Several instructors have contributed to the evolution of this laboratory manual over the years. Contributors include, alphabetically, Maurice G. Cook, Emeritus Professor of Soil Science, North Carolina State University; David A. Crouse, Associate Professor of Soil Science, North Carolina State University; Larry D. King, Emeritus Professor of Soil Science, North Carolina State University; H. Joseph Kleiss, Emeritus Professor of Soil Science, North Carolina State University; Colby J. Moorberg, Assistant Professor of Soil Science, Kansas State University; Lloyd Stone, Emeritus Professor of Agronomy, Kansas State University; and James A. Thompson, Professor of Soil Science, West Virginia University. Editorial support was provided by Nora Ransom. Contributions were also made by countless graduate teaching assistants over the development of the manual. Funding was provided by the Kansas State University Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative. This is contribution no. 18-128-B of the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station <...>

In 1543, Nicolaus Copemicus iuvenled the solar system. "Hold on!" you say. Surely the solar system had been there forever, and Copemicus didn't just iuvent it. Yes and no! What Copemicus had revealed and iuvented was the arrangement of the planets-a stunningly new way of mappiug them. He revolutionized the way humankind would conceive of the planets as a system, controlled by the Sun. "Thus iudeed," Copernicus wrote, "the sun, as though sealed on a royal throne, governs the family of planets revolving around it." Nick Kanas has documented this revolutionary shift iu his ingeniously illustrated album of solar system images, all historical even though the modern views, ''postcards from space", are scarcely a few decades old.