Physics Books
drorzel | June 19, 2007One of my colleagues raves about David Lindley's Where Does the Weirdness Go? as a basic introduction to odd quantum effects, but somehow, I've never managed to get around to reading any of his books until now. I recently had a need to know a bit more about the historical development of quantum theory, though, and ran across Lindley's Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science in the library, which promised to contain the information I was after, so I checked it out.
As you can guess from the title, the book deals with the early development of quantum…
drorzel | May 30, 2007Why the Sky Is Blue, by Götz Hoeppe is subtitled "Discovering the Color of Life," so I was a little puzzled when Princeton University Press asked me if I wanted a review copy. But, hey, free books!
This is ultimately a physics book, but it's really in the category that I think of as "Smart People Books," those books that take an exhaustive look at some phenomenon from a wide range of different perspectives. In this case, it's a survey of several thousand years of thought about the blue color of the sky.
This is an extremely comprehensive look, and I'd be surprised if there's any historical…
drorzel | April 9, 2007The Official Uncertain Principles Cosmic Jackpot Giveaway Contest was even more popular than I expected, with 122 comments (at the time of this writing) each trying to pick the "best" number.
As promised, the winner will be announced today, but this really comes down to deciding which number is the best. So, what's the best number?
The "best" number should obviously be something with intrinsic fundamental importance. Numbers like 7 and 37 and 206 (I liked that entry a lot) are interesting, but not all that fundamental. Constants of nature like h, c, or even the fine-structure constant alpha…
drorzel | April 4, 2007
As you can see from the picture, my desk is a mess. Also, I've come into possession of a second free copy of Paul Davies's new book Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life (one is an advance reading copy in trade paper, the other a spiffy new hardback). You can read my lukewarm review, from which you can easily deduce that I don't actually need to own two copies of this book.
Thus, I am pleased to announce The Offical Uncertain Principles Cosmic Jackpot Giveaway Contest. I will give away one of these two copies to the person who successfully completes the following challenge…
drorzel | January 23, 2007It's going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you'll need to entertain yourselves. Here's a question for the science-minded:
What's your least favorite science textbook of all time?
It could be a book that you loathed when you were a student, or it could be a dreadful book that you were forced to teach out of, but if you've got a least favorite textbook, leave the name in the comments. Obviously, my expertise in dealing with textbooks is mostly in physics, but I'll throw this open to all sciences, so go ahead and nominate that…
drorzel | January 8, 2007Paul Davies's forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled "Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life," so you know that he's not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the "Goldilocks Enigma," and what others refer to as "fine-tuning"-- basically, how do you account for the fact that the universe allows us to exist? A small change in the values of any of the constants of nature would very likely make it impossible for life as we know it to exist. And yet, here we are-- so how did that happen?
Though this book won't be released for a…
drorzel | October 10, 2006Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics is probably the hot physics book of the year. Granted, that's not saying very much, relative to whatever Oprah's reading this week, but it's led to no end of discussion among physics types. And also, frequently, the spectacle of people with Ph.D.'s squabbling like children, so reviewing it is a subject that I approach with some trepidation.
I'm coming to this late enough that it's hard to talk about the book without also talking about the various responses to the book. I'll do my best to split that material off into a separate post (if I post it at all),…
drorzel | September 30, 2006A week ago, I suggested a meta-contest for The Trouble With Physics, with a copy of the book going to the person with the best suggestion of an appropriate way to give away the book. The turnout wasn't exactly overwhelming (maybe a little too abstract to really draw people in, or maybe too obviously fishing for comments-- tough to say). Anyway, I've sort of fallen down on reporting the results-- I've been busy with my actual job, and some blog time has been eaten up with getting the SAT Challenge results ready to go.
Anyway, the most notable entries are below the fold:
Honorable mention: Jenn…
drorzel | September 22, 2006Through some quirk of the publishing industry, I find myself with two free copies of Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics, one from my Corporate Masters at Seed, and the other direct from the publisher. This seems a little excessive, even for a confirmed bibliophile like myself. (I know, I know, this is a problem a lot of people would be happy to have...)
The obvious thing to do is to give it away as the prize for some sort of bloggy contest, but I don't have any ideas for a good contest (I'm generally terrible at this sort of thing). So here's a meta-contest: A free copy of Lee Smolin's The…
drorzel | September 12, 2006The two most talked-about books in physics this year are probably a pair of anti-sting-theory books, Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics, and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, which shares a name with Jacques Distler's favorite weblog. I got review copies of both, but Not Even Wrong arrived first (thanks, Peter), and gets to be the first one reviewed.
Of course, I'm coming to the game kind of late, as lots of other high-profile physics bloggers have already posted their reviews, and various magazine reviews have been out for months. Peter has collected a bunch of links in various posts. I don't…
drorzel | August 9, 2006Like The Pontiff, I am always happy to receive an email from a publicist offering me a free book to review. In this case, the book was Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, of UC Santa Cruz.
I have to admit, the title made me a little uneasy. There have been a great many very stupid things written about quantum mechanics and consciousness over the years, after all. It's published by Oxford University Press, though, so I figured they can't be total cranks, and hey, free book!
I'm happy to report that this book does not add to the tally of stupid…