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Back when I was in school our physics teacher disappeared. Literally – one day he just stopped coming into school. So we ended up with a replacement for a couple of months while waiting for someone new to take the job permanently. Mr Green was an interesting guy, but he found it impossible to stick to the subject he was meant to be teaching. A random question would set him off on a rambling discussion of something entirely perpendicular to the curriculum. It wasn’t long before people started doing that on purpose, because Mr Green’s rambling observations were a hell of a lot more interesting than how a spring works.

The Velocity of Honey is like that. There’s no overarching theme here, no point that Ingram’s trying to make except maybe that science is full of interesting stuff and, well, here’s some of it in handy book form. It’s not serious science trying to do serious things, and it’s fascinating. The focus is a little narrow, but Ingram addresses this in his prologue: “I chose the topics based on the appeal of their science, which really meant their appeal for me. (For some unknown reason, there seems to be a lot of psychology and physics, with not much in between.)”

If you’re happy to let Ingram ramble at you on 24 different subjects this this’ll work well. I’ve read quite a lot of pop-sci and these kind of books have a tendency to cover the same ground – but I never noticed this in The Velocity of Honey. Ingram’s both original and interesting, which is quite an achievement. I had fun reading it.