But what about relativity? Physics professor Chad Orzel and his inquisitive canine companion, Emmy, tackle the concepts of general relativity in this irresistible introduction to Einstein’s physics. Through armchair ”and sometimes passenger-seat” conversations with Emmy about the relative speeds of dog and cat motion or the logistics of squirrel-chasing, Orzel translates complex Einsteinian ideas, i.e., ”the slowing of time for a moving observer, the shrinking of moving objects, the effects of gravity on light and time, black holes, the Big Bang, and of course, E=mc2” into examples simple enough for a dog to understand.A lively romp through one of the great theories of modern physics, How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about space, time, and anything else you might have slept through in high school physics class.

    It places the basics of astronomy and the process of science within the grasp of introductory students. Package Universe, Eighth Edition with FREE Starry Night CD!use Package ISBN 0-7167-9564-7 SPLIT VOLUMESIn addition to the complete 28-chapter version of Universe, two shorter versions are also available:Universe: The Solar System, Third Edition(Chapters 1-16 and 28)0-7167-9563-9; w/FREE Starry Night CD, 0-7167-9562-0Universe: Stars and Galaxies, Third Edition(Chapters 1-8 which includes a two-chapter overview of the solar system) and Chapters 16-28)0-7167-9561-2; w/FREE Starry Night CD, 0-7167-9565-5

    Quantum paradoxes and the eventful life of Schroedinger's Cat are explained, along with the Many Universe explanation of quantum measurement in this newly revised edition. Updated throughout, the book also looks ahead to the nanotechnology revolution and describes quantum cryptography, computing and teleportation. Including an account of quantum mechanics and science fiction, this accessible book is geared to the general reader. Anthony Hey teaches at the University of Southampton, UK, and is the co-author of several books, including two with Patrick Walters, The Quantum Universe (Cambridge, 1987), and Einstein's Mirror (Cambridge, 1997). Patrick Walters is a Lecturer in Continuing Education at the University of Wales at Swansea. He co-ordinates the Physical Science Programme in DACE which includes the Astronomy Programme. His research interests include science education, and he also writes non-technical books on science for the general reader and beginning undergraduates. First Edition Pb (1987): 0-521-31845-9

    The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas. There is only one universe at a time. Time is real: everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later. Mathematics, which has trouble with time, is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science; it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations. The argument is readily accessible to non-scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges.

    It ranges from the study of the universe itself to the smallest particles of matter contained within it - and everything in between. It explores everything from the big bang to theories about the end of the universe. If you want to better understand our physical world, as most of us do, gaining a basic understanding of science itself is profoundly important - yet many are intimidated by the breathtaking scope of such an endeavor. Now an award-winning science teacher has taken out the intimidation, harnessing that breathtaking scope into a series of 60 exciting, comprehensive, and accessible lectures that let you explore and understand the wealth of ideas, discoveries, and principles in all of the physical and biological sciences. You learn that understanding science comes from understanding not only its component disciplines - each of which has its own theories, pioneers, problems, and fundamental questions - but of knowing how these disciplines work with one another to create an entire mosaic of human knowledge. The lectures have been crafted to make those relationships crystal-clear, with an integrated approach that takes you through all of the major disciplines that fall under the umbrella of "science," including physics, chemistry, Earth science, geophysics, and biology. Each lecture covers one of the 60 fundamental principles of the scientific world - offering you new knowledge and insight into topics such as the scientific method, gravitation, atoms, the big bang, plate tectonics, volcanoes, proteins, ecosystems, and electricity.

    This is such a book. Max Born is a Nobel Laureate (1955) and one of the world's great physicists: in this book he analyzes and interprets the theory of Einsteinian relativity. The result is undoubtedly the most lucid and insightful of all the books that have been written to explain the revolutionary theory that marked the end of the classical and the beginning of the modern era of physics.The author follows a quasi-historical method of presentation. The book begins with a review of the classical physics, covering such topics as origins of space and time measurements, geometric axioms, Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, concepts of equilibrium and force, laws of motion, inertia, mass, momentum and energy, Newtonian world system (absolute space and absolute time, gravitation, celestial mechanics, centrifugal forces, and absolute space), laws of optics (the corpuscular and undulatory theories, speed of light, wave theory, Doppler effect, convection of light by matter), electrodynamics (including magnetic induction, electromagnetic theory of light, electromagnetic ether, electromagnetic laws of moving bodies, electromagnetic mass, and the contraction hypothesis). Born then takes up his exposition of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, discussing the concept of simultaneity, kinematics, Einstein's mechanics and dynamics, relativity of arbitrary motions, the principle of equivalence, the geometry of curved surfaces, and the space-time continuum, among other topics. Born then points out some predictions of the theory of relativity and its implications for cosmology, and indicates what is being sought in the unified field theory.This account steers a middle course between vague popularizations and complex scientific presentations. This is a careful discussion of principles stated in thoroughly acceptable scientific form, yet in a manner that makes it possible for the reader who has no scientific training to understand it. Only high school algebra has been used in explaining the nature of classical physics and relativity, and simple experiments and diagrams are used to illustrate each step. The layman and the beginning student in physics will find this an immensely valuable and usable introduction to relativity. This Dover 1962 edition was greatly revised and enlarged by Dr. Born.

