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biiaanccca's review against another edition
funny
informative
medium-paced
4.0
This book was hilarious and also at times informative. I feel like I was back in my middle school to high school years, but this time I was actually paying attention.
My favorite flow chart had to be: How to Tell What time Period You’re Stranded In. I spent 5-10 minutes going through every combination.
Interesting Information I Learned:
- From the Five Fundamental Technologies table:
- From the Selective Breeding table:
- The Field-Crop Rotation System
table which taught me some basic farming info, and then later on in the chapter I learned how important Legumes as a crop are - The Food Edibility test
(definitely storing these steps in the back of my mind) - The Technology Tree
showed technologies that can be invented on their own, and technologies that need other technologies to be invented first - The Useful Chemicals chapter explained each chemicals:
- Here’s Where Some Useful Human Parts Are and What They Do
- Roman numerals
- Sidebar: Why Can't You Divide by Zero?
- The History Behind the Modern Grapefruit
- The “Suicide Plant”
- Useful Plants chapter
- Domesticated Animals
- How Yeast is Made to Make Bread
- CPR Songs
- Sidebar: Rehydration Drink
Sections That Made Me Laugh:
- The Salt Section
- The definition of an Ideogram
- The Index
Direct Quotes I Thought Were Funny:
- Exhibit A:
- Exhibit B:
- Exhibit C:
- Exhibit D: The Repair Guide
- Exhibit E: the sarcasm in this paragraph
- Exhibit F: The renaming of inventions to your name, example
Not So Great Animal Facts I Learned:
- Because they breathe quickly and have high metabolic rates, many birds
die from carbon monoxide and other hazardous chemicals before people. Canaries specifically experience carbon monoxide fainting about 20 minutes before people do. If you bring a canary into the mine and monitor its level of consciousness, you'll be able to discover the presence of otherwise undetected hazardous gases while you still have time to flee. - You make silk by
boiling cocoons to kill silkworms
More Informational Sections I Liked:
- In the hospital where Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis worked,
there were two maternity clinics: one had students working as midwives, while the other had medical students performing autopsies before helping with births, all without ever washing their hands. Dr. Semmelweis instituted a hand-washing routine after observing that mothers at the medical student clinic would experience dreadful vaginal infections that caused them to pass away up to 30% of the time (compared to just 5% at the midwife clinic). In both clinics, the infection-related mortality rate fell to 1%. The idea that sickness might be averted by just washing hands was deemed radical at the time because the causes of illness were believed to be unique to each patient. - The Chamberlen family was reported to own a contraption that may aid with
birthing. Therefore, the Chamberlens would require the mother to be blindfolded and would force everyone else out of the delivery room. - The first manned heavier-than-air self-powered flight was created by the
Wright brothers. After developing and patenting airplanes, Wright stopped developing new products and instead spent the majority of their time litigating rival companies as well as specific pilots who dared to operate non-Wright aircraft. The Wrights also possessed a patent in France, but its enforcement had been repeatedly stopped there, thus by January 1912, there were more than 800 pilots in France performing flights every day compared to only 90 in the United States. When the US government officially required aviation manufacturers to share their patents, the lawsuits finally came to a stop in 1917 CE, but the harm had already been done. That same year, the United States entered World War I using French-built aircraft because American aircraft were thought to be of unacceptable inferiority. - Water can be used
to treat skin conditions. A hot compress should be applied to the affected area if it is hot, painful, or oozing pus. Apply a cold compress if it hurts, itches, or exudes clear fluid. - To perform CPR,
your patient should be placed on their back while you conduct CPR. You should apply firm pressure at a rate of around 100 compressions per minute in the patient's center of the chest, between the nipples. - When a bone is shattered,
you should execute traction in position, which entails moving any broken or dislocated limb out and away before allowing it to return to its original position. In addition to reducing pain in the long run, this stops bones from healing in the wrong areas. Grab the fractured limb with both hands; the upper hand will hold it in place while the lower hand will apply downward pressure as it is slowly and gently returned to its natural position. A splint, which is any stiff material, like wood, that will hold the broken bone in place while it heals, can then be used to stabilize the lesion. They ought to fit snugly, but not so tightly as to restrict blood flow. - Blood loss that results in death is the immediate threat
posed by a wound. The blood flow will be reduced if you can lift the wound. In order for blood to start clotting and bleeding to stop, there needs to be firm pressure applied for about 20 minutes. In the event that that doesn't work, try to locate the bleeding artery and apply direct pressure with a finger to that area. A tourniquet, which is a very tight bandage, is a last resort if everything else fails. A tight tourniquet restricts the flow of blood beyond it, which stops the bleeding but, after a few hours, causes the tissues in the tourniqueted limb to die as well. Nevertheless, the person to whom the tourniqueted limb is attached has a possibility of surviving today's blood loss. Even though cauterization is a desperate, unpleasant option for bigger wounds, it is an option. You can burn the flesh closed by heating up something (wood, metal, etc.) and applying it straight to the hound's bleeding pats. As little flesh as possible should be cauterized because doing so not only hurts but also causes the wound to develop dead tissue that can serve as an infection vector. You could require stitches to repair a huge wound. Simply boil the thread and the object you're using as a needle for twenty minutes to clean them, wash your hands with soap and water, and sew the wound together by threading tiny loops of thread through both sides of it and tying them off in a knot. - After carefully rinsing a wound with clean water,
you should apply either alcohol or an iodine solution in water with a 2 percent concentration to destroy bacteria. Since honey doesn't support bacterial growth, it can be used in a pinch if you don't have either of those. After that, close the incision with stitches, unless it has been more than 12 hours; in that case, leave it unclosed and pack it with gauze to allow the wound to drain.
elenavarg's review against another edition
Sadly, didn’t finish reading this. A fun concept, but it couldn’t keep my attention.
jhrnr99's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
5.0
I absolutely adored this book. Some parts were naturally more interesting to me than others, but it is such an awesome book for learning about all of the amazing technologies we take for granted. Also, so many great stories and fun-facts added onto an already extremely well-written and informative book made this just perfect. This will 100% be my suggested book for anyone that loves to figure out how things work and learn about the world around them. 10/10.
riccii's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
4.0