The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, reimagined as a living magazine. Twenty chapters in his own voice on how the eye sees, the measure of the body, water, air and growing things, and machines and the world, with animated ink sketches, interactive plates you can work with your own hands, the real manuscript pages, and his exact words with their sources. When a chapter is done, you can go and ask him about it.
Da Vinci Notes 01: The Mirror Hand, or How Leonardo Kept His Notebooks
How Leonardo kept his notebooks: mirror writing and the left hand, his to-do lists and word lists, and how the codices were scattered after Melzi.
Da Vinci Notes 02: Linear Perspective and the Pyramid of Sight
Leonardo on linear perspective: the pyramid of sight and the pane of glass, why twice the distance looks half as tall, and the error in his first rule.
Da Vinci Notes 03: Aerial Perspective and the Blue of the Sky
Leonardo's aerial perspective: five times as far, five times bluer, the smoke and velvet test, the Codex Leicester blue sky, and what Tyndall and Rayleigh found.
Da Vinci Notes 04: Light and Shade on the Sphere
Leonardo's Manuscript C on light and shade: primary and derived shadows, the three forms, why the penumbra widens, reflected light, lustre and sfumato.
Da Vinci Notes 05: The Eye and the Camera Obscura
Leonardo darkens a room, works out how the hole trades sharpness for light, and models the eye with a second crossing that Kepler later disproved.
Da Vinci Notes 06: The Last Supper, Perspective on a Wall
How Leonardo set the Last Supper's vanishing point high above the friars, drew its room with a nail and strings, and why his dry-wall paint began to fail.
Da Vinci Notes 07: The Vitruvian Man and the Measure of the Body
Leonardo's Vitruvian Man: the circle on the navel, the square on the groin, the text on the sheet translated, and the measures he took from living men.
Da Vinci Notes 08: The Skull and the Seat of the Senses
Leonardo's 1489 skull drawings: the proportional grid, the senso comune where his axes cross, the wax cast of the ventricles, and what neuroscience found there.
Da Vinci Notes 09: Muscles as Cords: The Arm and the Turning of the Hand
Leonardo's arm studies of 1510 to 1511: muscles drawn as threads, the elbow as a lever, why the biceps pulls nine times the weight, and how it turns the hand.
Da Vinci Notes 10: The Old Man's Vessels
Leonardo's centenarian dissection of 1507 to 1508: thickened, snake-like vessels, the child of two years, the oranges, and why narrow vessels carry so little blood.
Da Vinci Notes 11: The Heart and the Vortex in the Valve
Leonardo finds the heart is a muscle with four chambers, builds a glass aorta, and sees vortices close the aortic valve, confirmed by Bellhouse and 4D MRI.
Da Vinci Notes 12: Water, Vortices and the Falling Jet
Leonardo studies the falling jet, compares water to hair, and draws the eddies behind a post that Kármán and Strouhal would later measure and name.
Da Vinci Notes 13: The River's Law and the Arno
Leonardo's rule that a river runs faster where it narrows, the 1503 to 1504 plan with Machiavelli to divert the Arno from Pisa, why it failed, and his canal.
Da Vinci Notes 14: The Rule of Trees
Leonardo's rule that a tree's branches together equal its trunk, the sixth leaf above the first, tree rings and the north side, and light in leaves for painters.
Da Vinci Notes 15: The Flight of Birds
Leonardo's 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds: the kite, its centre of gravity and centre of resistance, gliding, the cradle memory and the great bird prophecy.
Da Vinci Notes 16: The Great Bird: Wings, the Screw and the Tent
Leonardo's ornithopters, the aerial screw of Manuscript B and the pyramid parachute, why human muscle was too weak, and how the 2000 parachute test went.
Da Vinci Notes 17: Friction and the Elements of Machines
Leonardo's friction rules two centuries before Amontons: load not area, a quarter of the weight, rollers and bearings, and the Madrid Codex elements of machines.
Da Vinci Notes 18: The Horse: Casting the Sforza Monument
Leonardo's colossal horse for Francesco Sforza: the 1493 clay model, the square-cube law, the casting plan in Madrid II, the bronze sent for cannon, the French.
Da Vinci Notes 19: Engines for the Duke, and the Most Bestial Madness
Leonardo's letter to Ludovico Sforza, the giant crossbow of 42 braccia, the armoured car and its gearing, and why he called war a most bestial madness.
Da Vinci Notes 20: Shells on the Mountains and the Ashen Moon
Leonardo's Codex Leicester arguments that fossil shells were not carried by the Flood, and his explanation of the moon's ashen light as earthshine.
by Marie Curie 
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