The Story of Physics - Anne Rooney

From Natural Philosophy to the Enigma of Dark Matter
Physics is the science which ties together all others,aiming to explain the nature of the universe from the smallest subatomic particles to vast galaxies and the very nature of space-time. 
It represents human intellectual endeavor at its most ambitious.

The Story of Physics traces the development of physics from the natural philosophies of the ancient world to cutting-edge experiments in quantum mechanics.

Topics include:

• The nature of mattter, which was first theorized as atoms 2,500 years ago
• Light and optics - from simple lenses to the wave-particle duality of light 
• Masses and forces - harnessing energy and mass to work for us
• The bizarre subatomic world of quantum mechanics
• Our fascination with the stars, which prompted the earliest scientific thought
• The universe around us, from the Big Bang to distant galaxies

The Story of Physics also features the giants of science history, from Archimedes through Newton and Galileo to Curie, Einstein and Hawking. 
[Book Description Source: Book Cover Notes] 


From the Ancient Greeks, who first suggested that matter might be made of indivisible atoms, through the great explorations of Arab, the Renaissance and then Enlightenment scientists, the story of physics has been written through trial and error, sheer persistence, and intermittent flashes of pure genius, despite many periods of persecution, hardship, and danger. 
Author Anne Rooney follows its narrative from the earliest societies to the current day, discovering the entrancing appeal of the secrets that rule the universe. 
On the way from prehistory to the twenty-first century, we encounter Newton poking a needle into his own eye, Einstein paving the way for nuclear weapons, and the ultimate puzzle of dark matter. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout in full color.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.81 out of 5 (21 Ratings, 2 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5.  


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Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility.
In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace in the future. 
From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the world of science fiction to explore the fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we know them today.
He ranks the impossible technologies by categories—Class I, II, and III, depending on when they might be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never.

 In a compelling and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:

• How the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light around an object, like a stream flowing around a boulder, making the object invisible to observers “downstream”
• How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to the nearby stars
•  How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology.
• Why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics, although it would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one.

Kaku uses his discussion of each technology as a jumping-off point to explain the science behind it. 

An extraordinary scientific adventure, Physics of the Impossible takes readers on an unforgettable, mesmerizing journey into the world of science that both enlightens and entertains.

 [Book Description Source: Goodreads]

Goodreads Rating - 4.05 out of 5 (16,711 Ratings, 789 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5. 

Buying Options 
 
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Buy the Kindle  version
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3-Minute Stephen Hawking - Paul Parsons & Gail Dixon

Digesting His Life, Theories &  Influence in 3-Minute Morsels

Stephen Hawking is the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. He is possibly the greatest living scientific genius but also a highly successful author who has revealed the most tricky of topics to ordinary minds, and a vocal campaigner for social and political issues, including the rights of disabled people. - See more at: http://www.ivypress.co.uk/books/3-minute-stephen-hawking/#sthash.fi6YsKBN.dpuf

Stephen Hawking is the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. He is possibly the greatest living scientific genius but also a highly successful author who has revealed the most tricky of topics to ordinary minds, and a vocal campaigner for social and political issues, including the rights of disabled people. - See more at: http://www.ivypress.co.uk/books/3-minute-stephen-hawking/#sthash.fi6YsKBN.dpuf

Stephen Hawking is the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. He is possibly the greatest living scientific genius but also a highly successful author who has revealed the most tricky of topics to ordinary minds, and a vocal campaigner for social and political issues, including the rights of disabled people. - See more at: http://www.ivypress.co.uk/books/3-minute-stephen-hawking/#sthash.fi6YsKBN.dpuf

Stephen Hawking is the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. He is possibly the greatest living scientific genius but also a highly successful author who has revealed the most tricky of topics to ordinary minds, and a vocal campaigner for social and political issues, including the rights of disabled people. - See more at: http://www.ivypress.co.uk/books/3-minute-stephen-hawking/#sthash.fi6YsKBN.dpuf

Stephen Hawking is the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein.
He is possibly the greatest living scientific genius but also a highly successful author who has revealed the most tricky of topics to ordinary minds, and a vocal campaigner for social and political issues, including the rights of disabled people.
3-Minute Stephen Hawking is the instant introduction to this exceptional genius. 
This quark-size biography divides Hawking's life into 3-minute particles - each served up as an easily assimilable feast.
Read it - and the Universe is your oyster.

