Reading Popular Physics PDF Download

Author: Joanne Baker
Publisher: Quercus
ISBN: 1623651905
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In this, the second volume in an important new series presenting core concepts across a range of critical areas of human knowledge, author Joanne Baker unravels the complexities of 20th-century scientific theory for a general readership. From Hubble's law to the Pauli exclusion principle, and from Schrodinger's cat to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, she explains ideas at the cutting-edge of scientific enquiry, making them comprehensible and accessible to the layperson.

Author: Harry Cliff
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0385545665
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
NAMED A BEST SCIENCE BOOK OF 2021 BY KIRKUS * An acclaimed experimental physicist at CERN takes you on an exhilarating search for the most basic building blocks of our universe, and the dramatic quest to unlock their cosmic origins. "A fascinating exploration of how we learned what matter really is, and the journey matter takes from the Big Bang, through exploding stars, ultimately to you and me." (Sean Carroll) Carl Sagan once quipped, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” But finding the ultimate recipe for apple pie means answering some big questions: What is matter really made of? How did it escape annihilation in the fearsome heat of the Big Bang? And will we ever be able to understand the very first moments of our universe? In How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch, Harry Cliff—a University of Cambridge particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider—sets out in pursuit of answers. He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the "Antimatter Factory," where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up). And he reveals what the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider may be telling us about the fundamental nature of matter. Along the way, Cliff illuminates the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy that brought us to our present understanding—and misunderstandings—of the world, while offering readers a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic intellectual journeys human beings have ever embarked on. A transfixing deep dive into the origins of our world, How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch examines not just the makeup of our universe, but the awe-inspiring, improbable fact that it exists at all.

Author: Michio Kaku
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385525443
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, the renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future. Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.

Author: Manjit Kumar
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848311036
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
'This is about gob-smacking science at the far end of reason ... Take it nice and easy and savour the experience of your mind being blown without recourse to hallucinogens' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this magisterial book, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its core. Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the particles and processes without which it could not exist. Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century. Quantum theory is weird. In 1905, Albert Einstein suggested that light was a particle, not a wave, defying a century of experiments. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrodinger's famous dead-and-alive cat are similarly strange. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren't shocked by quantum theory, you didn't really understand it. While "Quantum" sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age, Kumar's centrepiece is the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science. 'Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved', lamented the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. But in "Quantum", Kumar brings Einstein back to the centre of the quantum debate. "Quantum" is the essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story and by the band of brilliant men at its heart.

Author: John S. Townsend
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This brilliantly innovative textbook is intended as a first introduction to quantum mechanics and its applications. Townsend's new text shuns the historical ordering that characterizes so-called Modern Physics textbooks and applies a truly modern approach to this subject, starting instead with contemporary single-photon and single-atom interference experiments. The text progresses naturally from a thorough introduction to wave mechanics through applications of quantum mechanics to solid-state, nuclear, and particle physics, thereby including most of the topics normally presented in a Modern Physics course. Examples of topics include blackbody radiation, Bose-Einstein condensation, the band-structure of solids and the silicon revolution, the curve of binding energy and nuclear fission and fusion, and the Standard Model of particle physics. Students can see in quantum mechanics a common thread that ties these topics into a coherent picture of how the world works, a picture that gives students confidence that quantum mechanics really works, too. The book also includes a chapter-length appendix on special relativity for the benefit of students who have not had a previous exposure to this subject.Translation into Chinese.

Author: Elizabeth Leane
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351906526
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Reading Popular Physics is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature and implications of physics popularizations. A literary critic trained in science, Elizabeth Leane treats popular science writing as a distinct and significant genre, focusing particularly on five bestselling books: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes, James Gleick's Chaos, M. Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity, and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Leane situates her examination of the texts within the heated interdisciplinary exchanges known as the 'Science Wars', focusing specifically on the disputed issue of the role of language in science. Her use of literary analysis reveals how popular science books function as sites for 'disciplinary skirmishes' as she uncovers the ways in which popularizers of science influence the public. In addition to their explicit discussion of scientific concepts, Leane argues, these authors employ subtle textual strategies that encode claims about the nature and status of scientific knowledge - claims that are all the more powerful because they are unacknowledged. Her book will change the way these texts are read, offering readers a fresh perspective on this highly visible and influential genre.

Author: Mark Jones
Publisher: Hodder Education
ISBN: 1510429441
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Exam Board: AQA, Edexcel, CCEA, OCR, WJEC Eduqas Level: A-level Subject: Physics First teaching: September 2015 First exams: Summer 2017 Master the skills you need to set yourself apart and hit the highest grades; this year-round course companion develops the higher-order thinking skills that top-achieving students possess, providing step-by-step guidance, examples and tips for getting an A grade. Written by experienced author and teacher Mark Jones, Aiming for an A in A-level Physics: - Helps you develop the 'A grade skills' of analysis, evaluation, creation and application - Takes you step by step through specific skills you need to master in A-level Physics, including scientific reading, quantitative and practical skills, so you can apply these skills and approach each exam question as an A/A* candidate - Clearly shows how to move up the grades with sample responses annotated to highlight the key features of A/A* answers - Helps you practise to achieve the levels expected of top-performing students, using in-class or homework activities and further reading tasks that stretch towards university-level study - Perfects exam technique through practical tips and examples of common pitfalls to avoid - Cultivates effective revision habits for success, with tips and strategies for producing and using revision resources - Supports all exam boards, outlining the Assessment Objectives for reaching the higher levels under the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas and CCEA specifications

Author: Magdolna Hargittai
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1783260890
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 726

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Book Description
Candid Science IV: Conversations with Famous Physicists contains 36 interviews with well-known physicists, including 20 Nobel laureates, Templeton Prize winners, Wolf Prize winners, and other luminaries. Physics has been one of the determining fields of science in the past 100 years, playing a conspicuous role not only in science but also in world politics and economics. These in-depth conversations provide a glimpse into the greatest achievements of physics during the past few decades, featuring stories of the discoveries, and showing the human drama behind them. The greatest physicists are brought into close human proximity as if readers were having a conversation with them. The interviewees span a wide range of scientists, from such early giants as Eugene Wigner and Mark Oliphant to members of the youngest generation such as the 2001 Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle. The list includes famous personalities of our time, such as Steven Weinberg, Leon Lederman, Norman Ramsey, Edward Teller, John Wheeler, Mildred Dresselhaus, Maurice Goldhaber, Benoit Mandelbrot, John Polkinghorne, and Freeman Dyson./a

Author: Laura Pesce
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030227308
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
Close Encounters of Art and Physics is a voyage in time through the abstract ideas harboured in the minds of humans, starting from the graffiti art of cave dwellers and extending to the street art of contemporary men and women. In seeking parallels with science, the author looks far back to the first geometric ideas of our ancestors as well as ahead to the contemporary science of present-day physicists. The parallelism and analogies between these two fields bear witness to a real entanglement in the human brain. The second part of the book contains about 25 colour images showing the author's stunning glass artwork representing ideas such as dark matter, quantum entanglement, cellular automata and many others that are almost impossible to capture in words. Furthermore, many of the physicists who have themselves made major contributions in these fields provide their comments and analysis of the works. The book provides entertaining and informative reading, not only for practicing artists and physicists, but also anyone curious about art and physics.

Author: Richard Phillips Feynman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691125759
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Using everyday language, spatial concepts, visualizations and his renowned "Feynman diagrams," the author clearly and humorously communicates the substance and spirit of QED (quantum electodynamics).