Description
Facts and explanations about the various body systems, plus information on vaccines, tears, and many other relevant topics.
Library's review
A journey deep into the mind, and the stomach, the kidneys, the muscles, the heart...
You walk, you breathe, you talk, you think. You are the most complex and intelligent organism on the planet. But how does this organism work? And how did you arise from one unique cell? Sara Stein is an
'Sara Stein explains things in ways that kids can relate to and turns science into an adventure,' writes the Los Angeles Times. Author of the highly acclaimed The Science Book and award-winning The Evolution Book, Sara Stein is the mother of four sons and lives with her husband in New york.
Your body inside-
DNA, chormosomes, and genes.
How one sandwich can feed 40 trillion cells.
The biggest brain in the world (and thoughts that travel 250 miles per hour).
Your body's defenses.
Tonsils, the appendix, and the remnants of a tail.
How the little bits of iron that color our blood read also flowed through the veins of dinosaurs.
And out-
How you see, hear, taste, tuch, smell.
The sixth sense.
Your gorilla-hairy body.
Sweat,oil, milk, and tears (which actually 'wash away' sadness).
The skin: the body's largest organ.
Tans, burns, freckles, and the one gram of pigment difference between blacks and whites.
How you grow into your face.
Contents
Introduction: No beginning...
A. Stuff
1 Taking shape
Mothers and daughters
A cell divides
You
A sperm's journey
Multiplications
The right sperm
Burrowing in
Spacesuit
The little monster
Embryonic geometry
Insies, outsies
Shape up the old way
Male or female
Shaping the sexes
Suck, pee, kick, blink
Bump goes the baby
Finishing touches
Hints of a world beyond the womb
Happy birthday
2 All-weather outerwear
Born to die
A slice of skin
A squame's story
The skin that fits
How to build a callus
White dust
The way of a wart
Five bilion different fingerprints
Kiss away the hurt
Answers in black and white
Away with warts!
Making a tan
A warning
Pigment production
The skin of a hair
Not so naked
A tortured hair
Beastly reminders
Okay to shave
Flaky
Of tears and earwax
Not too long, not too short
A word from the interior
Zits
Would you believe
Seventh grade
The scent of sex
Budding out
3 Body building
Spun together
A trip into a scratch
Scars and scabs
Denizens of the dermis
Itching juce
Making leather
Communications networks
When clotting's not enough
Your inner weave
How bones begin
Turkey tendons
Scars
Elastic babies, brittle kids
The renewable skeletion
The point of a plaster cast
The better to bite with
Fixing the break
The trouble is braces
Tooth rot
Pressure on the bone builders
Germ ecology
Fuzzmakers
Spray 'em dead
4 Flesh & fat
Worm motions
Skeletons outside and inside
Spurts and spasms
Bend, rock, twist, and turn
Bones, bones, bones
Slow fusion
All strung up
Wow!
Cocoons, in case
Dark and white
Make a motion
Heart stats
Muscle building
Minimotions
Working out
Wrinking up
Have a happy face
Cushions and quilts
To diet, or not to diet
Death by dieting
B. Guts
5 The doughnut's hole
Dissolving and digesting
An experiment with spit and starch
A molecule of water
Spit and starch, maginified
From mouth to anus
Interrupted swallows
A closer look at food
The difference between knots and noodles
Bulletin!
The mark of the meat-eater
A nibbling thought
Overstuffed
Puke
UGH!
Hmmmmmm
Through the loop
Degreasing dinner
Dishpan hands
Gurgling along
Your daily dose
Eating for 40 trillion
Mealtime for a gut cell
Down to the bowels
Meet your guests
Oh bellyache, where art thou?
Bloat
Why once a day?
Hard lumps, soft messes
Pushin' on out
6 Eating in circles
People versus peas
A short history of eating
The littlest constructions sets
Trees from thin air
Making it with minerals
Milk haters
A very long list
None of this is necessary
The trouble with vegetables
Minimum daily allowance
The little worm
What you eat when you eat a cow
Eight hundred square meters of clay
R.I.P.
