 |
- Non fiction - |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
First You Build a Cloud |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 First You Build a Cloud:And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life by K. C. Cole Harvest Books 231 pages, 1999 ISBN 0156006464 Reviewed by John A. Broussard, PhD Read First You Build a Cloud and the way you view the world will be changed at least a little. Finding out that ". . . doubling the thickness of a piece of tissue paper just fifty times adds up to enough mileage to reach the moon and back seventeen times," should certainly make one pause. But there is more than that in this slim volume. Cole explores the world of the finite and the infinite, probes into chaos, discusses probability, and treads fearlessly - and helpfully - through the quagmire of quantum mechanics. The author is a master at putting into simple words some of the most mind-boggling concepts of modern science. Don’t expect complete understanding to follow, however, since neither Einstein nor Bohr - nor any of the other giant figures of Twentieth Century physics - have ever claimed to have come near that goal. But Cole gives us the flavor of what has been accomplished, all without that dreaded burden of mathematical formulas. Crucial to any understanding of physics has to be the awareness that, when we try to visualize the infinitely small world of quarks or the vast universe encompassing quasars and black holes, we are dealing with rules that we never encounter in everyday life. The world explored by the physicist and the astronomer is qualitatively different from the world we know. Once we fully recognize that that difference exists, our understanding makes a giant leap forward - a leap Cole helps us make. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||