It’s always kind of wonderful to read older texts. For one, the style is often much more approachably clear; for another, sometimes you find hidden gems of history.<p>One of my favorite bits of science history is the first edition of a text on metallurgy, that was meant for sales reps for a carnegie steel affiliate company.<p>The purpose of the book was to give sales reps enough clue to not embarrass themselves; it’s evolved and the book, now in its 8th edition or something, is a standard reference text for undergraduates.<p>Anyway the first chapter or so of the 1914 text was explaining the basic chemistry of the universe and went something like:<p><i>The three things that make up our physical universe are: matter, which is stuff that has mass; energy, which is the capacity to do work; and the luminiferous aether, which is the medium through which light propagates...</i>
I dislike reading a book in my browser. Here's the Project Gutenberg page with all file types for offline viewing.<p><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688" rel="nofollow">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688</a>
“Why does it get hot? Because when the electrons stream through it they bump and jostle their way along like rude boys on a crowded sidewalk. The atoms have to step a bit more lively to keep out of the way.”
You might enjoy this old radio program where Jean Shepherd discusses getting his Class A ham radio license when still young and in school:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU</a> part 1<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc</a> part 2