杏吧原创

DORLING KINDERSLEY, the most sophisticated publisher of children鈥檚 encyclopedias, has fun making sense of the weather in this book. From Gaia to the building of a weather station, weather lore to El Ni帽o, humidity to jet streams, its range is staggering. But even better are the many simple experiments featured in its pages.

In books like this, you often get the impression that devising the experiments was a chore imposed on a reluctant author by the publisher鈥檚 format. No sign of that here. You can make your own Rossby wave with potter鈥檚 wheel and candles, an asteroid strike with modelling clay and a bag of flour, or acid rain with red cabbage, vinegar, coffee filters and a candle. And try burning a hole in the ozone layer with 鈥� sorry, they drew the line at that one.

Sometimes the simplest experiments are the best. How to mimic a cloud creating April showers? Freeze a mirror for an hour and then breathe continually on it. See how long before the water vapour begins to form droplets, which then coalesce to form drops large enough to run down the mirror as 鈥渞ain鈥�.

A shame, though, that the text has nothing on real-life rainmaking by seeding clouds. But the cloud atlas is comprehensive and crisply captioned. Under cirrostratus, the harbinger of a warm front, we are invited to 鈥渋magine an enormous board lying on the ground in front of you. Lift the edge nearest you by 1 degree. This is the angle that a warm front approaches 鈥︹��

As good as its title: after reading this you really will begin to understand how the weather works.