Stories
Not courses: the history of an idea, told as a book. Who first thought it, who argued against it, and how it was finally proved.
c. 600 BCE – 1990 · 29 pages
The Story of the Atom
How an idea about the smallest things took 2,400 years to prove
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c. 450 BCE – 1986 · 29 pages
The Story of Light
How people found out what they were seeing with
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c. 1800 BCE – 1891 · 29 pages
The Story of Number
How people kept inventing the numbers they first called impossible
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1665 – 2013 · 29 pages
The Story of the Cell
How people found the smallest thing that is alive
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c. 350 BCE – 1968 · 29 pages
The Story of Motion
How people found out what keeps things moving, and what stops them
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c. 2000 BCE – 2014 · 29 pages
The Story of Money
How people came to trust silver, coins, paper and numbers in a ledger
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c. 350 BCE – 2008 · 31 pages
The Story of Evolution
How people found out where the kinds of living things come from
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1644 – 1956 · 31 pages
The Story of Energy
How people found the one thing that is never used up, and why
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c. 2500 BCE – today · 27 pages
The Story of the Year
How people learned to fit the days into one trip around the Sun
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c. 3100 BCE – today · 29 pages
The Story of the Seasons
Why some people counted two seasons, some three, some six, and most of us four
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c. 1140 BCE – today · 31 pages
The Story of Day and Night
How people learned that the sky stands still and the Earth turns
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c. 700 BCE – today · 31 pages
The Story of the Moon
How people learned where moonlight comes from, and what the Moon is made of
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c. 450 BCE – today · 29 pages
The Story of the Sun
How people learned what the Sun is, how far and how big it is, and why it shines
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c. 275 BCE – today · 32 pages
The Story of the Stars
How people learned that the stars are suns
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c. 600 BCE – today · 32 pages
The Story of the Earth
How people learned that the ground under their feet is a spinning ball
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c. 1000 BCE – today · 29 pages
The Story of Constellations
Why people joined the stars into pictures, where the names came from, and why we still use them
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c. 2560 BCE – today · 16 pages
The Story of Measurement
How people learned to say "how long" so that everyone means the same
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c. 1400 BCE – today · 15 pages
The Story of Length
From a king's forearm to a beam of light
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1585 – 2022 · 17 pages
The Story of Metric Prefixes
How kilo, centi and milli got their names
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before 3000 BCE – 2019 · 34 pages
The Story of Mass
How people learned the difference between how much stuff a thing has and how hard the Earth pulls on it
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