Back to the soil
With the help of microbes
7 Going with the flow
Going places randomly
Tink small
Rapid transit
Marble games
The squeezer
What's blood?
Pulses
And that ain't all!
Leaks in the system
No system is perfect
Tradeoffs
Neither feat nor famine
Little trickles add up
Say 'Ahhhhhh'
So you think you don't like liver
Detox and cleanup jobs
Two hearts, not one
Keep on truckin'
8 A breath of fresh air
Crisscross
Spreading thin
Climate conrol
Blue blood, read blood
Take a deep brath
Smoke in the hothouse
Supply and demand
The beating of the cilia
Metal colors
Enter the mitochondrion
Was there an eve?
But what is energy?
The art of burning sugar
Tapping energy
The receiving line
Any food for fuel Rah! Rah!
Exhalations
CO2 sensors
9 The inside sea
Inside a bean
Why two?
The rest of the plumbing
How not to burst or shrivel
As steady as teh sea
Pickles and jerky
The real stuff
Yellow observations
Dry fish and drinkers
What's all the stink about?
Satisfying sprinkles
Varieties of urine
A thirst for water, and appetite for salt
Such interesting stuff?
What's coming down the tube?
The fate of fishy kidneys
A more radical renovation
Getting ready
Arm in arm in arm in arm
An unusual use of blood pressure
Big eggs
A vital link
C. Senses
10 The world through crust
Nosing along
The smallest motor in the world
Free samples
Born knowing
The smell biz
Skunk anosia
Messages of plain vanilla
The men in the mind
All the way to the pencil tip
Gushy gray stuff
No democracy for jerks
Mixed messages
One or two?
Heat control
Heat stroke
Fever
Red drums
Hearing hairs
Clap hands
Tuning in
The camera eye
Four-eyes
Rods and cones
Minicomputers
A view to the brain
From spots to stripes
Thanks to carrots
Imagining the world
Need to know
Colorblindness
More than eyes can see
Our kind
An easy test
Outside-in skin
The longest neurons
Beyond the sixth sense
The last laugh
The jerk
11 Organic government
Common chemicals
The sugar sickness
Hormones in disguise
Not just glands
Eavesdropping
Growing the baby
What's wrong with old and wise
The superman hormone
Who lives to be a hundred
Quiet whispers, loud alarms
Contradictions
How to start a chemical event
It's about time
Natural rhythms
Millions a day, one a month
Crampers
Different shapes
Minds of their own
Lessons in ignorance
Hidden genes
Rungs in the ladder
The education of a cell
The making of a protein
Small difference
12 Tales of igs & antigen
The enemy is legion
A not-so-simple little molecule
Clone 9-633-254-001
Sauce for the goose
Zip, slurp
Meanwhile,the T-Cell
The alien returns
A killer at its grisly task
Anexerciseinexons
Sticking stuff
TB Tine test
A shot for extinction
Boosters
Swabbing streptococci
Why not the rest of them?
Permanent pox
Measles magnified
The golden age of the common cold
The kissing disease
Germs by chance
Achoooo!
VD
Designer molecules
What a way to live!
Safe sex?
Flu today, flown tomorrow
A germ's luck
A simpler way
Infectors of infectors
IgE, as in error
A frog's way
Poison ivy
Stickers
Unlearning
Urushiol everywhere
The self, and the whole world too
13 The biggest brain in the world
Zap!
An electric situation
An audience of multitudes
Not all alike
A fly goes by
Touch base, or die
Rigor mortis
School days for brain cells
Baby games
Remember?
Curiouser and curiouser
Now you don't see it, now you do
Aha! Oh oh
The rhythm of remembering
Mysteries of sleep
Knot, knit, type, bike
Deep down in ancient places
Dragon brains
Bad luck, good luck
What's fun?
