Saw this in the local second hand bookshop and decided to give it a go. I feel like I’ve experienced a 1st year undergraduate physics module with all the hard maths removed, and I still got very hazy towards the end.
The writing is light hearted and relevant, while covering really deep topics. It’s particularly good at walking the reader through first principles of concepts. I really enjoyed the section where through simple thought experiment and geometry some of the fundamentals of relativity are derived. For me this was very much a Ionian Enchantment moment; as the authors explain, this is a poetic term flowing from the work of Thales of Miletus. It describes the revelatory moment when science strips back the seeming complexity of the natural world to explain the simple underlying natural laws, and we feel a sense of deep wonder. Sounds corny but I experienced exactly that when a basic diagram and some elementary maths showed that time is not invariant.
Some elements of the layout were frustrating however; an equation or set of concepts/rules would be given, and then discussed over perhaps another dozen pages. I would have liked to see far more repetition of the relatively (pun not intended) short concept on every page as a reference, maybe in a footnote; having to keep flipping back becomes a little tedious. I’ve read various books on these topics previously but it is so mind-bending there always comes a point at which I lose the thread, and so every I want every tool possible to keep me on track.
I hadn’t realised that the book was published in 2009, which explains the later chapters talking about the imminent Large Hadron Collider and it’s upcoming work to try and prove/disprove the existence of the Higgs particle. Amazing to think that not long after publication that particular scientific breakthrough made headlines around the world.
A recommended read if you want to delve more into this fascinating, confusing, perfectly logical and yet seemingly totally illogical subject.
