Books
Category archives for Books
Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution by John Gribbin
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 2, 2013 
Erwin Schrödinger is one of the more colorful figures in physics history. He’s best known for Emmy’s favorite thought experiment, of course, which attempts to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum physics through locking a cat in a box. This overshadows the Schrödinger Equation, the central equation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, which won him a Nobel…
Explaining, Education, and Outreach
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 18, 2013 A couple of days ago, Alom Shaha posted on the new Physics Focus blog (by the way, there’s a new Physics Focus blog…) about his dissatisfaction with some popular books: I recently read a popular science book on a topic that I felt I needed to learn more about. The book was well written, ideas…
The Trouble With Physics
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 10, 2013 
For something related to the book-in-progress, I was reading Raymond Chandler’s classic essay “The Simple Art of Murder” last night, and stumbled across the following quote, where he laments the number of stories in print in the mystery genre in 1950: In my less stilted moments I too write detective stories, and all this immortality…
My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Switek
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 9, 2013 
Back in January, thinking about science topics to add to the book-in-progress, it occurred to me that I would really be letting down SteelyKid (and pre-schoolers everywhere) if I didn’t take the opportunity to include something about dinosaurs. The problem with that, of course, is that I know next to nothing about dinosaurs, especially discoveries…
Mastermind by Maria Konnikova
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 6, 2013 I saw Maria Konnikova’s Mastermind on the book lottery stacks at Science Online, and the subtitle “How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes” practically screamed “This is relevant to your interests!” Not only am I writing a book about how to think like a scientist, one of the chapters I have in mind uses mystery novels…
Gravity’s Engines by Caleb Scharf
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 3, 2013 
The last week or so of silence on the blog has been due to my trip to Ohio (which was very enjoyable), and a lack of child care for the early part of this week. A day and a half home with both kids was just exhausting, but the trip was useful in that it…
The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 1, 2013 
This is the physics book that’s generating the most buzz just at the moment, by noted string theorist Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky, based on a general-audience course Susskind’s been running for years. It’s doing very well, with an Amazon rank in the 300′s, which is kind of remarkable for a book with this many…
Science Online Advice: Writing Books
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 11, 2013 Last Friday, when I didn’t have any time to blog, Zen Faulkes wrote an interesting wrap-up post on Science Online 2013 in which he declared he won’t be back. Not because it was a bad time, but because other people would benefit from it more, and his not going frees up a spot for somebody…
Faitheist by Chris Stedman
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 5, 2013 I started following Chris Stedman on Twitter thanks to a recommendation from Josh Rosenau citing him as someone who promotes atheism without being contemptous of religious people. He was, indeed, a source of religion-and-politics material that I found congenial, and when I noticed he was flogging a forthcoming book, I picked up a copy, which…
The Physics of Wall Street by James Owen Weatherall
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 3, 2013 
As I hinted obliquely a little while back, I don’t have a terribly high opinion of Wall Street or Wall Street traders. Given that, I’m not the most obvious audience for a book titled The Physics of Wall Street, and truth be told, I wouldn’t’ve picked it up on my own. The publisher sent me…
