Mara Grunbaum

Today on Cool Science Radio: (1:13) Update on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, DART, which was intentionally smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos Monday September 26th. NASA administrator Bill Nelson called the mission an “unprecedented success for planetary defense. The next step is to study the asteroid using telescopes on Earth to confirm that DART’s impact altered the its orbit. Then (3:22) Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson who has just written Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, This new book brings the rationality of science and the scientific mind to look at the political and cultural issues we talk about every day.And finally (29:37) Mara Grunbaum who has just written Break Down! which is a NatGeo kids book. It is filled with photos and fun facts and covers all kinds of things that crash, crumble, and break.

In this episode of Cool Science Radio Mara Grunbaum who has just written Break Down! which is a NatGeo kids book joins Lynn and John. The book explores how things break down, crack, explode, crumple, and shatter. Break Down! explores the world through the lens of what it takes for things to, well, not work. You peer through the smoke and rubble of controlled demolitions to discover the properties of building materials. It shows the inner workings of a cracked cell phone screen, mega-avalanches and sinkholes and it travels back in time to explore the world’s most famous failures.

Today in the program, hosts Lynn Ware Peek and John Wells go on a wild ride with science writer Mara Grunbaum. Her work has appeared in Popular Science,…