Measuring the Earth with a Stick: Science as I've Seen It

Dust jacket notes: "...In this wonderful, often playful series of personal essays, McDonald shares with us his fascinating scientific perspective. Using a typical personal event as a springboard - boating the Great Lakes, coping with the illness of a close friend, gazing up at the night sky or experiencing pain - Mcdonald takes the reader through that event from a rich scientific viewpoint. Drawing upon his wide-ranging knowledge of astronomy, physics, biochemistry and marine biology, he leads us around the world, across the solar system and back to the beginning of itme. Along the way, he shares some of his not-so-typical adventures as a journalist, such as riding in spacecraft simulators, demonstrating terminal velocity through sky-diving, observing a lunar eclipse from a hilltop in Tanzania and spending a day in BC's interior with the Canadian Army's 'Snow Punchers' detachment, which controls avalanches with cannon fire. As well, he has had the profound privilege of spending time with such luminaries as Carl Sagan, Robert Ballard and Chris Hadfield. Often whimsical and always fascinating, Measuring the Earth with a Stick steeps the reader in the wonders of science in evidence all around us. Surely, we will never look at the world in the same way again."