    Uncle John and his loony lab partners will take you back to the Big Bang and forward to the distant future. You’ll see the science in everything around (and inside) you, and learn the truth about the most egregious science myths (such as—you can’t “sweat like a pig” because pigs don’t sweat). How many amazing facts await your visual cortex in these 494 pages made up of atoms (print version) or bits and bytes (e-book)? As Carl Sagan would have said, “Billions and Billions!” So put on your thinking cap and check out…Pluto deniedKitchen chemistryFootball gets physics-alPlanet Earth’s sudden hot flashesFood’s incredible journey…through youThe science of surfing, skating, and snowboardingHow they plugged the hole in the ozone layerHow “defenseless” animals stay aliveSci-fi that’s more fi than sciAncient astronomersKnow your cloudsAnd much, much more!

    

     In the years before the First World War, Filson Young had become friends with several notable Royal Navy leaders, including Lord Fisher and Admiral Beatty. Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Young began to miss his friends and resolved to join them and share in their experiences. Even though volunteer officers were ridiculed, Young wrote to his friends and managed to engineer a Lieutenant’s gazette in the R.N.V.R. Buoyed by the success of the Scarborough raid, Admiral Hipper of the Imperial German Navy sought a repeat of the exercise, this time against the fishing fleet on the Dogger Bank. Young was there to witness it. First published in 1921, With the Battle Cruisers is a very personal, focused study of naval life during wartime as it unfolded for Young. Filson Young (1876-1938) was an Irish writer, journalist, war correspondent and essayist. He was noted for publishing a book about the sinking of the Titanic little over a month after the tragedy in 1912. Between November 1914 and May 1915 he served as a Lieutenant R.N.V.R.; With the Battle Cruisers was one of two books he wrote about his naval service.

    Bardon employs helpful illustrations and keeps technical language to a minimum in bringing the resources of over 2500 years of philosophy and science to bear on some of humanity's most fundamental and enduring questions.

    Whether they've arrived via rocket, flying saucer, or plain old teleportation, they've been invading, infiltrating, or inspiring us for decades, and they've fascinated moviegoers and television watchers for more than fifty years. About half of us believe that aliens really exist, and millions are convinced they've visited Earth. For twenty-five years, SETI has been looking for the proof, and as the program's senior astronomer, Seth Shostak explains in this engrossing book, it's entirely possible that before long conclusive evidence will be found. His informative, entertaining report offers an insider's view of what we might realistically expect to discover light-years away among the stars. Neither humanoids nor monsters, says Shostak; in fact, biological intelligence is probably just a precursor to machine beings, enormously advanced artificial sentients whose capabilities and accomplishments may have developed over billions of years and far exceed our own. As he explores what, if anything, they would tell us and what their existence would portend for humankind and the cosmos, he introduces a colorful cast of characters and provides a vivid, state-of-the-art account of the past, present, and future of our search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

    November 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s discovery of the General Theory of Relativity.Levenson, head of MIT’s Science Writing Program, tells the captivating, unusual, and nearly-forgotten backstory behind Einstein’s invention of the Theory of Relativity, which completely changed the course of science forever. For over 50 years before Einstein developed his theory, the world’s top astronomers spent countless hours and energy searching for a planet, which came to be named Vulcan, that had to exist, it was thought, given Isaac Newton’s theories of gravity. Indeed, in the two centuries since Newton’s death, his theory had essentially become accepted as fact. It took Einstein’s genius to realize the mystery of the missing planet wasn’t a problem of measurements or math but of Newton’s theory of gravity itself. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proved that Vulcan did not and could not exist, and that the decades-long search for it had merely been a quirk of operating under the wrong set of assumptions about the universe. Thomas Levenson tells this unique story, one of the strangest episodes in the history of science, with elegant simplicity, fast-paced drama, and lively characters sure to capture the attention of a wide group of readers.

    Without knowledge, scientific enquiry is meaningless and we can’t begin to analyse the world around us. What is knowledge? How do you know you are not dreaming? Should we trust our senses? Presuming no prior experience of philosophy, this book covers everything in the topic from scepticism and possible worlds to Kant’s transcendentalism. Clear and readable, Epistemology: A Beginner’s Guide is essential reading for students and aspiring thinkers.

    Accordingly, he once derided as "spooky action at a distance" the notion that two elementary particles far removed from each other could nonetheless influence each other's properties—a hypothetical phenomenon his fellow theorist Erwin Schrödinger termed "quantum entanglement."In a series of ingenious experiments conducted in various locations—from a dank sewage tunnel under the Danube River to the balmy air between a pair of mountain peaks in the Canary Islands—the author and his colleagues have demonstrated the reality of such entanglement using photons, or light quanta, created by laser beams. In principle the lessons learned may be applicable in other areas, including the eventual development of quantum computers.

    The first volume in this annual series of the best writing by Americans, meticulously selected by bestselling author James Gleick, one of the foremost chronicles of scientific social history, debuts with a stellar collection of writers and thinkers.  Many of these cutting-edge essays offer glimpses of new realms of discovery and thought, exploring territory that is unfamiliar to most of us, or finding the unexpected in the midst of the familiar.  Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg challenges the idea of whether the universe has a designer; Pulitzer Prize winner Natalie Angier reassesses caveman (and-woman) couture; bestselling author and Darwinian theorist Stephen Jay Gould makes a claim for the man whose ideas Darwin discredited; Timothy Ferris proposes a realistic alternative to wrap-speed interseller travel; neurologist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks reminisces about his first loves-chemistry and math.  This diverse, stimulating and accessible collection is required reading for anyone who wants to travel to the frontier of knowledge.