Engineering Physics

Our intuition about how things should behave is usually right in the everyday world. We see the baseball soar in the air, arc, drop, and lie stationary on the ground. Through data gathered by our senses and basic knowledge of the laws of classical mechanics, the motion of a ball makes perfect sense. But enter the world of the tiniest particles on earth—the motion of electrons, the shapes of molecules—and everything we think we know about the world radically changes.

For the past 50 years, governments and research teams have tried to bottle the sun with lasers, magnets, sound waves, and particle beams, struggling to harness the power of fusion. Again and again, they have failed, disgracing generations of scientists. Throughout this fascinating journey, Charles Seife introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science.

Written by a friend and scientific collaborator with Albert Einstein, this remarkable study is a model of what a biography of a scientist should be. In this book, we come to know Albert Einstein as the “backward” child; the academic outcast; the reluctant world celebrity; the exile; the pacifist; the philosopher; the humanitarian; the tragically saddened “father” of the atomic bomb; and above all, the unceasing searcher after scientific truth.

Lighthearted, quirky, and upbeat, this book explores the portrayal of science and technology on both the big and little screen - and how Hollywood is actually doing a better job of getting it right than ever before. Grounded in the real-word, and often cutting-edge, science and technology that inspires fictional science, the authors survey Hollywood depictions of topics such as quantum mechanics, parallel universes, and alien worlds.

The aurora borealis, often referred to as the Northern Lights, is a natural light-show that appears in the sky around the north magnetic pole. Auroras can sometimes be seen in other places of the world, but not as clearly. In the southern hemisphere, the phenomenon is called "aurora australis".

This book is about science and how it works. It is about what it means for a paradigm to shift and what it really takes to shift it. And it is about the strange and unusual world of quantum physics and what it tells us about who we are. At the start of the 20th Century, a dramatic revolution in science occurred. Over the course of a few decades our most fundamental notions of time, space and consciousness were all being called into question. In undeniable ways, it became clear that the nature of reality is intimately interwoven with our experience of it.

We take time for granted as it passes during every moment of our existence. Other things may change, but time remains constant and predictable. The past, the present, and the future exist within a harmonious, reliable, and never-changing system. Or at least that’s how it seems… It was Albert Einstein who, in 1905, first theorized that time might not be quite as straightforward as that.

In The Universe in a Box, cosmologist Andrew Pontzen explains how physicists model the universe’s most exotic phenomena, from black holes and colliding galaxies to dark matter and quantum entanglement, enabling them to study the evolution of virtual worlds and to shed new light on our reality.

Knowledge of the basic ideas and principles of science is fundamental to cultural literacy. But most books on science are often too obscure or too specialized to do the general listener much good.

Das Wissen über das, was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält, ist nicht nur das Ergebnis herausragender Forschung brillanter Geister, sondern auch eine Konsequenz wahnwitziger Zufälle und absurder Ideen. Genau dieser höchst unterhaltsamen und verrückten Seite der Wissenschaft und ihrer Geschichten widmet sich der junge Science-Star und Wissenschaftsjournalist Niklas Kolorz. Er begleitet Pythagoras, Marie Curie und Albert Einstein, während sie quasi zufällig ihre bahnbrechenden Entdeckungen machen.

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.

E=mc2: It may be Einstein’s most well-known contribution to modern science, but how many people understand the thought process or physics behind this famous equation? In this collection of his seven most important essays on physics, Einstein guides the listener step-by-step through the many layers of scientific theory that formed a starting point for his discoveries.

Fear of Physics is a lively, irreverent, and informative look at everything from the physics of boiling water to cutting-edge research at the observable limits of the universe. Rich with anecdotes and accessible examples, it nimbly ranges over the tools and thought behind the world of modern physics, taking the mystery out of what is essentially a very human intellectual endeavor.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist.

Once dismissed as a mathematical curiosity, black holes are so strange they almost defy belief. Since their existence was confirmed, research into the nature of black holes has opened up new vistas in physics. In this audiobook, we examine some of the most fascinating discoveries about black hole formation and behavior, the new and evolving research in gravitational wave astronomy, theoretical possibilities such as wormholes, and much more.

Is there such a thing as a fundamental reality, something which was around before our universe came into existence and which will still remain when all matter, time, and space itself ultimately disappear? Something fundamental which, in turn, can make space and time and matter arise from seemingly nothing? Under most cosmological and physical models, the last known remnants of reality are the disembodied laws of mathematics - beyond which it is extremely difficult to probe further.

The Science of Superheroes takes a lighthearted but clear-headed look at the real science that underlies some of the greatest superhero comic books of all time, including Spider-Man, Batman, Fantastic Four, and many more. Each chapter presents the story of the origin of one or more superheroes and asks intriguing questions that lead to fascinating discussions about the limits of science, the laws of nature, and the future of technology.

In researching one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter, Ken Alder stumbled on a 200-year-old secret: The meter, it turns out, is in error. This is a story of two men, a secret, and a timeless human dilemma: is it permissible to perpetuate a small lie in the service of a larger truth?

The beauty of fractal patterns and their relation to chaos, as well as the history of chaos, and its uses in the real world and implications for the philosophy of science are all discussed in this Very Short Introduction audiobook.

Musician, composer, TV presenter, and educator Richard Mainwaring uses the concept of the Infinite Piano to reveal the extraordinary world of frequency in a multitude of arenas―from medicine to religion to the environment to the paranormal―through the universality of music and a range of memorable human (and animal) stories laced with dry humor. Whether you’re science curious, musically inclined, or just want to know what a Szechuan pepper has to do with physics, What the Ear Hears (and Doesn’t) is an immensely enjoyable book filled with “did you know?” trivia.