How much life can one cubic foot hold? Read how photographer David Liittschwager and zoologist Chris Meyer studied life in one cubic foot, and how their findings can teach us about life on the entire planet. Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this Informational Text builds reading skills while engaging students' curiosity about STEAM topics through real-world examples. Packed with factoids and informative sidebars, it features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for use in a makerspace and teaches students every step of the engineering design process. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from actual Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Discover engineering innovations that solve real-world problems with content that touches on all aspects of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math!

Twelve inches by twelve inches by twelve inches, the cubic foot is a relatively tiny unit of measure compared to the whole world. With every step, we disturb and move through cubic foot after cubic foot. But behold the cubic foot in nature—from coral reefs to cloud forests to tidal pools—even in that finite space you can see the multitude of creatures that make up a vibrant ecosystem. For A World in One Cubic Foot, esteemed nature photographer David Liittschwager took a bright green metal cube—measuring precisely one cubic foot—and set it in various ecosystems around the world, from Costa Rica to Central Park. Working with local scientists, he measured what moved through that small space in a period of twenty-four hours. He then photographed the cube’s setting and the plant, animal, and insect life inside it—anything visible to the naked eye. The result is a stunning portrait of the amazing diversity that can be found in ecosystems around the globe. Many organisms captured in Liittschwager’s photographs have rarely, if ever, been presented in their full splendor to the general reader, and the singular beauty of these images evocatively conveys the richness of life around us and the essential need for its conservation. The breathtaking images are accompanied by equally engaging essays that speak to both the landscapes and the worlds contained within them, from distinguished contributors such as Elizabeth Kolbert and Alan Huffman, in addition to an introduction by E. O. Wilson. After encountering this book, you will never look at the tiniest sliver of your own backyard or neighborhood park the same way; instead, you will be stunned by the unexpected variety of species found in an area so small. A World in One Cubic Foot puts the world accessibly in our hands and allows us to behold the magic of an ecosystem in miniature. Liittschwager’s awe-inspiring photographs take us to places both familiar and exotic and instill new awareness of the life that abounds all around.

Life Is Like A Rubik's Cube is designed to show people how to solve the twists and turns of life by teaching them how to solve the twists and turns of the Rubik's Cube. Too many people overcomplicate the Rubik's Cube and associate being able to solve it with being a genius, and not enough people realize that everyone has a genius inside of them. This book will help you discover the genius within by simplifying life and simplifying the Rubik's Cube. Life Is Like a Rubik's Cube outlines the steps of how Derrick Standifer learned to solve the twist and turns of the Rubik's Cube and applied the same principles to his life's quarrels. Throughout the pages of this book, you will learn how to: 1. Believe in yourself. 2. Solve your cross.3. Fill in your corners. 4. Take it to the next level.5. See the bigger picture. Author, Derrick Standifer shares how he graduated from high school as the salutatorian, lost his scholarship from FAMU, and flunked out of Georgia State. He then returned to FAMU to complete his bachelor's degree, master's degree, and is now in the process of completing the requirements to earn his Ph.D. This book is designed to help others overcome their own trials and recognize their tribulations. It proves that failing does not mean you are a failure, that you can always turn your test into a testimony with a renewed mind. Remember, if you learn to solve the Rubik's Cube, then you can also solve the twists and turns of your own life.

From the author of the #1 "New York Times" bestseller "The Millionaire Messenger," an electrifying book that provides the keys to motivation to satisfy the most essential creative and intellectual needs.

How much life can one cubic foot hold? Read how photographer David Liittschwager and zoologist Chris Meyer studied life in one cubic foot, and how their findings can teach us about life on the entire planet. Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this Informational Text builds reading skills while engaging students’ curiosity about STEAM topics through real-world examples. Packed with factoids and informative sidebars, it features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for use in a makerspace and teaches students every step of the engineering design process. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from actual Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Discover engineering innovations that solve real-world problems with content that touches on all aspects of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math!

'More than just a memoir. A manifesto for a whole way of thinking' Daily Mail 'An idiosyncratic and gripping memoir about his life and the indomitable career of the Cube' Observer 'The rise and enduring power of the world's most popular puzzle toy . . . Cubed is less a memoir than a chronicle of Rubik's evolving relationship with his creation' Financial Times *** As a child, Erno Rubik became obsessed with puzzles of all kinds. To him, they weren't just games - they were challenges that captured his imagination, creativity and perseverance. Rubik's own puzzle went on to be solved by millions worldwide, becoming one of the bestselling toys of all time. In Cubed, he tells us the story of the unexpected and unprecedented rise of the Cube for the very first time - and makes a case for why rediscovering our playfulness and inner curiosity holds the key to creative thinking.

The Rubik's Cube is the world's best-known puzzle, a magical object that has baffled and fascinated the world for over fifty years. This clearly-illustrated step-by-step guide teaches you a foolproof beginners' method for solving the Cube, plus advanced techniques if you want to learn to solve it in seconds. An Official Guide to cracking the cube!

Christian McPherson’s debut novel The Cube People pokes fun at government cubicle culture through the life and times of a struggling computer programmer/novelist wannabe. McPherson surrounds his protagonist, Colin MacDonald, with a cast of screwball characters while he toils away at his government job, struggles with fertility and dreams of becoming a published writer. Recycled air, bad lighting and bizarre environmental office policies by day; scheduled love-making sessions and rejection letters by night, push MacDonald to try to write his way out of his cyclical life story. Part tragedy, part comedy—with a bit of horror thrown in for fun—McPherson cooks up a boiling plot and a memorable anti-hero.

"[The author, a] journalist and aspiring "speedcuber," attempts to break into the international phenomenon of speedsolving the Rubik's Cube ... while exploring the greater lessons that can be learned through solving it"--Amazon.com.

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north. By the time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a “tough girl”—a young woman who confronts danger without apology—she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman’s adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her—and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own. Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence—navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors—as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land. Weaving fast-paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman’s journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.