In 1913, in Russian bookshops, appeared a book by the outstanding educationist Yakov Isidorovich Perelman entitled Physics for Entertainment. It struck the fancy of the young who found in it the answers to many of the questions that interested them. Physics for Entertainment not only had an interesting layout, it was also immensely instructive.
In the preface to the 11th Russian edition Perelman wrote: "The main objective of Physics for Entertainment is to arouse the activity of scientific imagination, to teach the reader to think in the spirit of the science of physics and to create in his mind a wide variety of associations of physical knowledge with the widely differing facts of life, with all that he normally comes in contact with." Physics for Entertainment was a best seller.