Teach Secondary 13.7

Off the Shelves Brilliant titles for you and your students to explore FeedingtheAIMachine: TheHiddenHumanLabour PoweringAI (JamesMuldoon,MarkGrahamandCallum Cant,Canongate,£20) Captivated as we are by the wonder of seeing AI apps summarise long reports and produce schemes of work in amatter of seconds, it perhaps hasn’t occurred to enough us how all the ‘magic’ involved actuallyworks – that the dataAI relies on has to first be tagged and processed before it can be used.This book examines the working lives of the people involved in precisely that.Alongside some harrowing workplace stories and testimonies, the authors present some suggestions as to how thingsmight be improved.The detailed research and the issues highlighted herein are a timely corrective to the techno-optimismofAI advocates, though be advised that the authors make little secret of their political leanings.The book’s content could be a good springboard for classroomdiscussion, but approach with care... ReviewedbyTerry Freedman (see bit.ly/Eclecticismformore details) LoveTriangle:TheLife-changing MagicofTrigonometry (MattParker,AllenLane,£24.85) Likemany people, I suspect, I’ve never given much thought as to what isosceles triangles are andwhat they’re used for in the course ofmy daily life.Yet it turns out that it, and other types of triangle are crucially important tomany of the everyday technologies we take for granted, such as the seemingly simple task of printing out a colour photo fromour phone.What makes this book stand out is the dizzying range of applications for triangles that Parker covers – fromheading off asteroid collisions with Earth, to the humdrumslicing of sandwiches.Moreover, you wouldn’t normally expect to find trigonometry sharing page space with humour, but there are parts of the book that read like ‘dad jokes’ on steroids.Themore densely technical discussions left me behind, somewhat – but on the whole, LoveTriangle is highly engaging and full of surprises. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman NutsandBolts:HowTiny InventionsMakeOurWorldWork (RomaAgrawal,Hodder,£12.99) It’s rather disconcerting when one considers that buildings like The Shard are essentially held together by nuts, bolts andwashers. In Nuts and Bolts ,Agrawal explores how seven seemingly humble technologies – the nail, wheel, spring,magnet, lens, string and pump – have not only contributed hugely to our built environment, but also facilitated important advances in clothing, entertainment and economics. Fromthe title and that description, you could be forgiven for expecting a dry treatment of the subject matter, but Agrawal’s easy, non-patronising prose (the technical explanations are illuminating,without being daunting) and her emphasis on personal perspectivesmakes for a – pardon the pun – riveting read.As an engineer who worked on the design ofThe Shard,Agrawal’s insights couldwell inspire your students, especially girls, to consider careers in science and engineering. Highly recommended. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman 42 teachwire.net/secondary