It's (Just) Rocket Science - Trisha Muro ****

It can be difficult to come up with a new and different way to look at basic science - but Trisha Muro manages this by using the applications of a whole list of satellites and probes to illustrate basics of physics. This could have got messy, but Muro keeps the reader on an even keel as we travel from topic to topic.

Sometimes the spaceflight missions are fairly obscure - readers may not have come across, for instance, the very first mentioned (TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), which is linked into the geometry of orbits. I thought this would be one of the weaker points, as exoplanets didn't strike me as a great link into the topic of orbits, but it worked surprisingly well. Others include the familiar favourites from the James Webb Space Telescope to the Voyager probe.

Mostly the topics are managed without much dipping into mathematics - the odd equation, but nothing scary. There are two 'interludes' that do include more mathematical physics, but there's nothing as challenging as calculus, let alone the kind of high level maths needed for the general theory of relativity. Incidentally this was a slight disappointment as Muro uses the old bowling ball on a rubber sheet analogy, missing (as far as I could see) any explanation of why a dropped object falls under gravity.

If I have any complaint is that rather too much of the physics itself is space-based - so we have chapters on the geometry of orbits, our place in space, the physics of rocket launch, the physics of orbit etc. The structuring works best, oddly, where the physics is very down to Earth - because this is where the physics is most meaningful to use in ordinary life - and, to be fair, some of the basics are covered. If we take the 'three pillars of physics' identified by Jim Al-Khalili as relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics in his excellent The World According to Physics, though, only one - relativity - gets significant coverage.

Even so, as long as we accept that the aspects of physics covered will be slanted towards space, it's an enjoyable and informative read.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

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 ...

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...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

Search This Blog