Physics Books - Page 4

MY INVENTIONS: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> People, A-Z -> ( T ) -> Tesla, Nikola

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Good quick life story 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I'm really a fan of Tesla and this book was a good view into him as a person. Although the exact same pages of this book can be found in the end portion of the book "The Nikola Tesla Treasury" and I highly suggest that book over this one.

A shoddy edition of a text deserving of better 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The presentation of Nikola Tesla's fascinating life and work is manhandled in this edition of his autobiography, My Inventions.

The text is full of typographical errors; the letter "i" (referring to Tesla in the first-person) is rarely ever capitalized, and there are numerous misspellings of simple words. Paragraph breaks seem to have been inserted at random and, when compared to other editions, do not correspond with the others' layouts or chapters.

I do not know what Tesla's manuscript looked like or who is responsible for typesetting it for BNPublishing, but it is most telling that Amazon's link to look inside this book redirects to a different edition.

Editorial Review:

Tesla's autobiography, originally printed as a series of six magazine articles in The Electrical Experimenter magazine. Complete with all original plus 6 additional illustrations.

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

Sax, Leonard, M.D, Ph. D.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fabulous! Well written. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The book was fabulous! Well written and supported by research, not another opinion book, very logically persuasive. His supported ideas regarding the reasons our young boys are becoming unsuccessful, unmotivated, and underachieved are quite correct! We discussed these matters in book group and were greatly motivated to make changes within our own families which Dr. Sax suggested.

Completely New Ideas 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The idea that boys are in trouble was a completely new idea to me. I have always heard about girls needing help with self-esteem and acedemics (like science & math). But boys in trouble . . . nope, never heard of it. My sister recommended this book because I have a young son and it was an EYE OPENER!

MUST READ - for partents of boys and girls. Very, very easy read and it will change how you look at our children and gender forever.

Editorial Review:

From kindergarten to college, boys are less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. Dr. Sax reveals a combination of factors creating an environment toxic to boys and presents some practical solutions.

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

Roger Penrose

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Attempts the impossible 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

It is not possible to express the ideas of modern physics without using mathematics very different from what one studies in high school. But a popular physics book can hardly assume more than a high school level of math. Therefore popular physics books are impossible.

Penrose's 'The Road to Reality' is a demonstration of this proposition. Penrose must be congratulated for facing the problem head on, not shying away from the formulae and trying to teach his readers all the mathematics needed. Penrose is more capable than most for such an undertaking, and often he comes up with clever, intuitive ways of explaining difficult concepts. But ultimately the beautifully-crafted intuition collapses due to the lack of a supporting structure of necessary technical details and hard proofs and the reader is left holding fuzzy ideas which he cannot independently apply.

The book would be a great way for a graduate student in physics or mathematics to see the big picture. Others would do well to stick either with less ambitious popularizations or to go straight to the textbooks. For the former, my recommendation would be Penrose's own The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science) while for the latter there is no better place to begin than Singer and Thorpe's Lecture Notes on Elementary Topology and Geometry (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) and Needham's Visual Complex Analysis.

Editorial Review:

Roger Penrose, one of the most accomplished scientists of our time, presents the only comprehensive and comprehensible account of the physics of the universe. From the very first attempts by the Greeks to grapple with the complexities of our known world to the latest application of infinity in physics, The Road to Reality carefully explores the movement of the smallest atomic particles and reaches into the vastness of intergalactic space. Here, Penrose examines the mathematical foundations of the physical universe, exposing the underlying beauty of physics and giving us one the most important works in modern science writing.

Cosmos

Carl Sagan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 159 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

read what you can of it, but READ it! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is an incredible book, even if it is dated. I am a words person, not numbers, so when Sagan got into a lot of equations and chemistry, I had to kind of skim over those parts. I never could have understood them, and if I'd tried to force myself to, I probably would have gotten frustrated and gave up on the book. So I stuck with the parts (happily, that was most of it) I could absorb and easily understand. There were so many fascinating aspects to it that I would have missed had I given up over the math. This book is capable of starting you on a journey. It has made me find a book on Alexandria, which I am just starting. There is a fascinating history there, and I will continue on with books on da Vinci and Einstein. They are men I've heard about, of course, but never has my curiosity about them been so piqued. Being a book lover, the Library of Alexandria is something I want to learn more about. This book will make you want to learn more about a lot of things.

Editorial Review:

The best-selling science book ever published in the English language, COSMOS is a magnificent overview of the past, present, and future of science. Brilliant and provocative, it traces today's knowledge and scientific methods to their historical roots, blending science and philosophy in a wholly energetic and irresistible way.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes

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Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been compared in its sweep and importance to William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.

