Popular Science Children's Review - Wholly Irresponsible Exploits

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Review - Car Science - Richard Hammond

There's nothing better to get science across than a real world application - and here's one that will appeal to many: using the jokey, techie approach favoured by the Top Gear TV show on the car as a science illustration, brought to you by the show's most loveable presenter, Richard Hammond. Although plenty of girls do like cars, the publisher, Dorling Kindersley, makes no secret of the fact that the primary audience for this book is boys.

It's not totally clear of Richard Hammond actually wrote the book, or just the chatty little introductions. In standard DK fashion, the copyright is with the publisher rather than the author, so it's hard to tell - but there certainly is a different feel to these introductory bits, as if they were written separately. This lack of continuity is probably the worst aspect of the book - for example the first section introduction one talks about power, giving the impression we'll find out what power is, and ends with 'Incidentally, why on earth is it called horsepower...' which makes you think you'll turn the page and find an answer. But over the page is a two page spread about fuels, then a pair of pages about energy. You do get there eventually, but the way it's done is a touch off-putting.

While we're getting moans out of the way, the page layout wasn't the clearest. It follows the standard DK format of pairs of facing pages on a subject, but the way the different elements are thrown together on the page lacks the clarity of main DK layouts - it was often quite difficult to work out how to make your way around the page, and the different areas weren't always well differentiated. It was okay, but not brilliant.

However, that's a relatively small moan - and the fact is there's plenty of good stuff in here. First of all, for young car fans, there's tons about what all those terms mean, from understeer and oversteer to split differentials. I particularly liked the bit about the now obscure and totally out-of-date measure horsepower. It's amusing that this is still used with such modern vehicles. We find out about Watt's original error in estimating the power of a horse that means a horse actually only has around 0.7 horsepower - a bit of a disappointment for four-legged speed freaks.

Linking to the animal power/speed aspect there's also an interesting spread covering the speed of everything from a snail to Thrust SSC via a person, a racehorse and a Bugatti Veyron (amongst others). It would have been interesting to explore more why different animals are able to achieve different speeds (this is mentioned for a human), and particularly how the 'bounce' factor means many animals can effectively produce more energy than they consume - but in the end the book is about cars.

Having said that, the other thing Car Science does particularly well is to bring in the physics of motion - Isaac Newton and his laws figure heavily - and apply them to just about everything in a car from stopping distance to the friction between a driver's hand and the steering wheel. By mixing ordinary road cars, racing cars and strange concept cars, it's possible to explore some extremes of the physics involved, including the way different fuels have different capabilities to store energy. We also see energy involved in everything from jet and rocket cars to car crashes and crash test dummies (given Richard Hammond's spectacular and well-publicised high speed crash, it's rather strange this is never used to illustrate any of these points). The result is great coverage of much of the physics of motion that is pitched at just the right level and with enough fun and excitement to keep the interest at Formula One level.

It's not totally clear what age range this book is aimed at - our suggested range is more of a guess than usual. One of the Amazon listings has it classed as 4 to 8, which it is clearly not suited for. Some of the wording almost suggests an adult audience, as it's very much talking about 'you' (the reader) being behind the wheel, but I suspect this is aspirational, in the same way that younger viewers enjoy Top Gear without being able to drive the cars described.

Overall a good book - not one of Dorling Kindersley's best as far as page layout goes, but this doesn't get in the way of it being great fun for those who like cars, and educational with it in a painless fashion.

Only in hardback

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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

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