Physics Books - Page 2

The Field Updated Ed: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

Lynne Mctaggart

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $6.73

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> New Age -> Mental & Spiritual Healing

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Underpinning the future 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you are interested in the future (and we all should be) read this book. It is one of those books that makes you realise that everything you were ever taught at school, and a lot of what you learned after school, was pretty much a waste of time, because life is simply not the way they said (and are still saying today). The Field provides a wealth of scientific evidence that supports a view of life that many people suspect (somewhere deep in their consciousness), but few have been able to put their finger on. The more you understand what is written in this book the more you recognise that society is at a pivotal point, not because of the environmental crisis, nor the financial crisis, nor any global security crises. Radical change is on the horizon because our understanding of life itself is changing. This is the most profound change we can imagine and this is the most exciting time to be alive in the history of human life.

Editorial Review:

Science has recently begun to prove what ancient myth and religion have always espoused: There may be such a thing as a life force.

In this groundbreaking classic, investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart reveals a radical new paradigm—that the human mind and body are not separate from their environment but a packet of pulsating power constantly interacting with this vast energy sea, and that consciousness may be central in shaping our world.

The Field is a highly readable scientific detective story presenting a stunning picture of an interconnected universe and a new scientific theory that makes sense of supernatural phenomena. Documented by distinguished sources, The Field is a book of hope and inspiration for today's world.

The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

Daniel J. Levitin

Amazon Price: $15.05 List Price: $25.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dutton Adult Amazon Marketplace: 65 new & used starting at $9.78

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Theory, Composition & Performance -> Appreciation
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of the New York Times bestseller and Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist This Is Your Brain on Music tunes us in to six evolutionary musical forms that brought about the evolution of human culture.

An unprecedented blend of science and art, Daniel Levitin's debut, This Is Your Brain on Music, delighted readers with an exuberant guide to the neural impulses behind those songs that make our heart swell. Now he showcases his daring theory of "six songs," illuminating how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms—for knowledge, friendship, religion, joy, comfort, and love. Preserving the emotional history of our lives and of our species, from its very beginning music was also allied to dance, as the structure of the brain confirms; developing this neurological observation, Levitin shows how music and dance enabled the social bonding and friendship necessary for human culture and society to evolve.

Blending cutting-edge scientific findings with his own sometimes hilarious experiences as a musician and music-industry professional, Levitin's sweeping study also incorporates wisdom gleaned from interviews with icons ranging from Sting and Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell, and David Byrne, along with classical musicians and conductors, historians, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The result is a brilliant revelation of the prehistoric yet elegant systems at play when we sing and dance at a wedding or cheer at a concert—or tune out quietly with an iPod.

A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations

Daniel Fleisch

Amazon Price: $26.09 List Price: $28.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $21.30

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> Mathematical Physics
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Kindle Version 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I can only echo the praise that others have submitted regarding "A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations." My comments are targeted at how it looks on the Kindle Reader.

The text rendering seems crisp and readable throughout, though the imaging of the equations are sometimes too small that the subscripts are difficult to read. (Locations 126-31) The text can be scaled nicely through six choices, but the images of the equations do not.

Tables lack contrast. (Locations 179-182)

The first of many boxed question marks, [?], begin at locations 232-40 and continue. The author presents a problem at Locations 440-50 that reads somewhat like this, at the end of the first sentence, "... extends from spherical angle [?]1 to [?]2 and from [?]1 to [?]2." Obviously the Kindle reader cannot render the element and simply shows [?].

I suspect a student, not familiar with the subject, would favor the old-fashioned "physical" medium to the Kindle medium.

Editorial Review:

Gauss's law for electric fields, Gauss's law for magnetic fields, Faraday's law, and the Ampere-Maxwell law are four of the most influential equations in science. In this guide for students, each equation is the subject of an entire chapter, with detailed, plain-language explanations of the physical meaning of each symbol in the equation, for both the integral and differential forms. The final chapter shows how Maxwell's equations may be combined to produce the wave equation, the basis for the electromagnetic theory of light. This book is a wonderful resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in electromagnetism and electromagnetics. A website hosted by the author at www.cambridge.org/9780521701471 contains interactive solutions to every problem in the text as well as audio podcasts to walk students through each chapter.

Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

Michio Kaku

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Anchor Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $8.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Astronomy -> Cosmology
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fascinating. Impressive. Amazing! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Ranges further and is more accessible than Brian Greene's "Elegant Universe." A must read for anyone who is interested in the _very big questions_.

Very Easy to Understand 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I don't have much physics backgroud but found this book very easy to comprehend and easy to read also. The information is astonishing.

Editorial Review:

In this thrilling journey into the mysteries of our cosmos, bestselling author Michio Kaku takes us on a dizzying ride to explore black holes and time machines, multidimensional space and, most tantalizing of all, the possibility that parallel universes may lay alongside our own.

Kaku skillfully guides us through the latest innovations in string theory and its latest iteration, M-theory, which posits that our universe may be just one in an endless multiverse, a singular bubble floating in a sea of infinite bubble universes. If M-theory is proven correct, we may perhaps finally find answer to the question, “What happened before the big bang?” This is an exciting and unforgettable introduction into the new cutting-edge theories of physics and cosmology from one of the pre-eminent voices in the field.

Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

Richard A. Muller

Amazon Price: $17.79 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $15.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Science -> History & Philosophy -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Learn the science behind the headlines—the tools of terrorists, the dangers of nuclear power, and the reality of global warming.

We live in complicated, dangerous times. They are also hyper-technical times. As citizens who will elect future presidents of the most powerful and influential country in the world, we need to know—truly understand, not just rely on television's talking heads—if Iran's nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, if there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels that should be nurtured and supported by the government, if nuclear power should be encouraged, and if global warming is actually happening. This book is written in everyday, nontechnical language on the science behind the concerns that our nation faces in the immediate future. Even active readers of serious journalism will be surprised by the lessons that the book contains. It is "must-have" information for all presidents—and citizens—of the twenty-first century. 50 illustrations.

Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA

Richard C. Hoagland, Mike Bara

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Feral House Amazon Marketplace: 55 new & used starting at $14.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Astronomy -> Astrophysics & Space Science

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 109 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For most Americans, the word NASA suggests a squeaky-clean image of technological infallibility.

Yet the truth is that NASA was born in a lie, and has concealed the truths about its occult origins. Dark Mission documents this seemingly wild assertion.

Why is the Bush administration intent on returning to the moon as quickly as possible? What are the reasons for the current “space race” with China, Russia, even India? Remarkable images reproduced within this book provided to author Richard C. Hoagland by disaffected NASA employees provide clues why, including information about suppressed lunar discoveries.

Mystical organizations quietly dominate NASA, carrying out their own secret agendas behind the scenes. This is the story of men at the very fringes of rational thought and conventional wisdom, operating at the highest levels of our country. Their policies are far more aligned with ancient religions and secret mystery schools than the facade of rational science NASA has successfully promoted to the world for almost fifty years.

Dark Mission is proof of the secret history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the astonishing, seminal discoveries it has repeatedly suppressed for decades.

Richard C. Hoagland is the former science advisor to CBS News, author of The Monuments of Mars, and a frequent guest on the popular radio programs Coast To Coast and The Art Bell Show.

Mike Bara is a consulting engineer for Boeing aircraft. This is his first book.

Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions

Edwin A Abbott

Amazon Price: $11.88 List Price: $13.98 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prometheus Books Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $0.91

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Classics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General -> Classics
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 160 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A 2D and 4D Classic Text 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Originally written with a Victorian theme, it is now a must-read classic for anyone who enjoys reading about the fourth dimension. The story is about a two-dimensional being (called A Square) living in a two-dimensional world (hence the title, Flatland). As a three-dimensional being imagining this two-dimensional world, you come to realize that you can understand higher-dimensional space through lower-dimensional analogies. In fact, A Square meets a three-dimensional being (A Sphere), and takes a journey beyond the second dimension. Although some readers may enjoy the book for its historical and Victorian period merits, math lovers can enjoy the book for its geometric insight.

