Science Books
drorzel | December 7, 2010Today is the official release date for the paperback edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I wanted to write up something cool about quantum physics to mark the occasion. I looked around the house for inspiration, and most of what we have lying around the house is SteelyKid's toys. Thus, I will now explain the physics of quantum teleportation using SteelyKid's toys:
"Wait, wait, wait... You're not seriously planning to explain something quantum without me, are you?"
"I could hardly expect to get away with that, could I. No, I'm happy to have your contributions-- the book is about…
drorzel | December 1, 2010I hadn't heard anything about Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation before it turned up in my mailbox, courtesy of some kind publicist at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, otherwise I would've been eagerly anticipating it. Anton Zeilinger is a name to conjure with in quantum optics, having built an impressive career out of doing laboratory demonstrations of weird quantum phenomena. He shared the Wolf Prize earlier this year with John Clauser and Alain Aspect, and the three of them are in a small set of people who probably ought to get a Nobel at some point in the near future…
drorzel | November 26, 2010Today is "Black Friday," the semi-ironic name given to the day after Thanksgiving when major retailers roll out Incredible! Deals! to draw shoppers in at an ungodly early hour. Personally, I don't plan to come within a mile of a mall today, but if that's what floats your boat...
Of course, if you're thinking of gifts for a person interested in science (and if you're reading this, you ought to be...), you could do a lot worse than to look at this list from GeekDad at Wired, which I'm sure you'll be shocked to notice includes How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. If your holiday shopping takes you…
drorzel | November 9, 2010I haven't been doing these as regularly as I was earlier in the year, but here are a few interesting bits of news about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
LA FISICA SPIEGATA AL MIO CANE, is now available. That's the Italian edition, which Google translates to something like "Explaining Physics to My Dog." Emmy is disappointed in that translation-- she was hoping it had something to do with spaghetti, preferably with meat.
This appears to be a review of the Chinese edition, though I can't read a word of it, and Google Translate isn't really up to the task, rendering one whole paragraph as "…
drorzel | November 8, 2010Last week's guess-the-number contest for my spare copy of Massive by Ian Sample generated over 150 comments. So, who won? Well, I said at the time:
I am thinking of an integer between 0 and 1000 (inclusive). The person who comes closest to guessing the number by midnight Eastern time Friday, November 5 wins a copy of Massive.
The number I was thinking of when I typed that was 137. Which, interestingly, was guess by two nearly simultaneous comments, numbers 10 and 11, by Nathan and Derek R. Clearly, these two know their physicist psychology-- 137 is a weirdly important number in physics, as…
drorzel | November 5, 2010Regular commenter onymous left a comment to my review of Warped Passages that struck me as a little odd:
The extended analogy between the renormalization group and a bureaucracy convinced me that she was trying way too hard to make sophisticated concepts comprehensible. Also, I'm not really sure that analogies are the best way to explain concepts to people without using mathematics.
I'm not talking about the implication that making sophisticated concepts comprehensible is not worth doing, but rather the negativity toward analogies. It's odd because, if you think about it, a huge chunk of…
drorzel | November 4, 2010I can't resist interrupting the relatively productive day I'm having working on the new book to point you to Conversación de fÃsica con mi perro, the Spanish-language edtion of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which sports this spiffy cover:
I haven't seen a physical copy of this yet, but the vanity search turned up this blog post, which just reproduces the cover copy, but does offer a sample chapter as a PDF. So, you know, if you want to try it before you buy it, there you go...
This also explains the phone call I got yesterday from a journalist in Spain, who wanted to ask me about…
drorzel | November 3, 2010In a case of poor communication between publicists, I have ended up with not one but two advance copies of Massive by Ian Sample, a forthcoming book about the Higgs Boson. As I barely have time to read one, I don't remotely need two; thus, I will dispose of one with a really simple contest:
I am thinking of an integer between 0 and 1000 (inclusive). The person who comes closest to guessing the number by midnight Eastern time Friday, November 5 wins a copy of Massive.
Leave your guess in the comments. One entry per commenter, please. In the event that two or more people choose the same…
drorzel | November 3, 2010I have nothing useful or interesting to say about electoral politics, but I suspect that's all people will want to read about today. So here's a book post that's been backlogged for quite a while.
Lisa Randall's Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions dates from 2005, and was, I think, part of the huge spate of string-theory-related books at that time (just before the String Theory Backlash books of 2006). It includes the usual survey of the Standard Model and the problems thereof, with an emphasis on the sort of extra-dimension theories that Randall and…
drorzel | October 28, 2010The Times Higher Education magazine in the UK, that is. They ran a review of my book a couple of weeks ago, which I've only just noticed:
The approach is quite entertaining. The tone of the book is chatty and contains some truly awful puns involving dogs, which, if you can stand them, make it an attractive and lively read. However, don't be fooled - Emmy is no ordinary dog. She can reason with the informed leaps one may expect from a physics undergraduate, despite peppering her conversation with "squirrel", "bunny" and "chase".
