The universe is a mind-boggling place, full of things seemingly too big and too small to understand. How can we visualise the minuscule world of the atom and the vastness of our galaxy? How can we grasp a billionth of a second and a billion years? Or the freezing point of Helium and the heat generated by the blast of an atomic bomb? David Blatner's solution is to put these and many other 'inconceivable' items on six spectrums - numbers, size, light, sound, heat and time - that put them into a human perspective. Full of facts, illustrations and anecdotes, Spectrums proves that we really can make sense of our extraordinary universe.Visit spectrums.com for amazing interactive charts, videos and more

In his two previous books, The Joy of Pi and The Flying Book, David Blatner ingeniously blended narrative and illustration to bring to life the infinitude of the number pi and the mysteries of flying in airplanes. In Spectrums, he illuminates the variety of spectra that affect our lives every day: numbers (the largest to the smallest), light and sound (in their many frequencies), length and breadth (quantum particles to the size of the observable universe), temperature (absolute cold to the ultimate heat), and time (from the quickest of calculations to the age of the universe). A few intriguing facts from Spectrums: *Computer scientists often refer to the speed of a computer in 'flops' - FLoating point Operations Per Second. Most computers can process megaflops or gigaflops (millions or billions of operations), but the fastest computers are breaking the petaflop barrier (quadrillions of operations per second). *If a one inch square on a graph equaled $1,000,000, Warren Buffet's $65 billion would be over a mile tall. *When Isaac Newton first split white light into a rainbow using a prism, he identified five colors on the spectrum: red, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Orange and indigo were added later to synchronize it with the seven notes of the Western musical scale. *In 240 BCE, Eratosthenes of Egypt not only proved that the world was round, but also calculated Earth's circumference within 2% of today's accepted measurement. With easy-to-read, engaging, and insightful observations, Blatner makes our daily lives richer and more meaningful through greater appreciation of the bizarre and beautiful world in which we live.