Skip to main content

Physics in 100 Numbers - Colin Stuart ***

I'm not generally a big fan of the popular science equivalent of those filler TV shows like 'The 50 best comedy moments' or 'The 100 TV scenes you least want to see again' or whatever. Some of these books feel no more than an easily sellable packaged concept with little imagination behind it. I'm pleased to say that Colin Stewart's Physics in 100 Numbers is not one of these - it has plenty of genuine moments of interest.

 What we have here is a collection of single page items and double page spreads in slightly wider than usual hardback (though not big enough to class as a coffee table book) format in numerical order from 5.49x10-44 (Planck time) to 1x10500 (number of possible string theory 'solutions'). Occasionally the format is a little squeezed - so 1543, for instance, is not really a number, but the year that the groundbreaking book by Copernicus was published - but mostly Stuart sticks to the straight and narrow.

 What the author tries to do, and at which he often succeeds, is to turn each little essay into an enjoyable expansion of the basic facts to include enough context to make it worth reading. So, for instance, for the permeability of free space (1.26x10-6, but you knew that) we don't just discover what the scientific term means, but who came up with the word 'permeability' (Oliver Heaviside, who in his photo looks scarily like an Edwardian version of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine), why permeability and its counterpart permittivity were important in Maxwell's work on electromagnetism, and how it made the prediction that light was an electromagnetic wave possible.

 The reason I really can't give a title like this the four stars that some of its content deserves is that I am never really sure what such a book is for. Unless readers have trainspotting inclinations, I can't see them sitting down and reading the book end to end. I certainly found that quite difficult to do (and I was a trainspotter in my teens). But on the other hand, physics isn't necessarily the ideal topic for a dip in, dip out loo book. Perhaps the best application here is as a gift for difficult-to-buy for people.

 So if you enjoy these kind of highly segmented 'n things' type books, and a lot of people must because they sell pretty well, this is without doubt one of the best of the breed. (Incidentally, it's a format that should work well on Kindle - a shame not to see it as an ebook.)
Hardback:  
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

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more