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The saga follows the lives of the eccentric Bagthorpe family, who live in Unicorn House in an unspecified part of the UK. The nearest large settlement is the fictional town of Aysham. These books are humorous, wholesome, and true to family life. ... Read more

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Have our noise-soaked lives driven us mad? And is absolute silence an impossible goal—or the one thing that can save us? A lively tale of one man’s quest to find the grail of total quiet.---

“ I don’t know at what point noise became intolerable for me,” George Michelsen Foy writes as he recalls standing on a subway platform in Manhattan, hands clamped firmly over his ears, face contorted in pain. But only then does Foy realize how overwhelmed he is by the city’s noise and vow to seek out absolute silence, if such an absence of sound can be discovered.Foy begins his quest by carrying a pocket-sized decibel meter to measure sound levels in the areas he frequents most—the subway, the local café, different rooms of his apartment—as well as the places he visits that inform his search, including the Parisian catacombs, Joseph Pulitzer’s “silent vault,” the snowy expanses of the Berkshires, and a giant nickel mine in Canada, where he travels more than a mile underground to escape all human-made sound. Along the way, Foy experiments with noise-canceling headphones, floatation tanks, and silent meditation before he finally tackles a Minnesota laboratory’s anechoic chamber that the Guinness Book of World Records calls “the quietest place on earth,” and where no one has ever endured even forty-five minutes alone in its pitch-black interior before finding the silence intolerable.Drawing on history, science, journalistic reportage, philosophy, religion, and personal memory, as well as conversations with experts in various fields whom he meets during his odyssey, Foy finds answers to his questions: How does one define silence? Did human beings ever experience silence in their early history? What is the relationship between noise and space? What are the implications of silence and our need for it—physically, mentally, emotionally, politically? Does absolute silenceactually exist? If so, do we really want to hear it? And if we do hear it, what does it mean to us?According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 30 million Americans suffer from environment-related deafness in today’s digital age of pervasive sound and  sensory overload. Roughly the same number suffer from tinnitus, a condition, also environmentally related, that  makes silence impossible in even the quietest places. In this respect, Foy’s quest for silence represents more than  a simple psychological inquiry; both his queries and his  findings help to answer the question “How can we live  saner, healthier lives today?”

Innovative, perceptive, and delightfully written, Zero Decibels will surely change how we perceive and appreciate the soundscape of our lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Predictable message, but interesting journey
Although the conclusion isn't very satisfying, the writing is lively and engaging, teaching what it needs to as it explores the author's quest.

Can't wait to read it!
Heard the author interviewed on NPR: Here & Now. The topic is interesting and timely, given the amount of ambient noise we have to put up with every day, and the toll it takes on our lives. Hearing health is a neglected area in our society and any examination of the dangers, physical & psychological, are welcome. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from UXL Encyclopedia of Science, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 2334 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.This collection of entries covers major areas of science including: biology, genetics, microbiology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, engineering, technology, geology, weather, archaeology, psychology, mathematics, and medicine, and provides readers with a wide range of up-to-date, relevant, and accurate information. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Science of Everyday Things, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 4775 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.

The four-volume “Science of Everyday Things” set illustrates the importance of scientific and mathematical principles through their use in everyday life. Each volume focuses on a specific scientific discipline — biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics — offering an in-depth understanding of each discipline and its theories, creating a sense of real-life relevance for students and those not scientifically-inclined, and including interesting facts and details relating to each principle. The fascinating entries offer explanations of concepts using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, and present theories in their everyday applications. Some examples of the entries covered include how osmosis is used in dehydrating fruit; Charles' law and the chemical reaction that sets off an airbag; and how algorithms are used to figure out the NCAA playoff tournaments.

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This digital document is an article from Science of Everyday Things, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 8265 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.

The four-volume “Science of Everyday Things” set illustrates the importance of scientific and mathematical principles through their use in everyday life. Each volume focuses on a specific scientific discipline — biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics — offering an in-depth understanding of each discipline and its theories, creating a sense of real-life relevance for students and those not scientifically-inclined, and including interesting facts and details relating to each principle. The fascinating entries offer explanations of concepts using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, and present theories in their everyday applications. Some examples of the entries covered include how osmosis is used in dehydrating fruit; Charles' law and the chemical reaction that sets off an airbag; and how algorithms are used to figure out the NCAA playoff tournaments.

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This digital document is an article from Science of Everyday Things, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 5370 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.

The four-volume “Science of Everyday Things” set illustrates the importance of scientific and mathematical principles through their use in everyday life. Each volume focuses on a specific scientific discipline — biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics — offering an in-depth understanding of each discipline and its theories, creating a sense of real-life relevance for students and those not scientifically-inclined, and including interesting facts and details relating to each principle. The fascinating entries offer explanations of concepts using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, and present theories in their everyday applications. Some examples of the entries covered include how osmosis is used in dehydrating fruit; Charles' law and the chemical reaction that sets off an airbag; and how algorithms are used to figure out the NCAA playoff tournaments.

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This digital document is an article from Science of Everyday Things, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 6066 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.

The four-volume “Science of Everyday Things” set illustrates the importance of scientific and mathematical principles through their use in everyday life. Each volume focuses on a specific scientific discipline — biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics — offering an in-depth understanding of each discipline and its theories, creating a sense of real-life relevance for students and those not scientifically-inclined, and including interesting facts and details relating to each principle. The fascinating entries offer explanations of concepts using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, and present theories in their everyday applications. Some examples of the entries covered include how osmosis is used in dehydrating fruit; Charles' law and the chemical reaction that sets off an airbag; and how algorithms are used to figure out the NCAA playoff tournaments.

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This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1678 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In algebra (in particular in algebraic geometry or algebraic number theory), a valuation is a function on a field that provides a measure of size or multiplicity of elements of the field. They generalize to commutative algebra the notion of size inherent in consideration of the degree of a pole or multiplicity of a zero in complex analysis, the degree divisibility of a number by a prime number in number theory, and the geometrical concept of contact between two algebraic or analytic varieties in algebraic geometry.A field with a valuation on it is called a valued field. ... Read more