If you're in the UK, the edition the review refers to is on sale…
drorzel | October 28, 2010I finished Jennifer Ouellette's new book a few weeks ago, shortly after my trip to Alabama, but it's taken me a long time to get around to reviewing it due to a combination of too much work and being a Bad Person. There's finally a tiny break in the storm of work, though, so here's a slightly belated review.
The Calculus Diaries is not a book that will teach you how to do math. There aren't worked examples, detailed derivations, or homework problems in the main text. It might, however, teach you not to fear math, as it provides a witty and accessible explanation of the key concepts behind…
drorzel | October 24, 2010Between my long-ago high-school French and Google Translate, I can tell that this is a good review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It does note, though, that reading the book requires knowledge of English to understand it, which is a problem. And, as far as I know, French translation rights haven't been sold yet... French publishers, je vous regarde.
In other foreign-edition news, we've sold German and Turkish rights, so there will be editions in those languages eventually. Emmy was very happy to hear that the book will be published in Turkey, though that was mostly a case of preposition…
drorzel | October 18, 2010As you may or may not be aware, we are once again in the middle of a DonorsChoose fundraiser to support public school students and teachers. The good news is, the Uncertain Principles entry for the 2010 Challenge is in second place among ScienceBlogs blogs with $373 in donations thus far; the bad news it that more than half of that money is from the initial contribution I made when I set the challenge up.
We've done much better than this in the past, but I realize these are tough economic times, and people may not have as much disposable cash to give to charity. I was thinking, though, about…
drorzel | October 14, 2010Emmy and I are in Buffalo today, after a long drive last night, made longer by the NY Thruway authorities decidin to randomly sprinkle lane closures along the westbound portion of I-90. They also made the sadistic move of putting on the "tune to this radio station for information" flashers before the big back-up, and then playing only a recording saying that they were updating the messages on the information network. For at least an hour. Nice work, Thruway idiots. That was positively Pennsylvanian.
Anyway, we're here in scenic Buffalo, where it isn't snowing yet, so don't ask. Which means I…
drorzel | October 7, 2010Between travel and general work craziness, I completely forgot to note that the UK version of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has gone on sale:
The title for this edition is How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, and the vanity search keeps turning up mentions to it in the Guardian Bookshop, so I guess they like their dog physics with extra quantum in Britain. Anyway, if you've been waiting and wondering when there would be a version with fewer idiomatic Americanisms, it's here, and available from the usual sources.
This brings the in-print edition tally to five, that I know of: the…
drorzel | October 2, 2010A quick check-in from Tuscaloosa, where we're getting ready to head out for the football tailgating. While I've got a minute, though, here are the slides from my public lecture, via SlideShare:
What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics
View more presentations from Chad Orzel.
These are probably less comprehensible that some of my other talks, as I deliberately avoided putting much text on the slides, which I think works better for this kind of presentation. The down side, of course, is that it's not as obvious what some of the slides mean, if you don't know the intended flow of the…
drorzel | September 28, 2010I am in Alabama at the moment, the temporary owner of a ginormous Ford SUV and a hotel room that even I think is a little more air-conditioned than strictly necessary. Which means that it's time for the How to Teach Physics to Your Dog mini-tour of the Southland. On Wednesday, I'll be driving to and speaking at Berry College at 8pm, then on Thursday, I'll be driving across Alabama to speak at the University thereof at 7:30.
If you're within striking distance of either of those places, come on by and see the talk-- I've got an all-new public lecture for this trip, and I promise it will be…
drorzel | September 23, 2010One of the things I've been stressed about lately is next week, when I'm making a trip to the South, specifically Georgia and Alabama. As I mentioned here earlier, the original inspiration was a get-together with friends from college for the Florida-Alabama football game next Saturday, but it seems a shame to go all that way and not do something book-related, so I have arranged to give four talks in two days. Two of these are research colloquia, but the other two are public lectures that might be of interest to readers of this blog or How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
First, on Wednesday,…
drorzel | September 21, 2010Got a big box in the mail today, which included author copies of two Asian editions: the Japanese edition, which I had seen before, and this:
That is, obviously, the Chinese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I say "obviously" mostly because I know that edition was about ready to roll out-- I can't say anything about the actual characters on the cover, other than that they don't include any katakana, and thus it's not the Japanese edition, and they're not hangul characters, meaning it's not the Korean edition. Other than that, I got nothing.
If you can read Chinese, and provide a…
drorzel | September 2, 2010"Hey, dude, whatcha doin'?"
"Signing these contracts. I'm not sure why they need four copies, but they do."
"Contracts for what?"
"The new book. Remmeber, the one we've been talking about these last few weeks? Sequel-of-sorts to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog? About relativity?"
"Oh, yeah, that's right! We're doing another book! Where do I sign?"
"What do you mean, 'Where do I sign?' You're a dog."
"I could, you know, put a paw print on the line, or something."
"I suppose you could, but it wouldn't be legally binding. Dogs aren't allowed to sign contracts."
"You know that's horribly…