• Become an expert on the life history and career highlights of Stephen Hawking in 3 hours.
• Divided into 3 sections on Life, Theories and Influence each containing an hour’s worth of fascinating facts.
• Each topic divided into 3-minute bites that you can absorb almost without pausing for thought. - See more at: http://www.ivypress.co.uk/books/3-minute-stephen-hawking/#sthash.fi6YsKBN.dpuf

Become an expert on the life history and career highlights of Stephen Hawking in 3 hours.
Divided into 3 sections on Life, Theories and Influence each containing an hour’s worth of fascinating facts.
Each topic divided into 3-minute bites that you can absorb almost without pausing for thought.

[Source: http://www.ivypress.co.uk/books/3-minute-stephen-hawking ]

Goodreads Rating - 3.62 out of 5 (21 Ratings, 5 Reviews)

Buying Options 
 
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Gravity by Brian Clegg

Why What Goes Up, Must Come Down

This book is a history of gravity, and a study of its importance and relevance to our lives, as well as its influence on other areas of science.

Physicists will tell you that four forces control the universe. 

Of these, gravity may the most obvious, but it is also the most mysterious. 

Although ludicrously weak compared to the other forces (a tiny magnet can hold up a piece of metal against the gravitational attraction of the whole Earth), gravity permeates our everyday life and being.

We begin with humanity's earliest ideas of how we remain stuck to the ground - a significant consideration when you realize that despite the myths, educated people have known the Earth was a sphere since the time of the Ancient Greeks. 

Along the way we'll see how the Arabic scholars explained the force of gravity, why Galileo didn't need to drop balls off the tower of Pisa, exactly how Newton came to his conclusions and why he refused to 'frame hypotheses' about gravity. 

Newton managed to predict the force of gravity but couldn’t explain how it worked at a distance. 

Einstein picked up on the simple premise that gravity and acceleration are interchangeable to devise his mind-bending general relativity, showing how matter warps space and time. 

Not only did this explain how gravity worked – and how apparently simple gravitation has four separate components – but it predicted everything from black holes to gravity’s effect on time. 

We will explore the concept of action at a distance, and see how Einstein transformed our understanding of gravitation with general relativity and consider whether the graviton will ever be discovered. We will see how birds, bees and rockets seem to defy gravity, and whether the concept of anti-gravity can move from pure science fiction to possible fact. 

Whether it’s the reality of anti-gravity or the unexpected discovery that a ball and a laser beam drop at the same rate, gravity is the force that fascinates.

Gravity never fails to fascinate...

[Based on the book description on the author Ben Clegg's website and  Amazon.com]

Link:
Hear Brian Clegg talk about gravity in a radio interview.

 My Comments: 
Many books and authors of this genre claim to explain abstruse concepts in a manner a layman can easily understand. Unfortunately though their intentions are good, they fall woefully short of this objective (at least as far as I am concerned !).
But this book came the closest in my opinion . I understood more than 80 % of what it was trying to explain.
Therefore highly recommend it to all the readers of the Popular Science genre.
 


Goodreads Rating - 4 out of 5 ( 3 Ratings)
 
 
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The Grand Design

Author:         Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow
Published:   2010
Publisher:    Bantam Press
Hardcover: 208  pages
 

This  book is a sort of sequel to Stephen Hawking's classic best seller A Brief History of Time. This time the renowned physicist Hawking teams up with another famous physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow. The book attempts to unanswered questions in "A Brief History of Time".
Questions like - Why is there a universe--why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why are the laws of nature are what they are? Did the universe need a designer and creator?

The authors explain how as per quantum theory there are multiple instances of universe existing simultaneously. Also these universes have not just one but every possible history. 
They question the conventional concept of an objective reality and propose a "model-dependent" theory of reality. 

The book describes how the laws of  the universe we live in are extraordinarily finely tuned to create an environment conducive  to our existence, and shows why quantum theory predicts the multiverse--the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. 

The authors then conclude that  M-Theory which explains  the laws governing the multiverse, is the only viable candidate for a complete "theory of everything." 

I have read many books which attempt to demystify the esoteric areas of modern physics and cosmology. But I must admit that I am yet to get a complete hang of the subject. Either I am incapable of digesting the stuff or the inherent nature of the subject itself is not amenable to easy explanation. Whatever the case may be, my experience with  this book was no different. 