507 Mechanical Movements: Mechanisms and Devices

Henry T. Brown

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

just o.k. 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The illustrations are well done, many of the mechanisms are repeated. The descriptions are dated. All in all, I would not buy this book again.

A great little collection for the curious 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a great collection of mechanisms for the curious. There is no kinematic, static or dynamic analysis; nor is it a source book for contemporary mechanism design. Instead there is an inspiring collection of mechanical innovation from the boom era of mechanical design.

I have seen far, far, larger collections (well over 5,000 items) in academic treatises and a modern mechanism sourcebook may be more useful to the busy mechanical inventor - but there is still a lot of value in having this gem to hand.

Dover has again produced a clear (though small) and robust paperback version of an old classic at a very attractive price.

Editorial Review:

This compendium of ingenious mechanisms employs simple drawings to explain 507 of the small components that constitute complex machinery. Left-hand pages feature illustrations, and facing pages offer brief descriptions of use and operation. Ranging from simple to complex, the mechanisms include cranks, pulleys, drills, wheels, and screws.

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next

Lee Smolin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 104 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A priesthood under attack? 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

For those of us non-physicists looking into what has been going on in string theory for something close to three decades, things just look curiouser and curiouser. No doubt the problem is that only physicists can comprehend the science itself. Still it is enormously frustrating that not a single shred of experimental evidence has come to light supporting string theory. What this suggests is that string theory, as beautiful as it may be, is art not science, or perhaps it is pure mathematics.

Lee Smolin, who is a real physicist, has come to a similar conclusion in this insider's look at the sorry state of particle physics today. Once the undisputed master of the sciences, physics has become--it is downright dreadful to acknowledge this--the butt of jokes from--are you ready for this?--the social sciences! Even professors of literature are having their way with physics. The inability of the string theorists, who have dominated particle physics lo these many years, to accomplish anything substantial, has so damaged the prestige of physics that something called postmodernism has been able to declare that all of science and mathematics constitutes merely an arbitrary "social construction" with no more claim to objective truth than utterances from a creationist's convention.

Say it isn't so, Brian Greene. Well Professor Greene has said it isn't so, but entrenched scientists tend to have entrenched ideas, just like global warming deniers, and so what we need are some hard facts derived from experiments or at least some predictions that can be identified and confirmed. Alas, as Smolin is at pains to point out, we have more like the opposite.

Take the reincarnation of Einstein's cosmological constant. Not predicted by string theory. Take the discovery of dark energy. Not predicted by string theory. Take the seven additional dimensions required by M-theory (an offshoot of string theory), and the old phobia about infinities in the equations seems rather mild. No one has yet seen, tasted, smelled, felt or heard even a fifth dimension (putting aside the once popular band) let alone six others. We cannot even imagine such a thing.

Well, yes, the fact that we can't imagine them doesn't mean they don't exist. However, one of the leading reasons that physicists like string theory's extra dimensions is that they do away with the infinities. Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire, or from the deep blue sea to the devil!

Philosophy was once the most prestigious academic discipline. Could the same thing happen to physics? And if so, why?

Part of the problem is the great success and power that physics has enjoyed since the days when Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. Even more so, since the days of James Clerk Maxwell, vast has become our knowledge of the physical world. Indeed physics and physicists have constructed much of the modern world. Their ideas and discoveries and understanding have led to enormous advances in technologies that have increased the standard of living of people, at least in the developed nations. So much success has led to great expectations. The sad fact for physics may be this: the next great discovery may be centuries away, or worse yet, beyond the reach of humans.

Smolin certainly isn't so pessimistic. The tone of "The Trouble with Physics" is that of a father urging his children to great accomplishments while warning them that they have been wayward. He is blunt but bends over backwards to be fair. The trouble with the book for non-physicists is that it is really impossible to follow the various arguments for and against string theory in any concrete detail. The truth is in the equations, and Smolin doesn't give any, and rightly so since this is a book aimed at the educated general reader. We educated general readers are left skimming the bewildering details of the history and current state of string theory to focus on the broad implications while being guided by Smolin's expert opinion. But even in reading somebody like the aforementioned Brian Greene, who is a proponent of string theory, this reader at least was left with the sense of watching a wild goose chase from a distance.

It isn't just in particle physics that physicists have gone over the deep end, so to speak. Take cosmology where some physicists are postulating a large, possibly infinite number of universes in addition to the one in which we live. As Smolin points out "The existence of a population of other universes is a hypothesis that cannot be confirmed by direct observation..." He adds, "...the fact that we are in a biofriendly universe cannot be used as a confirmation of a theory that there is a vast population of universes." (p. 163)

Although there is nothing wrong with Smolin's writing style, and he does write with a minimum of jargon, some of this is impenetrable, at least for me. Those more versed in physics will do better I'm sure. However particle physics is per force about things we can't see and can't even visualize.

