04.05.12

My new favourite blog is  Wrapped in Foil!  Why? Cos of this  great review  of Oceans. "In a world of meat-and-potatoes nonfiction, Basher Science books are the sushi." I love it.

03.29.12

Check out  this exciting preview  of the NEW Oceans book. It looks amazing and, as usual, Basher and Kingfisher have done a super job. This little fellow below is Krill, and is one of my favourites from the book. Everyone wants to eat him, so he's always on the lookout for danger!

03.23.12

Come and see Simon Basher and me at our show –  Planet Basher  – at  Edinburgh Science Festival . April 2, 1 pm in the  Scottish Storytelling Centre. 

03.22.12

A great big heartfelt thanks to the class at William Patten Primary School in Stoke Newington! You were very welcoming, very enthusiastic and very kind to two terrified first-timers! (Next time I'll remember to take photos.)

03.12.12

My very first elements  elements blog  is ready for your enjoyment. Check out the lovely charms of the periodic table's only reddish-orange metal, copper. I'll be blogging each day of  National Science & Engineering Week  , so keep checking in. Once I sort out the necessary internet bits and bobs, I'll also host the blog on this website... watch this space, element hounds!

03.07.12

A special announcement for  National Science & Engineering Week  , which begins this Friday (09/03/12). To celebrate, I'm holding an  elements photo competition . Click, join in and get snapping!

03.01.12

The great folk at  National Science & Engineering Week are running a competition each day of this week. Guess the scientist and win a Basher book!

02.27.12

The very first  review that I've seen for my new  Elements book (and it's a corker!) Sent to me via the  Facebook interwebs by the lovely Barbara Bell.

01.30.12

A little teaser for y'all to whet your appetites... Here are some of Basher's new characters for the NEW Oceans book, which will be released on March 27. Can you guess what they are?

01.01.12

Happy New Year Everybody! I hope your 2012 is an absoute corker!
I am very excited, because I've just received a copy of Discover More: The Elements - my latest book and the lead title in a new book series from Scholastic. It is an exciting, fact-packed, lovely-looking thing. Here is a picture of it's rather flashy cover. As it's New Year, and in honour of the chemical elements, I'm posting this little clip about the discovery of phosphorus. Enjoy!

12.23.11

Oxford Street Christmas lights this year look like forams (a type of microscopic plankton), in particular, one called Baculogypsina sphaerulata aka "star sand". Merry Christmas everyone!

12.18.11

Anyone got any hot tips for bumping my website up in Google ranking? Answers to dan@dangreenbooks.com (thankee muchly)

12.15.11

Just finished checking through Basher Technology. Looks fantastic and everybody is well pleased with it. If the publisher agrees, I'll post a sneak preview of one or two of Basher's characters for this new title.

12.02.11

Great reviews popping up on Amazon. My publisher just sent me this (and, no I didn't pay her to write it ;)
Basher Basics: Math When I told my 5-year-old daughter that I bought her a book about math at the school book fair instead of the cheesy dinosaur paperback she had requested, she angrily walked 20 feet ahead of me the whole way home from school and refused to talk to me. When I asked her to just take a look at it, she snapped, "I hate math" (already, at 5?!?). But then she saw the illustration on the front cover, and she agreed to look through it. Then she asked me to read it to her. Then she hung the poster above her bed and I spent the next week reading this book to her every day. Now she counts herself among the people who like math and even recommended this book to an adult who she knows also likes math.
How cool is that?!

11.31.11

Octopus walks on land! Continuing the octopus theme, take a look at this AMAZING vid... This wee fella hoys himself out of the water and goes for a walk! He looks looks a bit sick! As one of the ladies keeps saying, this is un-believable!

11.11.11

There’s nothing like a good bit of Attenborough. BBC’s new series Frozen Planet it characteristically a corker. Great shots of polar bear cubs on the ice. Ahhh. “Polar bears think nothing of swimming 50-60 miles a day.” Check. That mind-looping fact went unto Basher Oceans :)

11.05.11

Still some time left to design an experiment to take on the International Space Station 250 miles above the surface of the Earth. How cool is that? What experiment would you design?

10.31.11

My Halloween party at my house. I dressed as Gomez Addams. Happy Halloween. Moo-ha-ha!

10.23.11

Plush organs - I just spotted these cute critters. They are not Basher toys, but they would sit rather well alongside new Human Body book.

10.03.11

Just back from Portugal, where I visited these spectacular sauropod dinosaur tracks, near Fatima. They go diagonally across the floor of a quarry. All good stuff, since I'm gearing up to write a Basher Science book on Dinos! Watch this space!

09.22.11

Pendulum waves beeee-ooo-tiful, just beautiful :)

09.10.11

A special date kinda. We won't see its like until, well next year (10.11.12). Wowzer!

08.17.11

This wee fella didn't make it into the Basher's Ocean book, because he's only just been discovered. His close relative moray eel, however, made the cut.

08.05.11

In the middle of writing Basher Science Technology

07.22.11

Science “trick”. I love this! I’ve watched it again and again and I just can’t believe it’s real. More amazing non-Newtonian fluid stuff.

07.17.11

Freaky "Non-Newtonian" fluid (that's cornstarch to you and I, my dears) dancing to low-frequency soundz. It's Alive!

07.17.11

Some pictures of iron from Cornwall...

07.05.11

First Wales and then Cornwall here I come! Good weather, thank you very much!

06.14.11

Good to be writing a book on the Elements for Scholastic (i) when it's the International Year of Chemistry and (ii) when there's all this new elements buzz. I am one happy writer.

06.06.11

Exciting element news! Superheavy elements 114 and 116 have been officially added to the periodic table. tI's a good job we included them in the new Basher Periodic Table Flashcards. Phew! (By the way, the flashcards feature ALL the elemens written by yours truly, since the original book only had 60 elements). Now the scientists need have to name these two elements. What would you call them?

06.07.11

This is one of my science heroes Prof Poliakof of Nottingham Uni in the UK. He loves k-razee chemistry ties and you'll see a lot of him on this website. Here he is explaining about the two newest elements. Wait! What's that on his bookshelf? (It pops out from behind the large hair around 5.10.)

05.31.11

There's a great video where a mimic octo, sorta, pulls up its skirts and runs across the seabed on two legs. It's classic, but I can't find it at the mo I'll put it up as soon as I do (or let me know if you find it).

05.23.11

Inscrutable and cunning, the mimic octopus is probably my favourite sea creature. It was a shame that there wasn't any space for him in Basher Oceans.

05.22.11

Hey! Come back with my camera!

05.13.11

Thanks to Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Ask a Scientist website for this reply:

Dan, thank you for submitting the following question to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Ask a Scientist website:

"Why does a blue ringed octopus carry so much venom (enough to kill 26 adult humans) when it only needs to kill such small prey as shrimp and crab?"

Here is a response provided by one of our volunteer scientists:

"According to the Marine Education Society of Australasia, two types of poison (secreted by two separate poison glands) are used against prey and predators. One of the poisons is used for hunting crab, hermit crabs and shrimp, the other, which is extremely toxic, is used as self defense against predators. The poisons are secreted into the Blue ring octopus's saliva, but the mechanism for poisoning its victim is not well understood. Either the poison is expelled in the saliva into the water or the octopus bites its prey or predator. The main predator of these small octopus are moray eels. I could not find data on how much venom is released when the octopus is attacked but if you watch this video of an octopus (not the blue ringed) fighting a moral eel, the flush of ink is large and drives away the eel, although in this video the octopus is severely hurt"

05.10.11

Currently writing Basher Oceans. Totally digging so many of the wacky animals that live under the sea.