for the military, hoping to get access to enough resources to regrow his limbs and his brother’s body. However, the brothers eventually stumble upon a conspiracy and, with the help of some of Edward’s military buddies, have to save their country.
You can look it up on Wikipedia.
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This post written by Clint They Never Gave Up: Adventures in Early Aviation
by Michael Wilkey
[cover name=theynevergaveup]
This book describes people’s attempts to fly, from ancient myths up to the early days of modern airplanes.
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