Physics: Why Matter Matters! Paperback – Illustrated, April 29, 2008

I am making it my personal mission to collect all of the Basher Science books. They are absolutely wonderful; I’ve never seen books like them before. If you have a child in your life that is keen on science (or one that isn’t!), these are amazing books to spark their curiosity.Part graphic novel, the books have cute little illustrated characters to make big, complicated, even intimidating concepts kid-friendly. Each concept is written in first person, making it relatable. The side is color-coded, so you can easily flip to the chapter on the Wave Gang or Electric Cuties.I cannot say enough about these books. To think that my 6 year old is reading about physics and LOVING it is extraordinary.

My son asked for this book for his birthday and absolutely loves high level learning that is broken down into easier to learn terms.

I'm a physicist and father of a VERY curious 10 year-old boy. I decided to introduce him to some concepts in physics and found this book on Amazon. I bought it, but had little hope it was going to anything but a physics book with pictures for kids. And how wrong I was!! The text is cool, funny, and attractive, and at the same time it touches the concepts with fine precision. Clearly, the authors put a lot of thought when writing the book (and I DO respect a scientist putting his time to write a physics book for kids!). In short, it's a great book for young kids. Congratulations!

The only drawback to this book is the fact that now my 6 year old knows what alpha particles are and I have no idea. This is another outstanding science book for children that not only teaches but excites them about the subject matter as well. The book arrived in the mail last week and on the first day my son read the entire book. Never fear however the subject matter is introduced well enough to entertain and inform in that first reading, however it is physics. He has and will I am sure continue reading, understanding a little more each time. He was disappointed that Physics did not come with a poster like The Periodic Table: Elements with Style. I do recommend reading the book thoroughly, if like me you are not into physics, before your child does. The conversations go better when you don't have to look everything up.

My son is a voracious reader. We got him 7 of the Basher Science books for his 8th birthday in late March. He had finished them all by the end of April and has picked them back up again to reread. (2nd grade, reading at a U-level) He won't touch a fiction book unless forced, but if it is about science or technology he can't put it down. Just enough pictures to keep him from feeling intimidated by the text, perfect silliness level to keep him engaged, and more real science facts than he could absorb the first time through.

I purchased this book for a nine-year-old girl who is very interested in science and math. I'm a friend of her parents and love to help promote her interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields.She loves the book; unfortunately I haven't been around to see what kinds of questions she has about it. I read it myself before giving it to her just to see what it was like.The illustrations are really cute and well-done. Some of them have some subtle humor. Each page spread is about a different topic; there is an illustration on the right-hand page and a short summary on the left-hand side, plus some bullet-point facts. I liked the variety of topics included, from the basics (atoms, waves, mass, energy, protons, etc.) to some more obscure topics (as far as kids are concerned): dark matter, the higgs-boson, blackbody radiation, Schrodinger's cat, and so on. However, I am not sure if there is any meaningful way to explain the more advanced topics (like the higgs-boson) to kids who are just learning about matter, energy, and atoms. I found the explanations of the advanced topics to be more confusing than helpful, but maybe they will spark kids' interest in further study. Similarly, I don't see the point of the book's use of scientific notation to describe the sizes of things, since the numbers used are pretty darn hard to comprehend and there was no primer on scientific notation included.Another quibble is that sometimes the book uses nomenclature that isn't explained until further along in the book or in the glossary at the end. Something like "check out page 34" or whatever would have been helpful in these situations, as not every entry is listed in the table of contents.One reviewer noted that there is too much slang. I wouldn't call it slang so much as excessive use of colloquialisms and idioms. I definitely would not recommend the book for non-native speakers of english.Overall, I found this to be a fun book that will spark kids' interest on a lot of topics related to physics and be a starting-point for learning about the topic. It would be a good reference for a kid to have around.

Amazing. Fantastic. My 6 and 8 year old love this book. I bought it because my sister (their aunt) has a Ph.D in physics and I wanted a kids book that explained some of the concept of what she does. What surprised me is the elegance and creativity of the illustrations and the writing. It is not something you see often in kids books. I found the words stayed with me and the kids. The kids would refer to the "friends" and could tell me about the different concepts days later. Definitely get it if you have kids curious about the world and you want to give them broad awareness of how the universe works.

I bought several of the Basher series of books based on other reviews and have not been disappointed. My 3 1/2 year old son wanted us to read him the books as soon as he saw the covers - so that definitely grabbed his attention. He has asked for them to be read repeatedly so it's not just a first sight curiosity. I don't expect him to really understand most of the concepts but it's good to introduce just the words and ideas into his head and he enjoys it. These books aren't meant to be detailed explanations but are high level concept overviews and it does a good job at that.