One bright February afternoon on a beach in Cornwall,
Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting and
started watching the waves rolling into shore.
Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, and
decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don't
just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us,
and our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of
our hearts, to the movement of food through our
digestive tracts and of signals across our brains, waves
are the transport systems of our bodies. Everything we
see and hear reaches us via light and sound waves, and
our information age is reliant on the microwaves and
infrared waves used by the telephone and internet
infrastructure. From shockwaves unleashed by explosions
to torsional waves that cause suspension bridges to
collapse, from sonar waves that allow submarines to
'see' with sound to Mexican waves that sweep through
stadium crowds...there were waves, it seemed, wherever
Gavin looked. But what, he wondered, could they all have
in common with ones we splash around in on holiday?By
the time he made the ultimate surfer's pilgrimage to
Hawaii, Gavin had become a world-class wavewatcher,
although he was still rubbish at surfing. And, while
this fascinating, funny book may not teach you how to
ride the waves, it will show you how to tune into the
shapes, colours and forms of life's many
undulations. |
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