Skip to main content

Energy: the subtle concept – Jennifer Coopersmith ****

There are many reasons why, by rights, this shouldn’t be a great popular science title. Physicist Jennifer Coopersmith makes clear at the very beginning that a background in the physical sciences is assumed for parts of the book. We have quite a few equations, and throughout the book Coopersmith does not hesitate to mention such words as tensors, integrals and vectors, with little in the way of definitions for the layperson. In addition, there is a lot packed in here – at 360 pages, whilst there are certainly longer books out there, I wondered when starting the book whether the non-specialist might suffer from information overload.
And yet, the more I read this book, the more difficult it was to put it down, and I was always excited about returning to it. (To give some indication of how much I enjoyed the book: I am often unable to get down to reading until 8 or 9 o’clock at night during the week, because of a long commute. For this book, however, I got up especially early on one occasion to continue reading so I didn’t have to wait until the evening.) This is because, despite all the shortcomings mentioned above, the book also has a fascinating story to tell about the development of our understanding of energy as a physical quantity, and overall, the way Coopersmith describes this development means that these shortcomings, while never going away, become less significant.
We begin with Liebniz’s concept in the 17th century of vis viva, or ‘live force’, defined as some kind of ‘activity’ that was conserved and which was ‘the cause of all effect in the universe.’ After tracing developments in the 18th and 19th centuries, we go on to consider our modern understanding of kinetic and potential energy, via discussions of quantum mechanics (where we find that, contrary to what we had believed, the principle of conservation of energy can be violated due to the uncertainty principle) and relativity (a consequence of which is that we understand energy as being interchangeable with mass). Along the way, we meet a varied cast of characters who have contributed to our understanding of energy, and the biographical sections we get on the scientists involved complements well the explanations of the science, and makes the book, on the whole, very readable. Particularly interesting is the section on Sadi Carnot.
It is also the case that, whilst the science can often be challenging, if you put in the effort you will be more than compensated for your trouble, and it is possible to get real insights into the nature of energy, which, unlike less abstract physical quantities like mass or momentum, can be difficult to get a feel for. Yes, there are equations, and yes, there are tricky concepts which could have been introduced more gently. But if you persevere, and continue reading where you may otherwise be liable to get a little stuck, it is worth it, and you always get, at the very least, a good idea of the big picture.
I can’t completely overlook the drawbacks mentioned above, so am unable to give the book the full five stars. But I would still highly recommend this. Although perhaps ideal for physics undergraduates, this book is still of great value for the layperson, who would be likely to get a lot out of it.
Hardback:  

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero Degrees of Empathy [The Science of Evil] – Simon Baron-Cohen ***

I’ve been a real fan of previous books by Simon Baron-Cohen like  The Essential Difference , so opening this was one was a pleasant prospect. What I found was a book that wasn’t  bad … but that could have been a lot better. I got the impression of a book that had been rushed out without a lot of work going into it. The thesis at the heart of the book – that one of the important ‘circuits’ of the brain is the one dealing with empathy, and that individuals sit on an empathy spectrum, with some residing at zero degrees of empathy – is an interesting one. Baron-Cohen introduces us to three key personality types he defines as ‘zero-negative’ including psychopaths, plus types that are ‘zero-positive’ like those with Asperger’s. In a way both of these definitions are odd, in that his zero-negatives can actually have a lot of the kind of empathy that involves being able to read another person’s emotional state, and his zero-negatives can have a lot of the kind of empathy i...
Post a Comment
Read more