I would love to be able to pick up and read an accessibly written physics book. “Pop science book” I believe is the term. One that explains tricky concepts in simple terms. I’m not scared of basic maths, but definitely no complicated functions and formulas.
I feel as though I have a keen interest to learn about light, space, quantum physics, etc… but I can never get past the 4th or 5th sentence of a relevant science article, because my enthusiasm to learn gets gradually sapped with each “what does that mean?” moment I continuously encounter.
I’m not sure who’s writing good pop intro books these days. Isaac Asimov used to do a good job on a range of physics subjects, and the classic stuff doesn’t go out of accuracy bvery fast, but his books are pretty much out of print.
Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics are classics, and in print, but a bit pricey, and might be too mathematical. Nut I highly recommend them.
Larry Gonick’s Cartoon Guide to Physics is pretty good
I haven’t read it, but there’s a Physics for Dummies (and also a Physics Workbook and Quantum Physics). I’ve found their books pretty good for intros:
If you want to be a bit more serious, the Schaum;'s Outline series has several books on physics. They have lots of worked problems, so you can really se what’s going on:
I taught a college-level physics course several years ago, and used Hewitt’s material extensively to cover concepts for a given topic (before moving on to the traditional math-based approach).
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jim Al Khalili is the best non-technical explanation of quantum physics I’ve found. (It also has some great illustrations.) Jearl Walker’s The Flying Circus of Physics is a very good survey of the complexity of physical phenomena that goes past simplified textbook examples.
However, to really understand physical behavior you have to understand the basis of physical mechanics itself. A fundamental understanding of the principles of energy, momentum, mechanics, electrodynamics, waves, and optics is really essential to the ability to really visualize and intuitively understand physical phenomena, and without that grounding all the pop science in the world is just so much glurgage taken on faith.
I’d qualify myself as a non-phsyics guy (Anything beyond pre-calc confused the hell outta me.) The book Strange Matters helped me understand a lot more. It’s a pop-sci journalist as a writer, so while he’s not very technical, most of his stuff holds up if you bother to do background research.
I picked up a new re-issue of the Stephen Hawkins: A brief moment in the history of time +* The Universe in a Nutshell* (Now w/ Illustrations!). Even as a fan of physics, those books left me totally at a loss after 90+ pages. And I was really trying.
For a great, FREE, explanation of many of the complex theories floating out there, PBS: Elegant Universe.
I actually liked A Brief history of time (as a physics noob), you have to read carefully but things are pretty clear. I actually came in to get some ideas about books similar to this one, so…are the recomended books considerably ‘easier’ than Hawkins? Do you guys know of any books that are similar to A brief history, just - you know- more of it?
I don’t have any recommendations for strictly Physics introduction, but here’s some ‘pop science’ books with a bunch of physics in them:
Bill Bryson’s ‘A short history of nearly everything’ is a good general science book with some stuff on physics.
The Feynman biography - ‘Genius’ by James Gliek mostly talks about Feynman, but when going over his (amazingly interesting) life, there’s a lot of physics.
Another James Gleik book - ‘Chaos’ speaks of Chaos theory. A bit dated and narrower in scope than a general Physics book, but an interesting read.
Or perhaps pretty much any James Burke book. I particularly enjoyed the ‘Pinball Effect’. He writes about the history of science, which touches on physics quite a bit. He does an amazing job of humanizing science.
Bryson’s book has a lot of detractors in the sciences - a bit too dumbed down.
I enjoyed the Feynman bio a lot and the book Chaos but not sure they get to the topics the OP is really looking for.
I would start with E=MC2: a biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis. It breaks down the history of each literal symbol (the E for energy, = sign and its usage, matter, etc…) and then shows how other scientists built up to the famous equation Einstein included in his theories. It provides a thoughtful overview of Relativity and is one of the best I have found in making it grasp-able to a layman like me.
It is a bit old so therefore may be a bit dated, but I would add Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris. He is a science journalist so writes clearly and practically. He walks through Man’s evolution in understanding our place in the universe - from early astronomical charting through the move from geocentrism to a heliocentric model of our solar system, up through Relativity and quantum physics. You might like it because its main objective is how humans see themselves, so the physics innovations are used in service to this objective - they aren’t dug into with a lot of math detail…
If there is any fact or idea that Bryson states correctly in this book it’s purely by accident. Despite the author’s claim that the book was vetted by experts in the field, every single chapter I’ve skimmed through has egregeous errors of fact and misleading notions of accepted theory. Do not use this as a reference for understanding the fundamentals of physics or anything other than the dubious entertainment value of Bryson’s prose.
I used to have dozens of physics books; moving forced me to give most of them away, but this bookby Lewis Epstein remains. I’ve loaned to friends who gave it back and bought their own copies. I can promise you that you will not regret getting this book.
