Isbn: 9781456373856 - galloping with light - einstein, relativity, and folklore (9 risultati)

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Soft cover. Condizione: Near Fine. No Jacket. FIRST AMERICAN. SOLID CLEAN BRIGHT AND UNMARKED A RARE TITLE THE AUTHOR USES THE FIRST HALF OF THE BOOK TO SHOW THAT OUR INTUITION AND COMMON SENSE HAVE A SOUND FOUNDATION IN THE STUDY OF SCIENCE A REBELLIOUS ATTACK ON WIDELY ACCEPTED BELIEFS ON THE UNDERSTANDING THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE WORLD OF SCIENCE A CLEAN CRISP COPY. N/A (illustratore).…

Condizione: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condizione: New.

Condizione: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condizione: New.

Rústica. Condizione: New. Condizione sovraccoperta: Nuevo. 0. Physics is a very interesting field to the layperson: nuclear energy, space exploration, astronomy and cosmology, just to mention a few fields. But to understand physics requires much study, so popularizations are legio, even many books are best-sellers. This book deserves to be one. A motivation for Felix Alba-Juez (FAJ) to write 325 pages of dense text in rather small font was his annoyance with the popularizing literature. Scientists . enunciate statements that . sound to the layperson as mystical or incomprehensible. The purpose of this book, he states, is to destroy the aura of mystery and incomprehensibility surrounding Relativity theory. To achieve this demystification on must either put down an effort to learn the concepts and ideas of relativity, or learn the profession of a theoretical physicist. Actually these two paths only differ in language: the first uses ordinary language whereas the second uses mathematics. What annoys FAJ is that the people who know best - the theoretical physicists - are seldom good at popularizing. Although most readers probably think that they know what is meant by mass, weight, force, and energy, perhaps also by inertia, gravitation, and momentum, FAJ devotes his first chapter to elucidate these concepts. Here and in every following chapter he first discusses the epistemology and history of the concepts, clarifying the semantics and fighting like a Don Quixote against misconceptions. Surprisingly, this approach makes an absolutely fascinating reading, a cultural Odyssey through the roots of physics. Without mathematical equations, but with clever examples from everyday life, the reader rapidly gets used to moving in different frames of reference. Soon he/she meets the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Linear Momentum and learns some spatial and temporal properties of electromagnetic radiation. In spite of FAJs ambition to explain already in the first chapter The most famous Equation in History, E=mc2, he is at this point aiming too high. A footnote states briefly that the light speed in vacuum is constant, but this information is not necessary here (it is well explained in the appropriate place in Chapter 6). The equation still remains mysterious because the reader will not understand where the factor c2 came from. A real explanation would have required a discussion of invariants in four-dimensional space-time, concepts which are clarified in Chapter 6, but there FAJ does not return to the equation. To let the reader get home with some feeling of the real thing FAJ discusses chemical and nuclear reactions and the conversion of matter into radiation (but not vice versa). Chapter 2 on time is mainly a fascinating review of the human perception of time, vividly illustrated by fictitious and amusing encounters with Mrs. Chaplin and film stars, and exemplified by the perceived duration of a kiss. Soon one discovers that one has learned effortlessly about topological simultaneity, and that the cigarette smoke of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca illustrates an irreversible process. Just by-the-way, this explains the Second Law of Thermodynamics and one of the most difficult concepts in thermodynamics, the entropy. After an excellent overview of physical methods to measure time, the third Chapter on space brings a non-mathematical description of Euclidean geometry (not at all like school geometry), the Newtonian absolute space, and the refutation of both as absolute truths. The distinction between topology and metric is clarified. In the chapter on force and motion, FAJ defines the Principle of Galilean Relativity, and makes the first use of algebraic equations ( p. 148). These, I am sure, the layperson will put up with because she/he has so far been gently coached by words. The equations describe the Galilean transformation relating space and time coordinates between two inertial frames It follows that the Principle of Inertia is covariant with respect to the Galilean transformat. LIBRO.…

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