Every time I mention the idea of teaching physics to a wider audience than just physics majors, somebody brings up Richard Muller’s course, “Physics for Future Presidents,” at Berkeley. So, I was pleased to find out that he has turned the course into a book, also titled Physics for Future Presidents, with the subtitle “The… Continue reading Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller
Category: Physics Books
A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford by Richard Reeves
Richard Reeves is probably best known for writing biographies of American Presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan), so it’s a little strange to see him turn his hand to scientific biography. This is part of Norton’s “Great Discoveries” series (which inexplicably lacks a web page– get with the 21st century, already), though, so incongruous author-subject pairing… Continue reading A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford by Richard Reeves
Categories: On the Beauty of Physics
Having admitted that I know noting about fine art, here’s an opportunity to prove it… A week or so ago, I was in the Schenectady library looking for something else, and noticed a book called Categories: On the Beauty of Physics, which is packaged in such a way as to make it difficult to attribute,… Continue reading Categories: On the Beauty of Physics
Science Blogs: What Are They Good For?
Over at Science After Sunclipse, Blake has a very long post about the limitations of science blogs. Brian at Laelaps responds, and Tom at Swans On Tea agrees. You might be wondering whether I have an opinion on this. Since I’m going to be talking about it at a workshop in September (first talk, no… Continue reading Science Blogs: What Are They Good For?
Biographers (and Physicists) Are Pigs
I’m deep in book revisions at the moment, which largely accounts for the relative blog silence. This is expected to continue for a while yet, broken by the occasional post when something comes up that is irritating enough to push me to write about it. Such as, well, now. In the chapter on the Copenhagen… Continue reading Biographers (and Physicists) Are Pigs
Science Festivals, Science Books, and Science Funding
The World Science Festival happened while I was at DAMOP (I missed getting to talk to Bill Phillips, because he left shortly after his talk to go to NYC), and by all reports it was a success– they claim 120,000 attendees on their web site, and sold more tickets than expected for several events, and… Continue reading Science Festivals, Science Books, and Science Funding
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman
Somehow or another, I have managed never to read Feynman’s famous book on Quantum Electro-Dynamics. It always seemed a little too much like work, but having found myself in the position of writing a pop-science book about quantum physics that includes a chapter on QED and Feynman diagrams, it seemed like it would probably be… Continue reading QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman
The Theory of Almost Everything by Robert Oerter
In case you can’t pick up his direction from the subtitle of The Theory of Almost Everything (“The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics”), Robert Oerter lays it all out for you in the second paragraph of the Introduction: the Standard Model has a surprisingly low profile for such a fundamental and successful… Continue reading The Theory of Almost Everything by Robert Oerter
Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette
Looking back at the archives, I see that I never did get around to blogging about Jennifer Ouellette’s Black Bodies and Quantum Cats, which I finished back in May. This is a particularly shameful oversight, as she visited campus in late May, and gave two excellent talks for us, so the least I can do… Continue reading Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette
Mr. Tompkins in Paperback, by George Gamow
George Gamow was a Russian-born physicist who is known for, in roughly equal proportions, his work on nuclear physics, his popular-audience books, and his really weird sense of humor. He famously added Hans Bethe’s name to a paper he wrote with his student, Ralph Alpher, just so the author list would be “Alpher, Bethe, Gamow,”… Continue reading Mr. Tompkins in Paperback, by George Gamow