I love Wordle, at http://www.wordle.net/ for them what don’t know about it yet. This Wordle is composed by copy-pasting the entire English text of Galieo’s seminal book of 1610, The Starry Messenger. In the course of this book (its Latin title is Siderius Nuncius), he explains
- How to build a telescope;
- that the Moon has mountains and valleys;
- that the Moon must be orbiting the earth, which is orbiting the Sun;
- that the Sun is farther away from Earth than previously supposed;
- that there are many, many more stars than just those visible to the naked eye;
- that the stars are much, much farther away than previously supposed;
- that there are four moons in orbit around Jupiter; A N D
- that there must be a (previously unsuspected) cloud of vapors or gases around Earth.
In other words, this one book blows open all previous suppositions about how the world is actually formed. It’s short, easily read (fits on 16-17 8×11″ sheets of paper, double-sided) and is chock full of mind-blowing discoveries — most of which your science department can replicate with a good pair of telescopes or some binoculars. It’s probably one of the most important books of the last thousand years. What? You’ve never read it? Here. Borrow this one. Go read it right now. I’ll wait.
Plus, the wordle is magnificent. Don’t all your budding science writers need to know how to use these words correctly in a sentence?