Joy juice and other brain drugs
'I will please'
No measure of success
bad news on drugs
The futhre
Afterword: No end
Glossary
Index
Photography credits
You walk, you breathe, you talk, you think. You are the most complex and intelligent organism on the planet. But how does this organism work? And how did you arise from one unique cell? Sara Stein is an
Show More
award-winning science writer whose research is impeccable and whose writing is gifted. In The Body Book-crammed with facts, statistics, explanations, and connections-she tells the incredible story of your body.'Sara Stein explains things in ways that kids can relate to and turns science into an adventure,' writes the Los Angeles Times. Author of the highly acclaimed The Science Book and award-winning The Evolution Book, Sara Stein is the mother of four sons and lives with her husband in New york.
Your body inside-
DNA, chormosomes, and genes.
How one sandwich can feed 40 trillion cells.
The biggest brain in the world (and thoughts that travel 250 miles per hour).
Your body's defenses.
Tonsils, the appendix, and the remnants of a tail.
How the little bits of iron that color our blood read also flowed through the veins of dinosaurs.
And out-
How you see, hear, taste, tuch, smell.
The sixth sense.
Your gorilla-hairy body.
Sweat,oil, milk, and tears (which actually 'wash away' sadness).
The skin: the body's largest organ.
Tans, burns, freckles, and the one gram of pigment difference between blacks and whites.
How you grow into your face.
Contents
Introduction: No beginning...
A. Stuff
1 Taking shape
Mothers and daughters
A cell divides
You
A sperm's journey
Multiplications
The right sperm
Burrowing in
Spacesuit
The little monster
Embryonic geometry
Insies, outsies
Shape up the old way
Male or female
Shaping the sexes
Suck, pee, kick, blink
Bump goes the baby
Finishing touches
Hints of a world beyond the womb
Happy birthday
2 All-weather outerwear
Born to die
A slice of skin
A squame's story
The skin that fits
How to build a callus
White dust
The way of a wart
Five bilion different fingerprints
Kiss away the hurt
Answers in black and white
Away with warts!
Making a tan
A warning
Pigment production
The skin of a hair
Not so naked
A tortured hair
Beastly reminders
Okay to shave
Flaky
Of tears and earwax
Not too long, not too short
A word from the interior
Zits
Would you believe
Seventh grade
The scent of sex
Budding out
3 Body building
Spun together
A trip into a scratch
Scars and scabs
Denizens of the dermis
Itching juce
Making leather
Communications networks
When clotting's not enough
Your inner weave
How bones begin
Turkey tendons
Scars
Elastic babies, brittle kids
The renewable skeletion
The point of a plaster cast
The better to bite with
Fixing the break
The trouble is braces
Tooth rot
Pressure on the bone builders
Germ ecology
Fuzzmakers
Spray 'em dead
4 Flesh & fat
Worm motions
Skeletons outside and inside
Spurts and spasms
Bend, rock, twist, and turn
Bones, bones, bones
Slow fusion
All strung up
Wow!
Cocoons, in case
Dark and white
Make a motion
Heart stats
Muscle building
Minimotions
Working out
Wrinking up
Have a happy face
Cushions and quilts
To diet, or not to diet
Death by dieting
B. Guts
5 The doughnut's hole
Dissolving and digesting
An experiment with spit and starch
A molecule of water
Spit and starch, maginified
From mouth to anus
Interrupted swallows
A closer look at food
The difference between knots and noodles
Bulletin!
The mark of the meat-eater
A nibbling thought
Overstuffed
Puke
UGH!
Hmmmmmm
Through the loop
Degreasing dinner
Dishpan hands
Gurgling along
Your daily dose
Eating for 40 trillion
Mealtime for a gut cell
Down to the bowels
Meet your guests
Oh bellyache, where art thou?
Bloat
Why once a day?
Hard lumps, soft messes
Pushin' on out
6 Eating in circles
People versus peas
A short history of eating
The littlest constructions sets
Trees from thin air
Making it with minerals
Milk haters
A very long list
None of this is necessary
The trouble with vegetables
Minimum daily allowance
The little worm
What you eat when you eat a cow
Eight hundred square meters of clay
R.I.P.
