Physics Books
drorzel | June 1, 2010Two noteworthy events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the next month:
First, and most important, I'm going to be signing books at the Author's Alley portion of the World Science Festival Street Fair. The fair itself is in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, though the name of the signing program is a little misleading-- rather than being in an actual alley, the signings will be on the eighth floor of NYU's Kimmel Center, on the south side of the square. I'm signing at 1:30, and there are plenty of other books and presentations on offer, not to mention festive happenings…
drorzel | May 11, 2010I should note up front that I'm kind of jealous of Marcus Chown regarding this book. Subtitled "What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe," The Matchbox That Ate a Forty-Ton Truck is a book that uses trivial everyday observations-- the fact that you don't fall through the floor, the fact that the sky is dark at night-- as a jumping-off point for discussions about deep and fundamental scientific ideas like Pauli exclusion and inflationary cosmology. It's a fantastic idea for a pop-science book, and I wish I'd thought of it first.
The range of topics here is pretty big, covering most of…
drorzel | May 6, 2010My publisher would like to include a Teacher's Guide with the paperback edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. which means that, well, I need to put together a Teacher's Guide for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. The problem is, I'm not exactly sure what should go in that sort of thing.
So, if you have any opinions on the subject of Teacher's Guides for pop-science books in general, or can point to examples of Teacher's Guides that you particularly like, or have suggestions for what ought to be in a Teacher's Guide for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. If you were a teacher planning to…
drorzel | May 5, 2010It's been a couple of weeks since I did an update on How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, but that's been as much laziness as a lack of news. Some developments, mostly relating to foreign lands:
The US paperback edition is slated for December release. I'm working on a Teacher's Guide to go with it-- suggestions on what ought to be in there are welcome, as I have no idea
If you do the right search, you'll also find a forthcoming UK edition which will be out this fall with a slightly different title. There's a production schedule for this, and everything-- more information as things become…
drorzel | May 1, 2010The APS now gives out an Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics, which gives you some idea of how influential his work was, in particular "Subtle Is the Lord..." The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, which won prizes and sits in a prominent position on the bookshelves of many physicists. Like a lot of influential works, though, it's kind of odd to read it much later than some of the works it has influenced.
The ordering of the subtitle is very deliberate, and accurate. This is first and foremost a book about Einstein's science, with a biographical structure and occasional biographical…
drorzel | May 1, 2010A college classmate sent me this picture of a library display in the Boston area:
That's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog prominently displayed on the top shelf. Just below it, you can see Physics for Future Presidents, and to the right, you can just make out Richard Dawkins's book on evolution. Pretty good company to be in, and even better to be on top of...
(Yes, I know, relative position in a library book display doesn't have anything to do with anything. It's fun to pretend, though...)
(Thanks for the picture, Andrew.)
drorzel | April 15, 2010The pace has slowed, but there are still occasional sightings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in my Google vanity searches:
It turns up on library blogs with some regularity. This particular one, from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is nice because it's not just a rewrite of the publicity copy
I was really excited to see Daily Kos show up as one of the sites found by the blog search, because they have bazillions of readers. It was only a plug in a comment, but still...
The strangest-- in a good way-- mention recently was this passing reference in a newspaper column from Michigan,…
drorzel | April 8, 2010Via Twitter, Michael Barton is looking for some good books about physics. I was Twitter-less for a few days around the period of his request, and this is a more-than-140-characters topic if ever there was one, so I'm turning it into a blog post.
The reason for the request is that he's going to be working as an intern at the Einstein exhibit when it visits Portland, which makes this a little tricky, as relativity is not an area I've read a lot of popular books in (yet-- that's changing). That will make this a little more sparse than it might be in some other fields.
There's also an essential…
drorzel | March 29, 2010A flurry of things to kick off the new academic term. Reviews and news:
A nice write-up on Wired's GeekDad blog by Kathy Ceceri, about last week's homeschool event. Includes a picture of me giving a tour of my lab.
ZapperZ says that I'm not teaching physics, I'm teaching about physics. Which is probably fair, as he defines the terms. Of course, How to Teach Your Dog About Physics isn't as good a title.
And a bunch of upcoming events:
I'll be on WAMC's Roundtable this Thursday at 10am (well, after the news report that runs at the top of the hour).
I'm giving a Physics colloquium at Cornell…
drorzel | March 25, 2010Been a little while since I've done an Obsessive Update, but a few noteworthy things have come up recently:
A very nice review at Pet Connection: "this brilliant and (relatively) simple book explains the basic premises of quantum physics in terms that dogs and most English majors can understand." Which is not to say that English majors are less likely to understand it than dogs-- English majors are a big part of our target audience, and it's nice to hear that it works for at least some of them.
Another blog review, this time at Synergy of One: "Throughout the book, the author's extremely…
drorzel | March 22, 2010I gave a talk today for a group of local home-school students and parents, on the essential elements of quantum physics. The idea was to give them a sense of what sets quantum mechanics apart from other theories of physics, and why it's a weird and wonderful thing.