Initial few pages were quite easy to grasp but things starts getting confusing as I approached the half-way-mark. However it is perhaps better than many of the other books I have read in this genre. Small doses of humor sprinkled and lavish illustrations in myriad colors provide much needed relief to the readers.


Overall a good book to read . I rate it 3.5 in the scale of 5.
Some readers with higher IQ than me may enjoy it much more than I did !

 
Links:

• Stephen Hawking's website
• The Grand Design - Wikipedia entry about the book
• Introduction to M-Theory
  

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25 Big Ideas - the Science that's Changing our World

Author:         Robert Matthews

Published:   2007

Publisher:    Oneworld Publications

Paperback: 200 Pages

The 25 Big Ideas described in this book are based on the discoveries which make a point that the universe in which we live in is magical, bizarre, strange and defies common sense. These ideas have challenged many eminent scientists and mathematicians. These ideas prove that in reality science is not as objective as it is made out to be but it has its own uncertainties and subjectivity since it is a human endeavor. There is still a long way to go before we understand completely our universe.

The book consists of 25 chapters (one for each idea) categorized under the following heads as follows:

• Ourselves - and Others: Consciousness, Small World Theory, Game Theory
• Doing the Impossible: Artificial Intelligence, Information Theory, GM Crops
• Life: Out of Africa, Nature versus Nurture, The Selfish Gene
• The Earth: Catastrophism, Plate Tectonics
• Mathematics that Counts: Bayes's Theorem, Chaos, Cellular Automata, Extreme Value Theory
• In Sickness and in Health: Evidence-based Medicine, Epidemiology
• The Physics of Reality: Special Relativity, Quantum Entanglement, The Standard Model, The Theory of Everything
• The Universe- and Our Place In It: The Big Bang, Dark Energy, Parallel Universe, The Anthropic Principle

Each chapter is brief (6-8 pages) and self-contained. It begins with a very succinct summary which introduces the idea in a nutshell and explains it relevance in our day to day life. This serves as an appetizer for the the reader to proceed with the chapter. The chapter then takes us through the story of how the idea evolved, its current state of understanding. It also explains the associated technical terms  and provides suggestions for further reading.

A very well-written book which attempts to explain the abstruse ideas in a very interesting manner . But it requires the reader to have at least a high-school level knowledge of science and mathematics to fully appreciate and enjoy it.

Useful Links:

• Summary of all the Ideas and Further Readings
• Sample Chapter  :  Consciousness.

Einstein and the Special Theory of Relativity

Author :    Ajoy Ghatak
Published: 2010
Publisher: Viva Books
Paperback: 170 Pages


Modern physics especially the Theory of Relativity  had  fascinated me in my high school, though I did not really understand it very well. And for quite some time I had been on  a lookout for an interesting and well written  book which could help me understand it without trivializing the subject too much . And this book by Prof. Ajoy Ghatak, of IIT Delhi, perfectly fitted my need.
Interestingly this book starts with a  summary chapter which explains in 10 pages the  concept of  Special Theory of Relativity (completely equation free !) with simple examples. For a layperson this is more than enough. And if one cannot grasp what is said in this chapter, one need not proceed further ! But having a Ph.D in Engineering which  made me capable to stomach a reasonable dose of mathematical equations  I dared to venture forward.
The main book consists of four chapters.
In the first chapter author has given a brief life sketch of Einstein and briefly discussed his numerous contributions. This is quite an interesting chapter which also gives some insights into the personal life of Einstein , how he collaborated with other scientists, the story and controversies surrounding his Nobel Prize.
Chapter two discusses the first principles of  relativity - Constant Speed of Light, Time Dilation and Length Contraction , supported by interesting narrations of Mu-Meson experiment, Michelson Morely experiment.
and the the Twin Paradox .
In chapter three the author derives Einstein's world famous equation E = mc**2 in a fairly easy to understand manner.
Derivations of Lorentz transformation equations are provided in chapter four.  In my opinion this chapter though dealing with a very important topic was rather unnecessary in the book of this kind. It sort of breaks the whole flow of the book and conveys a sense of abrupt ending to the book. Besides there is nothing in this chapter which adds to the understanding of the concepts so well explained in the previous chapter.
The book has lots of examples, illustrations, problems and references which will vet one's appetite to know more about the subject of Relativity.
A very interesting book for those interested in Physics and comfortable with moderate amount of Mathematics. It is somewhere between an academic tome and a popular science book.