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jazzy_daveRichard P. Feynman "Six Easy Pieces : The Fundamentals of Physics Explained" (Penguin)
For my 94th book i read this year was this excellent selection of essays derived from lectures by the great scientific genius that was Richard Feynman. I have been dipping into this 144 page paperback over the last few months and been constantly delighted with the freshness of his explanations.
Feynman is as enigmatic as usual and his descriptions are vivid and inspiring. He begins discussing atoms and shows us how we can understand the world around us using the simple concept of 'jiggling' atoms. I found this to be a profound and exiting way of understanding how things truly work, for example, why does tea cool down when we blow on it? Well, we cause some of the atoms (well molecules in reality) of the tea to get so excited and jiggly that they break away from the liquid and fly off into the air. The more jiggly they are to start with, the more likely they are to break off, thus the tea gets less jiggly and jigglyness is equivalent to heat. Hence the tea gets cooler.
Those with a physics background and lay people alike should all be able to learn something from here, or if not see something they thought that they knew in a fresh way.
Also the introduction by philosopher and physicist Paul Davies is good and deflates the hyperobjective and impersonal myth, predominent among the way we teach science, that personality and idiosyncratic preferences don't show up in the results of scientists.
The sections on conversational energy, Gravitation and Quantum mechanics are a little basic but interesting nonetheless.
All in all, a great read.
For my 94th book i read this year was this excellent selection of essays derived from lectures by the great scientific genius that was Richard Feynman. I have been dipping into this 144 page paperback over the last few months and been constantly delighted with the freshness of his explanations.
Feynman is as enigmatic as usual and his descriptions are vivid and inspiring. He begins discussing atoms and shows us how we can understand the world around us using the simple concept of 'jiggling' atoms. I found this to be a profound and exiting way of understanding how things truly work, for example, why does tea cool down when we blow on it? Well, we cause some of the atoms (well molecules in reality) of the tea to get so excited and jiggly that they break away from the liquid and fly off into the air. The more jiggly they are to start with, the more likely they are to break off, thus the tea gets less jiggly and jigglyness is equivalent to heat. Hence the tea gets cooler.
Those with a physics background and lay people alike should all be able to learn something from here, or if not see something they thought that they knew in a fresh way.
Also the introduction by philosopher and physicist Paul Davies is good and deflates the hyperobjective and impersonal myth, predominent among the way we teach science, that personality and idiosyncratic preferences don't show up in the results of scientists.
The sections on conversational energy, Gravitation and Quantum mechanics are a little basic but interesting nonetheless.
All in all, a great read.
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