Last night was the latest meeting of the London Science Book Club. It should have happened last week but the London riots put the kibosh on that plan. Only two of us managed to turn up yesterday. Nevertheless, we had a lively discussion and plenty of space on our massive table in the empty cafe.
Our pick for this month was Marcus Chown's Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You. It's a lovely little book (fewer than 200 pages) but it does require your absolute concentration. Quantum theory is perhaps the most difficult and mind-bending of all the sciences, and it's particularly tough to make sense of it without the aid of formulae and diagrams... which makes Chown's achievement all the more impressive. That said, I can't say that we understood everything. One of our group read it twice and still wasn't comfortable with explaining the concepts to someone else. I read it once, and even though I felt more enlightened by the end, I still don't really understand the difference between a fermion and a boson either.
Even so, we would definitely recommend this book to others. It comes closer to explaining quantum physics and cosmology in an accessible way than anything else we've read. Plus it has loads of fun quotes (including a great one from Woody Allen) and footnotes (did you know, for example, that black holes didn't become popular amongst researchers until someone gave them their name?). And it has inspired at least one of our group to read up about quantum theory more deeply and research the lives of characters like Thomas Young (of double-slit experiment fame).
Our next book club pick is Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner. So look out for our review in October!
1 responses:
Interesting. Thanks for sharing the info about the book.
-- Pablo Kalidasa (idlyforbreakfast.blogspot.com)
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