Near the end of the book Smolin presents some alternatives to string theory. As a non-physicist I have no ability to evaluate these approaches, which brings up an important point. How can any non-physicist pass any kind of judgment on the validity of string theory? We can't. We can only count noses--physicists' noses. When we do we find that most theoretical physicists believe in string theory despite the dearth of experimental support. Why? Perhaps because string theory is what they have been doing all their working lives, and string theory is what they have been taught and are teaching.

My question is, have string theorists become a sacred priesthood? Smolin doesn't use this term, but his book suggests as much.

Editorial Review:

In this illuminating book, the renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that fundamental physics -- the search for the laws of nature -- losing its way. Ambitious ideas about extra dimensions, exotic particles, multiple universes, and strings have captured the public's imagination -- and the imagination of experts. But these ideas have not been tested experimentally, and some, like string theory, seem to offer no possibility of being tested. Yet these speculations dominate the field, attracting the best talent and much of the funding and creating a climate in which emerging physicists are often penalized for pursuing other avenues. As Smolin points out, the situation threatens to impede the very progress of science. With clarity, passion, and authority, Smolin offers an unblinking assessment of the troubles that face modern physics -- and an encouraging view of where the search for the next big idea may lead.

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Gould for the Common Man? 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the current director of the hayden Planetarium and an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History. His picture shows a portly African-American with a wry smile, wearing a vest with astonomical figures perhaps cut from a wizard's robe discarded by Hogwarts. Most likely half of America knows better what he looks and sounds like than I do, since he appears frequently on TV, on the Daily Show and various Fox blathergrounds. I heard him talking about comets for a few minutes on my car radio, and found him very quick, very amusing.

A comparison with Stephen Jay Gould is almost inevitable. This book, like most of Gould's, is a selection of Tyson's columns for the magazine Natural History. Tyson has a lighter touch and will be easier going for people without much background in science. He is nowhere near as encyclopedic or allusive as Gould, which will come as a relief to many. Gould wrote, increasingly so over the years, as a Harvard Don, which all the rhetorical flourishes of a man who expects his readers to be very erudite. The danger of such writing is pomposity and condescension. Since I almost became a Harvard Don myself, I have a high tolerance for pomposity, but I find Tyson's writing style delightfully relaxed.

Tyson's subject in Death by Black Hole is the astronomical zoo of gravitationally caged objects - stars, planets, comets, asteroids, and Anomalous Flying Objects - in what we still call the Universe, although the name seems less and less appropriate. Tyson back-fills as needed with tidbits of history but his central purpose is to make us acquainted with current observational astronomy. People who "already know all that" will enjoy his witty delivery, while the rest of us will learn quite a lot, quite painlessly.

One of the Identified Flying Objects Tyson describes is the asteroid Apophis, which ought to be of maximum interest for anyone under 40 years old. Tyson writes: "On Friday the 13th of April, 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup, will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites ...If the trajectory of Apophis at close approach passes within a narrow range of altitudes called the Keyhole, the precise influence of Earth's gravity on its orbit will guarantee that seven years later in 2036...the asteroid will hit earth directly, slamming in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii." You knew that, didn't you, and you've already made reservations for the observation grandstand on Mt. Whitney? What a show! But Tyson continues: "The tsunami it creates will wipe out the entire west coast of North America, bury Hawaii, and devastate all the land masses of the Pacific Rim." Oops. I'd better warn my grandchildren to sell my house in SF before it's too late.
Tyson doesn't mention it, but there's an upside to Apophis -- no need to worry about global warming after all.

In fact, Tyson is not all levity about Apophis, or about the inevitable fate of civilization. Later in the book, he discusses what "we" should be doing about our self-preservation in a universe that is far from anthropically perfect for human life, or any kind of life at all. Read it and quake - from laughter as well as fear.

Editorial Review:

"One of today's best popularizers of science."—Kirkus Reviews

Loyal readers of the monthly "Universe" essays in Natural History magazine have long recognized Neil deGrasse Tyson's talent for guiding them through the mysteries of the cosmos with stunning clarity and childlike enthusiasm. Here Tyson compiles his favorite essays across a myriad of cosmic topics. The title essay introduces readers to the physics of black holes by explaining just what would happen to your body if you fell into one, while "Hollywood Nights" assails Hollywood's feeble efforts to get its night skies right. Tyson is the world's best-known astrophysicist, and he's at his best here, as a natural teacher who simplifies the complexities of astrophysics while sharing his infectious excitement for our universe.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

Carl Sagan

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Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On the 10th anniversary of his death, brilliant astrophysisist and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sagan's prescient exploration of the relationship between religion and science and his personal search for God.