If you are curious about the fourth dimension, you should also read:

- Spaceland: A Novel of the Fourth Dimension, Rudy Rucker's novel of the fourth dimension
- Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So, a continuation of the geometric idea from Flatland
- The 4th Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality, Rudy Rucker's classic introduction to the fourth dimension
- The Visual Guide to Extra Dimensions: Volume 1: Visualizing the Fourth Dimension, Higher-Dimensional Polytopes, and Curved Hypersurfaces, a modern geometric introduction to the fourth dimension

Editorial Review:

This highly original and entertaining short novel (which has been in print continually since its original publication in 1884) tells the story of A. Square, an inhabitant of the two-dimensional world Flatland. Touching on themes of humanity's insatiable quest for truth, authority's tendency to squash radical ideas born from this quest, and the necessity of curiosity, "Flatland" is an odd and charming little book whose impact far surpasses its concise prose.

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

Leonard Susskind

Amazon Price: $18.47 List Price: $27.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little, Brown and Company Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $11.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Scientists
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Astronomy -> Astronomy
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Astronomy -> Astrophysics & Space Science

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did-and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space.
A brilliant book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes, Leonard Susskind's account of the Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.

Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces

Frank Wilczek

Amazon Price: $17.79 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Basic Books Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $15.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Science -> Physics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Particle physics still alive? 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Frank Wilczek, Physics Professor, MIT, Nobel Prize winner 2004,
427 publications, impressive work on theoretical particle physics.

This book is a classic, and a great read for anyone who is interested in physics.

Looking at the MIT website, there are many physics professors. What about the students? They can do research on particle physics. Where are the jobs when they graduate? How do they make a living? This is the main reason that Physics is fairly dead for the rest of the country.

I got my Ph.D. in Chemical Physics. I worked at Princeton University, under the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer. The first thing he told me, was there was no guarantee of jobs if you worked here. He was brutally honest and I appreciated that to this day.

I subsequently changed my field, Physics to Chemistry, to Computer Science, then to work as a Business Professor. Today, I teach everything from Accounting to Unix.

Yes, Physics is the foundation of everything. Dr. Wilczek has done very well. But for the young aspiring physics researcher, you need to put in 10 times the effort to be the next Dr. Wilczek. Good luck.

Editorial Review:

Physicist’ understanding of the essential nature of reality changed radically over the past quarter century. Frank Wilczek has played a lead role in establishing the new paradigms. Transcending the clash and mismatch of older ideas about what matter is, and what space is, Wilczek presents here some brilliant and clear syntheses. Space is a dynamic material, the engine of reality; matter is a subtle pattern of disturbance in that material.

Extraordinarily readable and authoritative, The Lightness of Being is the first book to unwrap these exciting new ideas for the general public. It explores their implications for basic questions about space, mass, energy, and the longed-for possibility of a fully unified theory of Nature. Along the way, Wilczek presents new perspectives on many strange aspects of our fantastic universe. Pointing toward new directions where the great discoveries in fundamental physics are likely to come, he envisions a new Golden Age in physics.

Four Laws That Drive the Universe

Peter Atkins

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 22 new & used starting at $10.35

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> Thermodynamics
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Physics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal, and from the unfurling of a leaf to the course of life itself--everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. They establish fundamental concepts such as temperature and heat, and reveal the arrow of time and even the nature of energy itself.
Written by Peter Atkins, one of the worlds leading authorities on thermodynamics, this powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics. Guiding the reader a step at a time, Atkins begins with Zeroth (so named because the first two laws were well established before scientists realized that a third law, relating to temperature, should precede them--hence the jocular name zeroth), and proceeds through the First, Second, and Third Laws, offering a clear account of concepts such as the availability of work and the conservation of energy. Atkins ranges from the fascinating theory of entropy (revealing how its unstoppable rise constitutes the engine of the universe), through the concept of free energy, and to the brink, and then beyond the brink, of absolute zero.
C.P. Snow once remarked that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics is like never having read a work by Shakespeare. This brief but brilliant book introduces general readers to one of the cornerstones of modern science, four laws that are as integral to the well-educated mind as such great dramatic works as Hamlet or Macbeth.