Sometime commenter “Dr. Pain” asked, on a mailing list, for book recommendations for his son, who “wants to read up about physics, especially weird modern physics.” He adds some qualifications: Kid’s books on physics are way too elementary for him, but the typical “naive adult” book is over his head. Does anyone have any good… Continue reading Physics Books for Middle Schoolers?
Category: Science Books
DonorsChoose Payoff: “Favorite” Book
Another question from a generous donor, in this case Natalie, who asks: As for my question, how about “who is your favorite author, and why?” or, if you’d rather, “what’s your favorite book, and why?” This is a difficult question, because it’s subject to a sort of quantum projection noise. That is, my “favorite book”… Continue reading DonorsChoose Payoff: “Favorite” Book
Questions for Chris Mooney?
Chris Mooney will be visiting Union tomorrow (I’m picking him up at the airport in a couple of hours). He’ll be speaking to a couple of classes and then giving a presentation about science and politics in the evening. If you have any questions that you’ve been dying to ask Chris, and haven’t been able… Continue reading Questions for Chris Mooney?
Everything and More by David Foster Wallace
The best way– really, the only way– to sum up David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Brief History of ∞ is by quoting a bit from it. This comes from the middle part of the book, after a discussion of Fourier series, in one of the “If You’re Interested” digressions from the main discussion:… Continue reading Everything and More by David Foster Wallace
Longitude by Dava Sobel
Jennifer Ouellette’s pop-science book project post and the discussionaround it reminded me that I’m really shockingly ill-read in this area. If I’m going to be writing pop-science books, I ought to have read more of them, so I’ve been trying to correct that. Hence, Longitude, which I actually read a few weeks ago at the… Continue reading Longitude by Dava Sobel
Talking to My Dog About Science: Weblogs and Public Outreach
I gave my talk this morning at the Science in the 21st Century conference. Video will eventually be available at the Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive site, but if you’d like to get a sense of the talk, a few people were live-blogging it in the FriendFeed room for the meeting. You get a pretty… Continue reading Talking to My Dog About Science: Weblogs and Public Outreach
Pop-Science Science Book Project
Jennifer Ouellette was inspired by the recent book “meme,” and is putting together a similar list of pop-science books. It might surprise some people, but I haven’t been a big reader of pop-science books over the years. In fact, I’ve read few enough of the books on her list that I’m only going to copy… Continue reading Pop-Science Science Book Project
Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller
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
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