Skip to main content

Why Does E=mc2? – Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw ****

Brian Cox is a dream for any publisher (sorry, Jeff Forshaw, but we haven’t heard of you). The media’s darling physicist at the moment, Cox is sometimes described as the popstar physicist, partly because he looks like one, but even more remarkably, because he was one. Although now Professor of Particle Physics at Manchester University (though confusingly, according to the bumf, he lives in London – that’s quite a commute), he was once part of the band D:Ream. He’s also a nice guy – I’ve done couple of gigs with him (speaking engagements, not music), and though a little over-enthusiastic about the movie world at the time, he was very friendly.
You might expect, with Cox on board, that this would follow the approach of TV science – lots of ‘gee, wow, amazing!’ but light on nuts and bolts science. But not a bit of it. In fact, if Cox and Forshaw had taken the same advice about equations as Stephen Hawking, the chances are they would have expected to have around 2 readers.
This is primarily a book about the origins of the world’s most famous equation, but rather than just give fun background, some special relativity and some handwaving, this pair plunge in and really do explain how E=mc2 is derived, something that isn’t generally done in popular science because, frankly, it’s pretty hard going. They don’t stop there either. They go into the master equation of the standard model of particle physics, explaining how it is derived from gauge symmetry, exploring the different components of the equation and giving by far the best explanation of the Higgs field/Higgs boson that I have ever seen. In this, the book is absolutely masterful.
What I was a little disappointed with, having heard Cox’s eloquent speaking, is the rather stiff writing style. Although it tries to be friendly, I felt a bit like I was… well, being talked to by a couple of professors. There’s a lovely example of this where they quote Kurt Mendelssohn’s book on Lavoisier’s widow where she is said to have led Count Rumford “a hell of a life.” Cox and Forshaw then comment: ‘the book was written in 1966, hence the quaint turn of phrase.’) You can almost see the pursed professorial lips.
I loved this book, which perhaps makes it rather surprising that I only gave it four stars. If you’ve at least a physics A level and are about to set out on a physics degree (or, like me, you’ve got a rusty physics degree), it’s phrased at just the right level. But I felt it would be hard going for a general reader without that background. I had to re-read several bits to be sure what the writers intended, and in the end there’s a reason most popular science books don’t have this level of technical detail.
So, not quite the perfect popular science book, yet certainly one of 2009’s gems.

Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why? - Philip Goff *****

It might seem a bit odd to review a popular philosophy book here, but Philip Goff's content overlaps sufficiently with cosmology that it's appropriate, and that content is fascinating, even though chances are you won't agree with Goff all the way. The point of this book is to suggest that there is purpose behind the cosmos. The main evidence for this that Goff uses is the fine tuning of our universe that makes it suitable for life. Most cosmologists agree that this is odd, but many try to explain it using the idea of the multiverse. With some nifty mathematic-less probability (though he does invoke and describe Bayes theorem), Goff demonstrates convincingly that this argument does not hold up. (You can see some detail of how he shows that it's rubbish here .)  We then take a look at a couple of alternative explanations - a deity, or the universe itself embodying a degree of purpose, which comes under the banner of panpsychism. I didn't honestly find the arguments in
Post a Comment
Read more

Short Cut: Maths - Katie Steckles (Ed.) ****

As a reader, I'm generally something of a sceptic on the subject of highly illustrated books that cover a topic in a series of two page spreads, but I surprised myself by enjoying Short Cut: Maths . It's described online as a paperback, but it's actually a quite handsome hardback. The book is divided into eight sections (numbers, structures, logic, geometry and shape, functions, probability and statistics, modelling and games) each of which contains six or seven spreads in the form of answers to questions. These range from the straightforward 'How high can you count on your fingers?' or 'Why can't you un-square a number?' to the intriguing 'Can a baby manage a crocodile?' and 'How many hairs are there on a bear?' As is often the case with this style of book, there are several contributors whose names are quite hard to find - as well as consulting editor Katie Steckles, we have Sam Hartburn, Alison Kiddle, and Peter Rowlett (plus illustrat
Post a Comment
Read more

Consciousness - John Parrington ****

Consciousness provides what is the arguably biggest gap we have in our scientific knowledge. Unlike quantum physics or the detail of cell biology, this is a subject we all experience directly in our everyday lives. We know that we appear to be conscious. But what consciousness really means, if it exist at all and how it can be studied scientifically are all issues that science bumps up against repeatedly. John Parrington starts us of with some basic background to the history of consciousness 'science' from Artistotle, through Descartes to the modern distinction between the understanding of mechanisms for how we sense, remember, react to stimulus and so forth and the 'hard problem' of explaining the subjective sense of being us and our feelings. Parrington argues that our human-style consciousness, which he suggests is different from that of other animals, is a consequence of our use of language and our ability to use tools to radically transform our environment, combin
Post a Comment
Read more