The realm of theoretical physics is teeming with abstract and beautiful concepts. And the task of imagining them is one that demands profound creativity, argues Giovanni Vignale. Explaining them is curiously akin to the craft of poets, or magical realist novelists such as Borges, and Musil, or Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. In this unusual and sometimes poetic book, Vignale presents his own unorthodox accounts of fundamental theoretical concepts such as Newtonian mechanics, superconductivity, and Einstein's theory of relativity, showing that what may seem at first quite simple in fact turns out to be much more profound. As we delve behind now-familiar metaphors such as 'electron spin' and 'black hole', the world that we take for granted melts away, leaving a glimpse of something much stranger.
| ISBN | 0199574847 | | Pages | 320 | | ISBN13 | 9780199574841
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 614 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Height (mm) | 239 | | Format | Hardback | | Width (mm) | 156 | | Publication date | 10 Mar 2011 | | Spine width (mm) | 31 | | DEWEY | 530.1 | | Academic level | General | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
|
|
|
Prologue ; 1. The way of the abstract ; 2. Limits ; 3. Laws are made to be broken ; 4. Of first and last things ; 5. Representations ; 6. The invisible light ; 7. The double helix ; 8. Quantum mechanics: the triumph of the abstract ; 9. Tales of quantum reality ; 10. The spinning electron and other metaphors ; 11. Margarita
this book is the best Christmas reading for physicists this year CERN Courier For anyone thinking of starting a physics degree, or wishing they had done one, this is an excellent book...by someone who is eveidently a first-rate teacher. Andrew Crumey, The Scotsman
Be the first to write a
customer review
Enlarge
