21 Impossible Things: Quantum Physics And Relativity For Everyone

21 Impossible Things: Quantum Physics And Relativity For Everyone PDF Author: Nury Vittachi
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811235899
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Quantum physics and relativity, two of the most important advances in modern science, are normally presented as a series of technical discoveries in 20th century Europe.Yet this brief, easy-to-read volume shows how they were underpinned by centuries of observations about the nature of reality from the great philosophies and faiths of humanity, from China to India to the Middle East.At each stage, the people involved found themselves saying: 'That's impossible! That makes no sense. And yet...'

21 Impossible Things: Quantum Physics And Relativity For Everyone

21 Impossible Things: Quantum Physics And Relativity For Everyone PDF Author: Nury Vittachi
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811235902
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Quantum physics and relativity, two of the most important advances in modern science, are normally presented as a series of technical discoveries in 20th century Europe.Yet this brief, easy-to-read volume shows how they were underpinned by centuries of observations about the nature of reality from the great philosophies and faiths of humanity, from China to India to the Middle East.At each stage, the people involved found themselves saying: 'That's impossible! That makes no sense. And yet...'

Summary of John Gribbin's Six Impossible Things

Summary of John Gribbin's Six Impossible Things PDF Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 14

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Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The standard way of looking at the quantum world is based on the idea of waves, and it largely ignores the caveat as if. The matrices approach is more honest, since it does not pretend to explain what is happening between state A and state B, but it provides less solace than the Schrödinger equation. #2 The Copenhagen Interpretation states that we do not know anything except for the outcomes of experiments. These outcomes depend on what the experiments are designed to measure. These questions are colored by our everyday experiences of the world, on a scale much larger than atoms and other quantum entities. #3 The Copenhagen Interpretation, which is the basis of the modern understanding of quantum mechanics, says that the wave function of a quantum entity spreads out to fill up an area evenly, and then collapses when the area is examined. This is not the same as saying that the electron always was in one half of the box or the other, as the CI insists that the collapse only happens when the contents of the box in the lab are examined. #4 The CI states that an electron is emitted from a source on one side of the experiment as a particle. It immediately dissolves into a probability wave which spreads through the experiment and heads towards the detector screen on the other side. This wave passes through however many holes are open, interfering with itself or not as appropriate, and arrives at the detector as a pattern of probabilities.

Don't Be Afraid of Physics

Don't Be Afraid of Physics PDF Author: Ross Barrett
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030634094
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
With the aid of entertaining short stories, anecdotes, lucid explanations and straight-forward figures, this book challenges the perception that the world of physics is inaccessible to the non-expert. Beginning with Neanderthal man, it traces the evolution of human reason and understanding from paradoxes and optical illusions to gravitational waves, black holes and dark energy. On the way, it provides insights into the mind-boggling advances at the frontiers of physics and cosmology. Unsolved problems and contradictions are highlighted, and contentious issues in modern physics are discussed in a non-dogmatic way in a language comprehensible to the non-scientist. It has something for everyone.

Breakfast with Einstein

Breakfast with Einstein PDF Author: Chad Orzel
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1946885665
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Your alarm goes off, and you head to the kitchen to make yourself some toast and a cup of coffee. Little do you know, as you savor the aroma of the steam rising from your cup, that your ordinary morning routine depends on some of the weirdest phenomena ever discovered. The world of quantum physics is generally thought of as hopelessly esoteric. While classical physics gives us the laws governing why a ball rolls downhill, how a plane is able to fly, and so on, its quantum cousin gives us particles that are actually waves, "spooky" action at a distance, and Schrodinger's unlucky cat. But, believe it or not, even the most mundane of everyday activities is profoundly influenced by the abstract and exotic world of the quantum. In Breakfast with Einstein, Chad Orzel illuminates the strange phenomena lurking just beneath the surface of our ordinary lives by digging into the surprisingly complicated physics involved in his (and anyone's) morning routine. Orzel, author of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, explores how quantum connects with everyday reality, and offers engaging, layperson-level explanations of the mind-bending ideas central to modern physics. From the sun, alarm clocks, and the red glow of a toaster's hot filaments (the glow that launched quantum mechanics) to the chemistry of food aroma, a typical day is rich with examples of quantum weirdness. Breakfast with Einstein reveals the hidden physics all around us, and after reading this book, your ordinary mornings will never seem quite as ordinary again.

Physics of the Impossible

Physics of the Impossible PDF Author: Michio Kaku
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385525443
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, the renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future. Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.

