Makes me think of the kind of 'survival kit' that could find its way onto future starships, that might turn into accidental colony ships. A super-adaptive recipe book that allows for differences in climate and resource base.
"I can get from stone age to space age in ___ centuries!"
I'm getting one. But I too am irritated by how many impractical things are on it. Knowing the atomic contents of synthetic progesterone is not actually inherently useful to me. Penicillin, sterilization, electromagnets, latitude and longitude, okay, quartz and aluminum even, but...
Where's the cam, or some other basic engineering principles? And in chemistry, I think how to get aspirin from willow bark would be a pretty big one. I haven't the faintest clue how to grind a good magnifying lens, and I suspect it's simple enough to compress here.
The 3-plate technique for generating a flat surface. Archimedes' Principle. The photoelectric effect. Gunpowder and nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose (guncotton) syntheses. Agriculture. Plumbing and the concept of sewage handling. DNA. The transistor. ENIAC.
All infinitely more useful than the stoichiometric formulae for anything, which tell you nothing at all about how to actually make it (since there's no structure information).
The aerodynamics section is woefully misleading; generating lift was never the problem, it was getting a sufficient power-to-weight ratio. The Wrights' chief achievment was in obtaining a new, lightweight engine.
All the same, I was happy to see that birth control was included - yay for not assuming that time-travelers will be men!
You can apparently get progesterone precursors from a species of Mexican yams (or the source for the original synthesis, sasparilla), and estrogens from pregnant mare's urine, but I think the effectiveness of hormonal birth control is pretty dependent on the precise dose and the mix of particular progestogens/estrogens/other byproducts you end up with. Not sure I'd want to chance it.
Instructions for making condoms, diaphragms, and spermicides would be more useful.
when I was a kid my dad and I made a compass out of a magnetized razor blade (http://www.linkthink.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/435178-razor-blade.jpg) + needle + eraser (somehow I'd forgotten this).
Incidentally, I still have no idea how this kind of blade can be used for shaving.
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"I can get from stone age to space age in ___ centuries!"
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Where's the cam, or some other basic engineering principles? And in chemistry, I think how to get aspirin from willow bark would be a pretty big one. I haven't the faintest clue how to grind a good magnifying lens, and I suspect it's simple enough to compress here.
What else are we missing?
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All infinitely more useful than the stoichiometric formulae for anything, which tell you nothing at all about how to actually make it (since there's no structure information).
The aerodynamics section is woefully misleading; generating lift was never the problem, it was getting a sufficient power-to-weight ratio. The Wrights' chief achievment was in obtaining a new, lightweight engine.
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You can apparently get progesterone precursors from a species of Mexican yams (or the source for the original synthesis, sasparilla), and estrogens from pregnant mare's urine, but I think the effectiveness of hormonal birth control is pretty dependent on the precise dose and the mix of particular progestogens/estrogens/other byproducts you end up with. Not sure I'd want to chance it.
Instructions for making condoms, diaphragms, and spermicides would be more useful.
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Incidentally, I still have no idea how this kind of blade can be used for shaving.