Physicists Look Back

Physicists Look Back
Author: J Roche
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 1990-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780852740019
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In Physicists Look Back: Studies in the History of Physics, various international contributors ranging from physicists, engineers, theoreticians, experimentalists, and information scientists to educationalists, science historians, sociologists, and physics teachers discuss the history of physics. They describe their own research developments, demonstrate ways the history of physics can be helpful in teaching physics and in clearing up difficult concepts, and offer professional advice about resources and methods. This diversified book provides a historical background to modern physics and illustrates how an appreciation of the historical context of physics can lead to a better understanding of modern physics. It covers the history of ozone, the ionosphere, plasma physics, the technical developments of the electron microscope and crystallographic x-ray photography, and the history of the Josephson effect. Well illustrated and containing some autobiographical research not previously published, this resource is valuable reading for professional physicists, physics teachers, educationalists, historians and philosophers of science, and physicists.

The Physics Behind...

The Physics Behind...
Author: Russ Swan
Publisher: Cassell
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2018-08-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1788400968
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Can you really lose weight by consuming nothing but ice cream and beer? How does the latest blockbuster movie get squeezed onto a disk, and how do they make the pictures seem 3D? How much does a selfie weigh? What's the science behind forensic investigations, body scans, and the dating of ancient artefacts? The Physics Behind... takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the scientific principles that that make the modern world work. Could there be life on Mars? Why is north really south? How do self-driving cars find their way around? These and many more topics are explored by starting with the basic science that makes them tick - examining the physics behind them. Packed with detailed original artwork and infographics, The Physics Behind... is perfect for anyone who has ever been curious about the science of life. Including: - The physics behind modern life: Wi-Fi, Facial recognition, touchscreens, microwave ovens, the ice cream and beer diet, taking a selfie, Flash memory, a bag of sugar, catching the train, calendars and clocks - The physics behind entertainment: optical discs, lasers, white water, executive toys, the electric guitar, music, 3D movies - The physics behind analysis: medical imaging, looking at little things, spectroscopy, crime scene investigation, tricorder, microfluidics, radiocarbon dating, proving the Earth is round - The physics behind space: rocket science, space weather, Planet Nine, space telescopes, is there anybody out there? life on Earth, life on Mars - The physics behind big science: what's the matter?, time travel, bomb or meltdown?, the Large Hadron Collider, the Human Genome Project, the Standard Model, gravity, everything - The physics behind the weird universe: strings, rings and other things, N-dimensional space, the hypercube, antimatter, the dark universe, quantum weirdness, quantum biology, time crystals and Majorana - The physics behind the environment: weather forecasts, climate change, renewable energy, migration, peacock feathers, sunburn, rainbows, spider silk - The physics behind transportation: autonomous autos, Hyperloop, Maglev, satellite navigation, motor sport, going rreeaallllyy fast, stealth - The physics behind everything else: curve balls, the Mpemba Effect, why north is really south, perpetual motion and the heat death of the universe, and the physics behind this book.

Back-of-the-Envelope Physics

Back-of-the-Envelope Physics
Author: Clifford Swartz
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2004-12-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0801881641
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From an award-winning teacher, “a delightful and instructive accessory to an introductory physics course” (Physics World). Physicists use “back-of-the-envelope” estimates to check whether or not an idea could possibly be right. In many cases, the approximate solution is all that is needed. This compilation of 101 examples of back-of-the-envelope calculations celebrates a quantitative approach to solving physics problems. Drawing on a lifetime of physics research and nearly three decades as the editor of The Physics Teacher, Clifford Swartz—a winner of two awards from the American Association of Physics Teachers—provides simple, approximate solutions to physics problems that span a broad range of topics. What note do you get when you blow across the top of a Coke bottle? Could you lose weight on a diet of ice cubes? How can a fakir lie on a bed of nails without getting hurt? Does draining water in the northern hemisphere really swirl in a different direction than its counterpart below the equator? In each case, only a few lines of arithmetic and a few natural constants solve a problem to within a few percent. Covering such subjects as astronomy, magnetism, optics, sound, heat, mechanics, waves, and electricity, this book provides a rich source of material for teachers and anyone interested in the physics of everyday life. “This is a book that will help make the study of physics fun and relevant.” —Mark P. Silverman, author of Waves and Grains: Reflections on Light and Learning

At the Edge of Time

At the Edge of Time
Author: Dan Hooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0691197008
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A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.

