If: A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers

David J. Smith

Aug 2014 · Kids Can Press Ltd

About this ebook

If the Solar System’s planets were shrunk down to the size of sports balls, and Earth were the size of a baseball, what size would the other planets be? If your lifespan was represented by a pizza divided into twelve slices, how many slices would represent your time spent in school? These questions and more are explored in this innovative and visually appealing book about very big concepts made accessible when scaled down to kid-friendly size.

Ratings and reviews

"If " is an amazing book. The concepts are mind-bending and attainable for finite minds, just like mine. David Smith takes concepts that are so humungous and so ancient that we cannot even conceive of making sense of them. He is brilliant as he shapes these overwhelming, hard-to-imagine ideas and compares them to everyday things that we can see and are familiar with, thus bringing them down to a level that we can comprehend. Kids will be amazed and very interested as one after another these facts are presented to them. Boys especially will be drawn to this book and both genders will go back again and again to absorb its wisdom. Smith has cleverly scaled down the history of the Earth into a one-year span - (time-lines), all the wealth in the world divided into one hundred coins - (quantities), and the planet's sizes shown by different size balls - (size comparisons). The illustrations augment the concepts and are a welcome addition to the text....as seeing can be finally be believing. This book would be a wonderful add-on for any classroom. It is always fantastic to awaken the sense of awe and imagination that is present in kids (and adults) minds alike. If you want t