The Measure of Everything: Visible Units by Kazuhiko Maruyama Publisher: Houlang | Elephant Publishing House

Introduction · · · · · ·
Use photos and drawings to make the "units" visible, giving a concrete feel to the nearly 80 types of units.

How are units defined and named, and what is the convenience of units such as knots, Mach, gallons, barrels, and pounds?

Understand units that you don’t quite understand and increase interest in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

◎ Editor's Recommendation

☆ Use photos and pictures to make abstract physical units more concrete and make mathematics, physics and chemistry more approachable

How long is 1 centimeter - the width of an adult's middle finger nail; how heavy is 1 kilogram - the weight of 4 apples or 165 one-yuan coins; how bright is 1 lux - the brightness of a firefly; how big is 1 mole - the number of sand grains that can make up 30 Mount Fujis... Use a large number of photos and drawings to explain, connect the abstract units with the real objects, and you will have a concrete feeling all of a sudden. The abstract data in mathematics, physics and chemistry courses are no longer distant.

☆ Introduce what the unit is used to represent, and explain how it was established and what kind of history it has

The unit "meter" is a unit of length. The French initially defined it as 1/10 million of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole, and later changed it to the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds. "Horsepower" was a unit of power set by James Watt to demonstrate the superiority of steam engines over horses. Later generations used "watt" as a unit of power to commemorate his achievements. More stories about units are waiting for you to discover.

☆ Clear organization and format, detailed introduction of 36 units and introduction of about 40 related units

Introducing units such as length, area, volume, mass, time, speed, light-related, electricity-related, power, energy, pressure, sound intensity, frequency, temperature, resolution, data, and prefixes used to express huge and tiny numbers. Building a three-dimensional knowledge network in multiple sections: what units are used to represent quantities, what symbols are used, scientists whose names are used as units, expanding knowledge, interesting trivia...

◎ Introduction

Numbers + units are how we measure the world.

In daily life, we often see units such as meter, mu, second, liter, kilogram, ton, etc. We also come into contact with barrel, Newton, ampere, volt, horsepower, watt, joule, hertz, dpi and even wind level and earthquake magnitude. But do you really know how these units are determined, how long, how big, how heavy, how fast, how strong? This book uses illustrations to help you understand nearly 80 units, so that abstract units can also bring concrete feelings, allowing you to have a deeper understanding of the world.

The characteristic of this book is that it uses very vivid pictures and photos to show readers the quantity of various abstract units. It can be used as a supplement to classroom knowledge, or as an interesting extracurricular extension reading material, which is conducive to cultivating scientific thinking.

◎ Media Recommendation

Japanese people intuitively understand the size of 4.5 tatami mats and 1 liter bottles. But non-metric units such as barrels and gallons are difficult to understand. This book is a wonderful work with pictures and text, and it is an epoch-making attempt to visualize units. When I was a child, I learned from the TV series "Little House on the Prairie" that an acre is half the size of a football field and two tatami mats are about 1 ping. Recently, the brightness of light bulbs in home appliance stores has changed from "watts" to "lumens", which confuses me. I also don't understand becquerels and sieverts. But I understand everything from this book.

——Comments from Japanese readers

Although we know some units that are too big to imagine or very abstract in theory, in this book we can understand them just by looking at the pictures. Perhaps because of this, most of the units in the book are presented with photos and pictures, and there are easy-to-understand explanations (origin, meaning, usage, etc.).

When learning units, it is best to be able to do simple multiplication and division, but I think units are basically closely related to daily life and can go beyond the understanding of the corresponding grade, so I think this book is suitable as a gift for elementary school students. However, the content of this book is very diverse, from the familiar "meter" to the "Kelvin" that you may have never heard of, and it is explained quite thoroughly...

I really recommend this book because it is a groundbreaking illustrated book that allows you to intuitively understand units that adults seem to understand but can only vaguely imagine. ... I have seen all kinds of picture books, and this is one of the most advanced picture books I have ever seen, so I want to buy it for my own children.

——Comments from readers of Japan Asia

About the Author
Editor-in-Chief: Kazuhiko Maruyama, born in Mie Prefecture, Japan in 1970. He holds a PhD in Economics from the School of Economics, Seijo University, Japan. He has served as a researcher at the Institute of Economics, Seijo University, a lecturer at the School of Science and Technology, Meiji University, Japan, and a professor at the Department of Business Information, Toyama Junior College, Japan. He is currently an associate professor at the Department of Business Administration, School of Economics, Wako University, Japan. His research areas include innovative design, new product development management, market strategy, and purchasing behavior analysis.

Compiled by: Japan Children's Club, mainly engaged in the planning and editing of children's books, mainly in the fields of children's games, education and welfare. Representative works include "Science Around Us", "Baby English Picture Book", "Primary School English Picture Book", "Japanese Industry", "Understanding and Prevention of Natural Disasters", "Historical Object Picture Book", "Automobile Picture Book", "Poplardia Picture Book WONDA Railway". More than 100 books are planned and edited every year.