Not op, but I remember what got me into sciences was the “kids soviet encyclopedia”. Specifically the physics section. We had “big soviet encyclopedia” and “ki

Not op, but I remember what got me into sciences was the “kids soviet encyclopedia”. Specifically the physics section. We had “big soviet encyclopedia” and “kid” one on our bookshelf (A point of pride for my grandparents). Nobody told me that by “kids” the authors meant “teens”, so around 13yo I devoured those books whole. Taught me structure of the atom, chemistry and lots of fascinating physical phenomena. And made most of the physics material easy to grasp up till last HS grade. It had little maths, concentrating more on the understanding rather than the rigorous descriptions, which made the maths to describe them quite obvious, when I had to learn them in school. Not sure if the current state of wikipedia is better or worse for that purpose- it was much better structured and paced for sure.