Hmm, my wife had the 9th edition of Hewitt’s Conceptual Physics textbook. I found myself highly unimpressed by it–in that it was significantly more math-heavy than the course description and title would have implied, such that my wife (who admittedly never quite got past trigonometry) could not get through it in any meaningful way.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I’ve heard the detractors on Bryson’s book and it’s my sense that people take issue with his sometimes poor analogies and oversimplification of complex ideas, but have to admit that it’s still mostly right on the important stuff.
Now, I am not a scientist and LOVE his travel books, so I admit I have some clear bias, but I found the book an entertaining a educational read. I think the good outweighs the bad, but I get the sense I’m in the minority on this issue. I still recommend it.
That said, it covers the science waterfront, as it were, and if the OP is looking for a physics book, there are better choices out there.
While I love Walker’s book and refer to it constantly (my copy is starting to fall apart), it’s an abysmalbook to try to learn physics from, even if you get the edition “with answers”. This is a book you give your students after they’ve have a cuple of years of physics, and think they know it all – to prove that they don’t. The ultimate reference on oddball physics (now desperately in need of an update – it’s over 30 years old*), it’s not really all that great as an introduction.
*And I know Walker has tried. He had the contents online a while back in an effort to update it, but that seems to have disappeared.
Thanks everyone. The Feynmann recommendations have led me to buy myself a copy of Six Easy Pieces. I’ve already finished the first chapter, and am so far feeling relatively at ease with it.
Incidentally, I have read Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything. I quite enjoyed it, but am in no position to comment on its scientific accuracy.
That certainly has got to be the highest rated “pop science” book I’ve ever seen on Amazon. I’ve added it to my Amazon Wishlist, and may give it a go after I finish reading my current one.
Most Amazon reviewers seem to disagree with me, but for quantum mechanics I enjoyed David Z. Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and Experience. It explains, in layman’s terms, just a bit of quantum mechanical formalism. In this respect it’s better than some popular books that spend all their time saying, “Golly, quantum mechanics sure is weird! It’s like magic or Taoism or something!” With Albert’s book you can imagine what it might be like to calculate a real-world result with QM. (Except that he uses made-up observables like “hardness” to keep things simple.)
He’s also a philosopher, so there’s a lot of time spent on interpretations of quantum mechanics, which you might or might not enjoy.
No it isn’t. That’s the problem; it takes a few factoids, spins them out, and then tries to claim a cohesive survey of the field in question, when in fact it contains numerous errors, misapprehensions, and diversions that deliver a complete misunderstanding of the phenomena at hand.
I don’t own the book, so I can’t cite directly from it, but my in my recollection he makes some pretty egregious errors regarding hominid development; specifically claiming a level of incompleteness in the fossil record that isn’t true. His discussion of the Big Bang and initial nucleuosynthesis was infuritatingly bad; he stated some claims as definite that are entirely speculative (in particular his excursions into theories of multiple universes) and allows others to be vague when we actually have a pretty good understanding of them. His discussion on atomic theory was, at best, badly incomplete, and more properly flawed. His parade through the Solar System was curiously warped toward Pluto, and is almost entirely absent of discussions about the effect of Solar processes. His knowledge of biology is sorely incomplete (his estimate of the number of cells in the human body is off by about two orders of magnitude), and his general discussion of evolution was inexcusably wrong-headed, although the latter is a common problem that extends far beyond Bryson’s work. And his discussions of historical figures in science focus on their morbid pecculiarities, as if these oddities were the most significant or useful facts to relate about their lives.
The thing is, you’re not going to learn physics comprehensively without getting into the math, so anyone not prepared to do that is basically going to be limited to reading and parroting factoids anyway. The Flying Circus at least offers a view that even everyday phenomena are not as simple as a standard textbook makes them out to be, and that the world is a really complicated chain of interactions. While it isn’t the book I would teach introductory mechanics from, it is a good illustration of the complexity of common natural phenomena.
You might want to try just a regular run of the mill intro physics textbook. Find one that is REALLY thick and really BIG. Seriously, because its the one that is most likely going to have lots of pictures and words and diagrams in addtion to worked out problems and problem sets.
If you are near a university you can probably get a used one cheap, or a discontinued edition for next to nothing. The smaller, local independent book textbook store would probably be more likely to keep an eye out for one for you. And often the school library will keep a copy of those on hand.
I don’t have it handy, and I dont recall who wrote it, but my intro physics book actually had a good bit of verbage that was helpful in addition to the math. It probably wasnt nearly as entertaining as a for the masses book, but it was readable.
As for the math, yes it really helps to understand the physics.
Buttt, for a lot of the basic understanding, you really dont have to be able to DO the math. So much as understand what it means. Solving alegbraic equations or integrating or differentiating can get downright hairy. Understanding the mathematical theory behind those things can get pretty difficult for some folks as well. But if you can just understand WHAT those things mean or represent (which IMO much easier), that would go along way towards understanding what the physics textbook is trying to explain.
Students take math courses that take semesters explaining the math theory and how to work all different kinds of math problems in a gazillion different ways with all sorts of “tricks” for the more difficult stuff. However, much of what all that represents could be explained in a few hours with the right student/explainer combination.