The World According to Physics

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If Kaluza-Klein theory piques your interest, you might have to wade through a Lisa Randall book to wrap your mind around tiny curled up dimensions. the book has 10 chapters in which he gave a really well introduction to many areas in physics and discussed multiple mind intriguing theories and discoveries about our universe. Yes. You cannot say for sure where an atom is until you look at it. Looking at it makes it decide. Only when you look at it is it in one place. I’ve written books specifically about quantum mechanics, cosmology, the history of science and quantum biology—so there have been topics that fired me up or that my own research has been involved in. But the opening sentence of The World According to Physics is, “This book is an ode to physics.” It’s my love affair with a subject that I’ve had a passion for since my early teens. Al-Khalili will outline the major differences between inflation and bubble universes as well as loop quantum gravity, string theory, and M -theory. But you will have to read pop sci books by Brian Greene or Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems) to understand more.

Let’s go on to the next book which is The Born-Einstein Letters, 1916-1955, which are letters between Albert Einstein and Max Born. Presumably these contain quite a lot of physics: it’s not just about their daily lives, but also about what they were discovering. The language is straightforward and approachable. Rather than take the more common historical approach that builds up physics the way it was discovered, Al-Khalili starts with the 'three pillars' of physics: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. In simple language with never an equation nor even a diagram in sight, the book lays out what physics is all about, what it has achieved and what it still needs to do.

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For me, communicating some of these ideas is more about getting people inspired and excited that there’s this wonderful universe out there that we need to understand. It’s fun and it’s exciting and it’s mysterious and counterintuitive, but I’m not expecting a person to read my book and say, ‘OK. I now understand the subtleties of quantum gravity or the nature of space and time.’ That takes a lifetime of effort and dedication.” Well, there are two. When he came up with the special theory of relativity in 1905 people had almost got there before him. Again, this was to do with the nature of light. Sound waves need air, water waves need water. What is the medium you need to carry light waves? What is the oscillating thing that light travels through? It must be invisible to us and must pervade all space or the light from the sun and stars would not reach us. At the time scientists called it the ‘ether’. But when they did experiments it seemed not to exist. No one could understand how, but Einstein proved it doesn’t exist – light travels through empty space and doesn’t need a medium. I should say that I teach this to undergraduates and this one concept takes me all term to explain so it’s hard to do it in a few sentences.

The cover design has a very spare, geometric quality. There are essentially two shapes in your composition: rectangles and circles. Why did you decide to work with such a limited palette? A quantum physicist and BBC host introduces modern physics by explaining its fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, then describing the field’s three pillars—quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics."— Publishers Weekly So it’s not the easiest of reads, but it’s one of the books that made me fall in love with physics. It’s one of the books that persuaded me that I wanted to spend the rest of my life dedicated to thinking about some of these ideas. After studying physics at Surrey, Al-Khalili stayed on for a DPhil on nuclear reaction theory and has spent most of his career there, apart from a brief interlude as a postdoctoral fellow at University College London. Along with a number of publications devoted to making his field accessible to non-specialists, he drew on his bilingual upbringing to write Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science (2010). But it’s done in a way that is reasonably accessible to people. You don’t have to be an insider or an expert to follow their arguments.Chapter six is about thermodynamics and the arrow of time. when the system reaches equilibrium, its entropy is maximised, and the energy it contains is useless. So, in a sense, it is not energy that is needed to make the world go around, it is low entropy. If everything were in a state of equilibrium, nothing would happen. We need a system to be in a state of low entropy, far from equilibrium, to force energy to change from one form to another—in other words, to do work. Life is an example of a system that can maintain itself in a state of low entropy. Penjelasan soal tiga sokoguru (relaitivitas, mekanika kuantum, dan termodinamika) meski dianggap oleh penulisnya sebagai "semacam cara singkat" tapi tetap bikin mikir kok. Yang seru ya itu, ternyata dunia ini bahkan yang seolah sudah bisa dijelaskan dengan teori dan perhitungan fisika, masih saja bisa saling berkontradiksi antar satu sakaguru dengan yang lain. At one point in this book, Al-Khalili explained how, as objects approach the speed of light, more energy goes into their mass than into making them go faster. Infinite mass is usually a hard concept for people who have not taken physics courses. Since that section was so short, I think a lot of novices might need to visualize the concept more than what this book can offer. I remember the video below as giving one of the best explanations of this concept. It repeats the same info included in the book -- The physical world is strange and full of surprises. And yet, as Jim Al-Khalili shows, it is far from incomprehensible. His simple, profound, and accurate account of core principles makes mind-expanding knowledge accessible to general readers."—Frank Wilczek, 2004 Nobel laureate, author of A Beautiful Question You say you get polemical in the book, so then are you also expounding a particular ideological stance?

This is an excellent book full of inspiring ideas. Jim Al- Khalili is a physicist and a wonderful science popularizer. I'd read a few books written by him already. He tends to explain complex concepts in science in a very lucid and accessible way. Let’s look at the physics books you’ve recommended. These are really the books that inspired you as you dedicated your life to this fascinating but difficult subject, is that right? Broadcaster and quantum physicist Jim Al-Khalili is a superb guide to the fundamental principles of quantum theory, relativity and thermodynamics."— Mail on Sunday Chapter nine is about the usefulness of physics. GPS systems are now such an integral part of our lives that we could not live without them. Not only do we take for granted the fact that we no longer get lost in unfamiliar parts of the world, but GPS has allowed us to see our planet from above and map it with remarkable detail, enabling us to study the way the Earth’s climate is changing, or to predict natural phenomena and help with disaster relief. an understanding of the quantum rules that explain how electrons behave in semiconductor materials like silicon has laid the foundation of our technological world. Without an understanding of semiconductors, we would not have developed the transistor and, later, the microchip and the computer.

If I knew that then the King of Sweden would be calling me up with the Nobel. It’s counterintuitive and weird but we’ve learned to accept it. Quantum mechanics is hugely accurate – most of modern scientific development is based on it and on what it tells us about the subatomic world, but at its heart it says that an atom can be in two places at once. We’ve learned to live with that.