Carl Sagan is considered one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. His remarkable ability to explain science in terms easily understandable to the layman in bestselling books such as Cosmos, The Dragons of Eden, and The Demon-Haunted World won him a Pulitzer Prize and placed him firmly next to Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and Oliver Sachs as one of the most important and enduring communicators of science. In December 2006 it will be the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, and Ann Druyan, his widow and longtime collaborator, will mark the occasion by releasing Sagan's famous "Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology," The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God. The chance to give the Gifford Lectures is an honor reserved for the most distinguished scientists and philosophers of our civilization. In 1985, on the grand occasion of the centennial of the lectureship, Carl Sagan was invited to give them. He took the opportunity to set down in detail his thoughts on the relationship between religion and science as well as to describe his own personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience, edited, updated and with an introduction by Ann Druyan, is a bit like eavesdropping on a delightfully intimate conversation with the late great astronomer and astrophysicist. In his charmingly down-to-earth voice, Sagan easily discusses his views on topics ranging from manic depression and the possibly chemical nature of transcendance to creationism and so-called intelligent design to the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets to the likelihood of nuclear annihilation of our own to a new concept of science as "informed worship." Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, he illuminates his explanations with examples from cosmology, physics, philosophy, literature, psychology, cultural anthropology, mythology, theology, and more. Sagan's humorous, wise, and at times stunningly prophetic observations on some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos have the invigorating effect of stimulating the intellect, exciting the imagination, and reawakening us to the grandeur of life in the cosmos.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

Brooks, Michael

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

Quantifying Ignorance...the fractal nature of knowledge 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

"I believe that knowledge is fractal in nature. No matter how much we learn, what remains how seemingly small is infinitely complex."
Isaac Asimov

In detailing 13 mysteries at the edge of modern science Michael Brooks expertly lays bare fertile domains for scientific progress. But much more than that, referencing history and historical shifts in perspective that accompanied scientific advance (as for example, when the church attempted to suppress the writings of Galileo and was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so) Brooks also suggests that shifts in perspective may be necessary for us to gain the advance we seek.

But enough about generalities...let's take glimpse at the mysteries surveyed by Brooks:

1) The search for the missing mass in the universe: Today's physicists believe they can only fully explain four percent of what constitutes the universe. The remaining 96 percent has been supposedly divided into dark matter and dark energy owing to qualities about some of it that seem to behave more like matter and others that seem to behave more like energy. However, another proposal is that our understanding of gravity itself is at fault and just as Einstein had to tweek Isaac Newton's concepts of gravity in relation to light we may also have to tweek them in relation to supposedly empty space...which relates to the next mystery:

2) The Pioneer anomaly: In the early 1970s the US sent out two Pioneer probes that are now both past Pluto. Yet amazingly both of them are off course and by the same degree than would be predicted under traditional notions of gravitational pull. Have our probes journeyed far enough to make contact with that missing universe aluded to in the first mystery? The answer to that question is related to our next mystery:

3) Varying Constants: The set strength of the various fundamental forces of nature may not be constant. For those whose appetite is whetted by this chapter, please read Oxford University Prof. John Barrow's book entitled simply "Constants of the Universe." In a rough way, this mystery relates to the next one:

4) Whether cold fusion is possible: Thanks to Einstein's famous E = MC2 huge amounts of energy can be produced by either nuclear fission (the division of nuclear particles) or alternatively fusion (the unification of certain nuclear particles). For those familiar with US A bomb and H bomb testing videos and Godzilla movies, this process is usually a very dramatic one. If cold fusion were possible it would bode significantly against global energy concerns. And while we still don't know for sure if it can be done, we do know that the US Navy is convinced enough to massively fund research in this area. From this mystery, we leap to our next one:

5) How did life originate: Wisely Brooks peppers this part of his book heavily with quotations from both Erwin Schroedinger whose 1944 essay of the same name is still in print and also Adelaide U prof Paul Davies fantastic book The Fifth Miracle. While personally, I believe life will ultimately be found to a fairly common emergent property on certain types of planets and moons, it's still interesting reading to see just how far current research has NOT come. This brings us to our next mystery:

6) Did Viking find evidence of life on Mars: On July 20 1976 the Viking lander did just that on Mars. In four then cutting edge tests (the fifth one failed to work properly) Viking's magic eight ball said: Probably not. But was that the final word? Itself probably not. Which brings us to the next mystery: did we alredy recieve an extra terrestrial signal?

As can be seen, the issues (and the ones listed were just a sampling are fascinating reading for both the questions they answer and the others they beckon us...their inheritors...to answer.

Editorial Review:

Science starts to get interesting when things dont make sense. Michael Brooks reveals thirteen anomalies that defy the scientific theory of today and forecast tomorrows breakthroughs.