Back to the soil
With the help of microbes
7 Going with the flow
Going places randomly
Tink small
Rapid transit
Marble games
The squeezer
What's blood?
Pulses
And that ain't all!
Leaks in the system
No system is perfect
Tradeoffs
Neither feat nor famine
Little trickles add up
Say 'Ahhhhhh'
So you think you don't like liver
Detox and cleanup jobs
Two hearts, not one
Keep on truckin'
8 A breath of fresh air
Crisscross
Spreading thin
Climate conrol
Blue blood, read blood
Take a deep brath
Smoke in the hothouse
Supply and demand
The beating of the cilia
Metal colors
Enter the mitochondrion
Was there an eve?
But what is energy?
The art of burning sugar
Tapping energy
The receiving line
Any food for fuel Rah! Rah!
Exhalations
CO2 sensors
9 The inside sea
Inside a bean
Why two?
The rest of the plumbing
How not to burst or shrivel
As steady as teh sea
Pickles and jerky
The real stuff
Yellow observations
Dry fish and drinkers
What's all the stink about?
Satisfying sprinkles
Varieties of urine
A thirst for water, and appetite for salt
Such interesting stuff?
What's coming down the tube?
The fate of fishy kidneys
A more radical renovation
Getting ready
Arm in arm in arm in arm
An unusual use of blood pressure
Big eggs
A vital link
C. Senses
10 The world through crust
Nosing along
The smallest motor in the world
Free samples
Born knowing
The smell biz
Skunk anosia
Messages of plain vanilla
The men in the mind
All the way to the pencil tip
Gushy gray stuff
No democracy for jerks
Mixed messages
One or two?
Heat control
Heat stroke
Fever
Red drums
Hearing hairs
Clap hands
Tuning in
The camera eye
Four-eyes
Rods and cones
Minicomputers
A view to the brain
From spots to stripes
Thanks to carrots
Imagining the world
Need to know
Colorblindness
More than eyes can see
Our kind
An easy test
Outside-in skin
The longest neurons
Beyond the sixth sense
The last laugh
The jerk
11 Organic government
Common chemicals
The sugar sickness
Hormones in disguise
Not just glands
Eavesdropping
Growing the baby
What's wrong with old and wise
The superman hormone
Who lives to be a hundred
Quiet whispers, loud alarms
Contradictions
How to start a chemical event
It's about time
Natural rhythms
Millions a day, one a month
Crampers
Different shapes
Minds of their own
Lessons in ignorance
Hidden genes
Rungs in the ladder
The education of a cell
The making of a protein
Small difference
12 Tales of igs & antigen
The enemy is legion
A not-so-simple little molecule
Clone 9-633-254-001
Sauce for the goose
Zip, slurp
Meanwhile,the T-Cell
The alien returns
A killer at its grisly task
Anexerciseinexons
Sticking stuff
TB Tine test
A shot for extinction
Boosters
Swabbing streptococci
Why not the rest of them?
Permanent pox
Measles magnified
The golden age of the common cold
The kissing disease
Germs by chance
Achoooo!
VD
Designer molecules
What a way to live!
Safe sex?
Flu today, flown tomorrow
A germ's luck
A simpler way
Infectors of infectors
IgE, as in error
A frog's way
Poison ivy
Stickers
Unlearning
Urushiol everywhere
The self, and the whole world too
13 The biggest brain in the world
Zap!
An electric situation
An audience of multitudes
Not all alike
A fly goes by
Touch base, or die
Rigor mortis
School days for brain cells
Baby games
Remember?
Curiouser and curiouser
Now you don't see it, now you do
Aha! Oh oh
The rhythm of remembering
Mysteries of sleep
Knot, knit, type, bike
Deep down in ancient places
Dragon brains
Bad luck, good luck
What's fun?
Joy juice and other brain drugs
'I will please'
No measure of success
bad news on drugs
The futhre
Afterword: No end
Glossary
Index
Photography credits
Show Less
Genres
ISBN
894808052
Publication
Workman Publishing New York