Popular Science Children's Review - The Terrible Truth about Time

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Review - The Terrible Truth about Time - Nick Arnold

Tick, tock... "everyone knows about time", begins Nick Arnold, then goes on to show us how much we don't know, ending with the rather devastating fact that even scientists are pretty vague about what time really is.

Luckily this doesn't stop The Terrible Truth being one of the better books in the Horrible Science series. There's plenty on time measurement - calendars, clocks and so forth - but also we visit subjective time, space-time and more. It can't be bad to cover special relativity, general relativity and entropy (used to illustrate time's arrow) all as side illustrations in one book.

One of the great things about this topic - and it comes across well in the book - is that time is something that has a huge effect on us all, but while we often think of the basic practicalities (someone recently pointed out that the first thing almost all of us do when we wake up is try to discover what time it is), we rarely go beyond and think about time itself. As usual the illustrations (by Tony de Saulles) are an able aid to getting the message across.

I have to repeat my usual moan about the series format's use of upside down answers to little questions and quizzes. They strongly break the flow of the book and are quite unnecessary. There is also one immense howler. Arnold tells us that the Roman month names September and October, meaning seventh and eighth months are applied to the ninth and tenth months because they were named in 753 BC, then they switched to a 12 month calendar 50 years later. This is absolute baloney - it's because the year used to begin in March, and as part of Caesar's calendar reforms that Arnold mentions, the year start was switched to January.

It is a bit worrying that something so fundamental can be wrong, but provided you can overlook it, the book is very good, and it would be a shame to get too hung up on it.

Only in paperback

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

Kid's review to follow...

* Our age range recommendation is an estimated guide, but individual readers outside the range could still enjoy the book!

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