Follows the nineteenth-century race to discover how to measure the distance to a star, profiling such contributors as a destitute boy who became a foremost telescope maker, a hot-tempered Dane who lost his nose in a mathematics duel, and a musician who discovered a planet from his backyard. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Product Description: Hirshfeld's Astronomy Activity and Laboratory Manual is a collection of twenty classroom-based exercises that provide an active-learning approach to mastering and comprehending key elements of astronomy. Used as a stand-alone activity book, or as a supplement to any mainstream astronomy text, this manual provides a broad, historical approach to the field through a narrative conveying how astronomers gradually assembled their comprehensive picture of the cosmos over time...read more

Tells the story of Michael Faraday, who was a poor, uneducated bookbinder's apprentice who overcame adversity and class prejudice in nineteenth-century England to emerge as the greatest experimental scientist of his day.