A Universe from Nothing

A Universe from Nothing
Author: Lawrence Maxwell Krauss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013
Genre: Science
ISBN: 145162445X
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This is a provocative account of the astounding new answers to the most basic philosophical question: Where did the universe come from and how will it end?

Physics of the Future

Physics of the Future
Author: Michio Kaku
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2011-03-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0385530811
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next century. “Mind-bending…. [An] alternately fascinating and frightening book.” —San Francisco Chronicle Space elevators. Internet-enabled contact lenses. Cars that fly by floating on magnetic fields. This is the stuff of science fiction—it’s also daily life in the year 2100. Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the world’s top scientists—working in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In Physics of the Future, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries’ leaps and bounds seem insignificant.

Einstein Wrote Back

Einstein Wrote Back
Author: John W. Moffat
Publisher: Thomas Allen Publishers
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-10-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781771022095
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John W. Moffat was a poor student of math and science. That is, until he read Einstein’s famous paper on general relativity. Realizing instantly that he had an unusual and unexplained aptitude for understanding the complex physics described in the paper, Moffat wrote a letter to Einstein that would change the course of his life. Einstein Wrote Back tells the story of Moffat’s unusual entry into the world of academia and documents his career at the frontlines of twentieth-century physics as he worked and associated with some of the greatest minds in scientific history, including Niels Bohr, Fred Hoyle, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Abdus Salam, among others. Taking readers inside the classrooms and minds of these giants of modern science, Moffat affectionately exposes the foibles and eccentricities of these great men, as they worked on the revolutionary ideas that, today, are the very foundation of modern physics and cosmology.

The Trouble with Physics

The Trouble with Physics
Author: Lee Smolin
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2006
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780618551057
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Beyond the Dynamical Universe

Beyond the Dynamical Universe
Author: Michael Silberstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2018-02-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192533835
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Theoretical physics and foundations of physics have not made much progress in the last few decades. Whether we are talking about unifying general relativity and quantum field theory (quantum gravity), explaining so-called dark energy and dark matter (cosmology), or the interpretation and implications of quantum mechanics and relativity, there is no consensus in sight. In addition, both enterprises are deeply puzzled about various facets of time including above all, time as experienced. The authors argue that, across the board, this impasse is the result of the "dynamical universe paradigm," the idea that reality is fundamentally made up of physical entities that evolve in time from some initial state according to dynamical laws. Thus, in the dynamical universe, the initial conditions plus the dynamical laws explain everything else going exclusively forward in time. In cosmology, for example, the initial conditions reside in the Big Bang and the dynamical law is supplied by general relativity. Accordingly, the present state of the universe is explained exclusively by its past. This book offers a completely new paradigm (called Relational Blockworld), whereby the past, present and future co-determine each other via "adynamical global constraints," such as the least action principle. Accordingly, the future is just as important for explaining the present as is the past. Most of the book is devoted to showing how Relational Blockworld resolves many of the current conundrums of both theoretical physics and foundations of physics, including the mystery of time as experienced and how that experience relates to the block universe.

Fly By Night Physics

Fly By Night Physics
Author: A. Zee
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0691207739
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The essential primer for physics students who want to build their physical intuition Presented in A. Zee's incomparably engaging style, this book introduces physics students to the practice of using physical reasoning and judicious guesses to get at the crux of a problem. An essential primer for advanced undergraduates and beyond, Fly by Night Physics reveals the simple and effective techniques that researchers use to think through a problem to its solution—or failing that, to smartly guess the answer—before starting any calculations. In typical physics classrooms, students seek to master an enormous toolbox of mathematical methods, which are necessary to do the precise calculations used in physics. Consequently, students often develop the unfortunate impression that physics consists of well-defined problems that can be solved with tightly reasoned and logical steps. Idealized textbook exercises and homework problems reinforce this erroneous impression. As a result, even the best students can find themselves completely unprepared for the challenges of doing actual research. In reality, physics is replete with back of the envelope estimates, order of magnitude guesses, and fly by night leaps of logic. Including exciting problems related to cutting-edge topics in physics, from Hawking radiation to gravity waves, this indispensable book will help students more deeply understand the equations they have learned and develop the confidence to start flying by night to arrive at the answers they seek. For instructors, a solutions manual is available upon request.