Book description
A wonderful collection of oddly brilliant questions and answers
taken from the infamously challenging Oxbridge interviews. 'What
happens if I drop an ant?' 'What books are bad for you?' 'What
percentage of the world's water is contained in a cow?' The Oxbridge
undergraduate interviews are infamous for their unique ways of
assessing candidates, and from these peculiar enquiries, professors
can tell just how smart you really are. Cambridge-educated John
Farndon has collected together 75 of the most intriguing questions
taken from actual admission interviews and gives full answers to each,
taking the reader through the fascinating histories, philosophies,
sciences and arts that underlie each problem. Oxford graduate Libby
Purves lends her own thoughts and reflections on what it's like to
have your mind stretched in unusual ways in a thorough introduction.
This is a book for everyone who likes to think they're clever, or who
thinks they'd like to be clever. And cleverness is not just knowing
stuff, it's how laterally, deeply and interestingly you can bend your
brain. Guesstimating the population of Croydon, for example, opens a
chain of thought from which you can predict the strength of a nuclear
bomb ... and that's just the start of it.
John Farndon is the author of many popular reference books on a
wide range of topics, including the best-selling Dorling Kindersley
Pocket Encyclopaedia and the Collins Children's Encyclopaedia. He has
been short-listed three times for the Aventis Science Book junior prize.