Six Impossible Things

Six Impossible Things PDF Author: John Gribbin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262043238
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
“An elegant and accessible” investigation of quantum mechanics for non-specialists—“highly recommended” for students of the sciences, sci-fi fans, and anyone interested in the strange world of quantum physics (Forbes) Rules of the quantum world seem to say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time and a particle can be in two places at once. And that particle is also a wave; everything in the quantum world can described in terms of waves—or entirely in terms of particles. These interpretations were all established by the end of the 1920s, by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and others. But no one has yet come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. In this concise and engaging book, astrophysicist John Gribbin offers an overview of six of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics. Gribbin calls his account “agnostic,” explaining that none of these interpretations is any better—or any worse—than any of the others. Gribbin presents the Copenhagen Interpretation, promoted by Niels Bohr and named by Heisenberg; the Pilot-Wave Interpretation, developed by Louis de Broglie; the Many Worlds Interpretation (termed “excess baggage” by Gribbin); the Decoherence Interpretation (“incoherent”); the Ensemble “Non-Interpretation”; and the Timeless Transactional Interpretation (which theorized waves going both forward and backward in time). All of these interpretations are crazy, Gribbin warns, and some are more crazy than others—but in the quantum world, being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.

Toys Or Physics?: Explaining Physics Through Toys

Toys Or Physics?: Explaining Physics Through Toys PDF Author: Oles Matsyshyn
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 981128153X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Are you ready for a journey of discovery? Let's go!This eye-opening book will amaze young readers and spark their interest in physics. With full-colour illustrations and simple-to-read explanations, Toys or Physics? examines well-loved toys and games, and breaks down essential physics concepts through fun and play.This book is for three groups of people:This title is part of the set: Is it Science? (Set 1)

Void

Void PDF Author: James Owen Weatherall
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224494
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Physics of Wall Street “deftly explains all you wanted to know about nothingness—a.k.a. the quantum vacuum” (Priyamvada Natarajan, author of Mapping the Heavens). James Owen Weatherall’s bestselling book, The Physics of Wall Street, was named one of Physics Today’s five most intriguing books of 2013. In this work, he takes on a fundamental concept of modern physics: nothing. The physics of stuff—protons, neutrons, electrons, and even quarks and gluons—is at least somewhat familiar to most of us. But what about the physics of nothing? Isaac Newton thought of empty space as nothingness extended in all directions, a kind of theater in which physics could unfold. But both quantum theory and relativity tell us that Newton’s picture can’t be right. Nothing, it turns out, is an awful lot like something, with a structure and properties every bit as complex and mysterious as matter. In his signature lively prose, Weatherall explores the very nature of empty space—and solidifies his reputation as a science writer to watch. Included on the 2017 Best Book List by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “An engaging and interesting account.”—The Economist “Readers get a dose of biography while following such figures as Einstein, Dirac, and Newton to see how top theories about the void have been discovered, developed, and debunked. Weatherall’s clear language and skillful organization adroitly combines history and physics to show readers just how much ‘nothing really matters.’”—Publishers Weekly

Universe Without Things

Universe Without Things PDF Author: Jan-Markus Schwindt
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3662654261
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Physics is written in the language of mathematics, and its findings are based on thousands of experiments. But what kind of picture does physics paint of the world? What do theories like relativity or quantum mechanics contribute to it? How complete is this picture? This book sheds light on how the "things" these theories are about relate to our everyday things, and points out what questions remain unanswered and what problems are involved. In this book, the author presents how physics works, what it can and cannot do. In doing so, he describes the surprising answers that physics provides to many of our questions about the nature of "things" and the world; answers that challenge our intuition in many ways. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Universum ohne Dinge by Jan-Markus Schwindt, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

Reality Is Not What It Seems

Reality Is Not What It Seems PDF Author: Carlo Rovelli
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735213941
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“The man who makes physics sexy . . . the scientist they’re calling the next Stephen Hawking.” —The Times Magazine From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, Helgoland, and Anaximander, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the universe today. In elegant and accessible prose, Rovelli takes us on a wondrous journey from Democritus to Albert Einstein, from Michael Faraday to gravitational waves, and from classical physics to his own work in quantum gravity. As he shows us how the idea of reality has evolved over time, Rovelli offers deeper explanations of the theories he introduced so concisely in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. This book culminates in a lucid overview of quantum gravity, the field of research that explores the quantum nature of space and time, seeking to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. Rovelli invites us to imagine a marvelous world where space breaks up into tiny grains, time disappears at the smallest scales, and black holes are waiting to explode—a vast universe still largely undiscovered.