The title is, of course, a reference to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and the second slide was an embedded version of the Chapter 3 reading. I set the talk up to build toward the double-slit experiment with electrons, using the video of the experiment made by Hitachi. Here's the talk on SlideShare:
What Every Dog Should Know…
drorzel | March 3, 2010I've been buried in work, so I haven't had time to do any real blogging, but I do want to post a quick reminder of this week's signing:
-- This FRIDAY, March 5 (that is, the day after tomorrow), I will be signing books at the Vestal, NY Barnes and Noble at 7pm. I'm not entirely sure what they expect, but at the very least, I will be signing books and answering questions. If they want me to read stuff, I can do that, too, and will bring along the unpublished dialogue that I read at Boskone.
If you're in the Binghamton area, and are looking for a way to kick your Friday night off with some…
drorzel | February 26, 2010A couple of upcomign events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
-- Next FRIDAY, March 5, I will be signing books at the Vestal, NY Barnes and Noble at 7pm. This is the big-box chain store closest to my hometown, and my parents report already getting calls about it, which is weird but cool. If you're in the Broome County area, stop on by.
-- I will be at the APS March Meeting in Portland March 14-18 (getting in a little early, leaving a little early). I'm giving an invited talk, but haven't been able to line up anything more public, alas.
-- I'm giving a Physics colloquium at Williams…
drorzel | February 25, 2010One of the weird-but-cool things about being C-list famous on the Internet is that some publishers now send me unsolicited review copies of forthcoming books about science. These aren't always the books I would really like to get free copies of, but, hey, free books.
Among the books I've received in the last year or so is Anil Ananthaswamy's The Edge of Physics, which I got as an ARC several months ago-- I read a bunch of it in Houston at the Sigma Xi meeting back in November-- but I just realized that it's due out next Tuesday, and I really ought to post a review of it.
As you can guess from…
drorzel | February 17, 2010A couple of reviews, an offer, and a mystery regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
The reviews:
A review at suite101 that went up a while ago, but I somehow missed in the vanity search. It's a nice, detailed review, and if I had to pick a pull quote it would probably be: "You can be prepared for a good scientific romp throughout Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Thinking like a dog is a big help."
Scott at a physics teaching blog has a more recent review: "I often pick up books and don't bother finishing them. This book kept pulling me back to discover what oddity was next. I…
drorzel | February 12, 2010Miscellaneous stories and links about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
-- There's a nice review by Margaret Fisk (who has been reading it for a while, and mentioning it on her blog, which kept turning up in the vanity search):
Orzel does a wonderful job of finding physical parallels to explain quantum concepts in ways that make a reasonable amount of sense, whether in the behavior of dogs on a walk or the "magically" refilled food bowl. Though scientifically inclined, through a series of events I ended up with little formal training, and this book is written for people in just that situation…
drorzel | February 7, 2010Miscellaneous stories and links about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
Kathy Ceceri, who wrote the story about the book that ran in the Times Union, has posted the full article on the Home Physics blog. The link to the paper itself may very well disappear behind a paywall, but this post should remain accessible.
There's an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that I can't read because I'm not a subscriber, and I don't remember the password needed to access it via the library subscription. If anybody has access and would like to tell me what it says, that would be cool. (UPDATE: I've…
drorzel | February 6, 2010I want to like this book more than I do.
As a general matter, this is exactly the sort of science book we need more of. As you can probably guess from the title, Why Does E=mc2? sets out to explain Einstein's theory of relativity, and does an excellent job of it. It presents a clear and concise explanation of the theory for a non-scientific audience, using no math beyond the Pythagorean Theorem.
I picked this up partly as research of a sort-- if there is ever a How to Teach Physics to Your Dog 2: Canine Boogaloo, the most obvious topic for it would be relativity, which I mention a few times,…
drorzel | February 3, 2010It's been a while since I've done a fun with graphs post about the Amazon sales rank of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, but that's not because I've stopped tracking it. It's getting to be enough data, though, that it's worthwhile to look on a slightly coarser scale, so here's the sales rank data binned by day:
This shows some clear structure, specifically two points with dramatic drops (that is, dramatic improvements in the Amazon rank-- smaller numbers are better), followed by slow climbs. The two big improvements correspond to the immediate post-publication blog boost, and the…
drorzel | February 1, 2010Two events in the next couple of weeks at which I will be appearing live and in person:
1) This Thursday, Feb. 4, I will be giving a talk at the University of Maryland, College Park at 3:30 pm in the Lecture Hall (room 1110) in the Kim Engineering Building. The title of the talk is "Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How Weblogs Can Help." Which reminds me, I need to tweak those slides...
Lest I get overly nostalgic about Our Nation's Capital, there's snow predicted for Friday and Saturday, just in time to potentially screw up my flight home.…