Meltdown

Joel Levy is a writer and journalist specialising in science, nature and technology for younger audiences. His writing explores both mainstream science and weird technology, from chemistry and physics to death-rays and biomimetic robots. After taking degrees in molecular biology and psychology at Warwick and Edinburgh, he has gone on to write books including Really Useful, the science and history of everyday technology; Poison: A Social history, on the science and lore of poisons; Newton's Notebooks, on the life and discoveries of Isaac Newton; Phobiapedia, an encyclopaedia of the things that scare us most; and A Bee in a Cathedral, exploring analogies and thought experiments in science, nature and technology.

• Splitting the Atom • Explorers of New Worlds • Louis Slotin and the Demon Core • the Town That Wasn't There • Spoilt Milk • Burning Up • the Wrong-shaped Bottle • a Slip of the Hand • Broken Arrow • Human Error • Don't Rock the Boat • Nuclear Nightmare • Concentration Critical • the Four Horsemen • the Nyonoska Mystery.