The Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Idea Book: 181 Simple Machines and Clever Contraptions


Yoshihito Isogawa - 2014
    Each model includes a list of the required parts, minimal text, and colorful photographs from multiple angles so you can re-create it without the need for step-by-step instructions.You'll learn to build cars with real suspension, steerable crawlers, ball-shooters, grasping robotic arms, and other creative marvels. Each model demonstrates simple mechanical principles that you can use as building blocks for your own creations.Best of all, every part you need to build these machines comes in one LEGO set (#31313)!

Universe on A T-Shirt: The Quest for the Theory of Everything


Dan Falk - 2002
    - This is the best kind of popular science: informed, impassioned, and highly accessible.- Compare it to Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell, but broader in scope and much more readable.- A crossover for the Young Adult market, now in the perfect format.

Physics for the Rest of Us


Roger S. Jones - 1992
    Offers a humanistic and cultural view of modern physics.

Chance: The science and secrets of luck, randomness and probability (New Scientist)


Michael Brooks - 2015
    So it's not surprising that we persist in thinking that we're in with a chance, whether we're playing the lottery or working out the likelihood of extra-terrestrial life. In Chance, a (not entirely) random selection of the New Scientist's sharpest minds provide fascinating insights into luck, randomness, risk and probability. From the secrets of coincidence to placing the perfect bet, the science of random number generation to the surprisingly haphazard decisions of criminal juries, it will explore these, and many other, tantalising questions.Following on from the bestselling Nothing and Question Everything, this book will open your eyes to the weird and wonderful world of chance - and help you see when some things, in fact, aren't random at all.

The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments


Jim Baggott - 2011
    From the minds of the world's leading physicists there flowed a river of ideas that would transport mankind to the pinnacle of wonderment and to the very depths of human despair. This was a century that began with the certainties of absolute knowledge and ended with the knowledge of absolute uncertainty. It was a century in which physicists developed weapons with the capacity to destroy our reality, whilst at the same time denying us the possibility that we can ever properly comprehend it.Almost everything we think we know about the nature of our world comes from one theory of physics. This theory was discovered and refined in the first thirty years of the twentieth century and went on to become quite simply the most successful theory of physics ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the twenty-first century technology that we have learned to take for granted. But its success has come at a price, for it has at the same time completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at the level of its most fundamental constituents.Rejecting the fundamental elements of uncertainty and chance implied by quantum theory, Albert Einstein once famously declared that 'God does not play dice'. Niels Bohr claimed that anybody who is not shocked by the theory has not understood it. The charismatic American physicist Richard Feynman went further: he claimed that nobody understands it.This is quantum theory, and this book tells its story.Jim Baggott presents a celebration of this wonderful yet wholly disconcerting theory, with a history told in forty episodes -- significant moments of truth or turning points in the theory's development. From its birth in the porcelain furnaces used to study black body radiation in 1900, to the promise of stimulating new quantum phenomena to be revealed by CERN's Large Hadron Collider over a hundred years later, this is the extraordinary story of the quantum world.Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game


Allen St. John - 2013
    It’s actually an innovative way to understand chaos theory, and the remarkable complexity of modern professional football.   In Newton’s Football, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Allen St. John and TED Speaker and former Yale professor Ainissa Ramirez explore the unexpected science behind America’s Game. Whether it’s Jerry Rice finding the common ground between quantum physics and the West Coast offense or an Ivy League biologist explaining—at a granular level—exactly how a Big Mac morphs into an outside linebacker, Newton’s Football illuminates football—and science—through funny, insightful stories told by some of the world’s sharpest minds.   With a clear-eyed empirical approach—and an exuberant affection for the game—St. John and Ramirez address topics that have long beguiled scientists and football fans alike, including:   • the unlikely evolution of the football (or, as they put it, “The Divinely Random Bounce of the Prolate Spheroid”) • what Vince Lombardi has in common with Isaac Newton • how the hardwired behavior of monkeys can explain a head coach’s reluctance to go for it on fourth-down • why a gruesome elevator accident jump-started the evolution of placekicking • how Teddy Roosevelt saved football using the same behavioral science concept that Dreamworks would use to save Shrek • why woodpeckers don’t get concussions • how better helmets actually made the game more dangerous   Every Sunday the NFL shares a secret with only its savviest fans: The game isn’t just a clash of bodies, it’s a clash of ideas. The greatest minds in football have always possessed an instinctual grasp of science, understanding the big ideas and gritty realities that inform the game’s rich past, as well as its increasingly uncertain future.   Blending smart reporting, counterintuitive creativity, and compelling narrative, Newton’s Football takes gridiron analysis to the next level, giving fans a book that entertains, enlightens, and explains the game anew.Praise for Newton’s Football “It was with great interest that I read Newton’s Football. I’m a fan of applying of science to sport and Newton’s Football truly delivers. The stories are as engaging as they are informative. This is a great read for all football fans.”—Mark Cuban“A delightfully improbable book putting science nerds and sports fans on the same page.”—Booklist   “This breezily-written but informative book should pique the interest of any serious football fan in the twenty-first century.”—The American Spectator   “The authors have done a worthy job of combining popular science and sports into a work that features enough expertise on each topic to satisfy nerds and jocks alike. . . . The writers succeed in their task thanks to in-depth scientific knowledge, a wonderful grasp of football’s past and present, interviews with a wide array of experts, and witty prose. . . . [Newton’s Football is] fun and thought-provoking, proving that football is a mind game as much as it is a ball game.”—Publishers Weekly

Explorations: Introduction to Astronomy


Thomas T. Arny - 1994
    This new edition continues to offer the most complete technology/new media support package available. That technology/new media package includes: Interactives, Animations, and introducing Connect - online homework and course management.

Quantum Mechanics


Claude Cohen-Tannoudji - 1977
    Nobel-Prize-winner Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and his colleagues have written this book to eliminate precisely these difficulties. Fourteen chapters provide a clarity of organization, careful attention to pedagogical details, and a wealth of topics and examples which make this work a textbook as well as a timeless reference, allowing to tailor courses to meet students' specific needs. Each chapter starts with a clear exposition of the problem which is then treated, and logically develops the physical and mathematical concept. These chapters emphasize the underlying principles of the material, undiluted by extensive references to applications and practical examples which are put into complementary sections. The book begins with a qualitative introduction to quantum mechanical ideas using simple optical analogies and continues with a systematic and thorough presentation of the mathematical tools and postulates of quantum mechanics as well as a discussion of their physical content. Applications follow, starting with the simplest ones like e.g. the harmonic oscillator, and becoming gradually more complicated (the hydrogen atom, approximation methods, etc.). The complementary sections each expand this basic knowledge, supplying a wide range of applications and related topics as well as detailed expositions of a large number of special problems and more advanced topics, integrated as an essential portion of the text.

The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How To Build an Atomic Bomb


Robert Serber - 1992
    The lecturer was Robert Serber, J. Robert Oppenheimer's protégé, and they learned that their job was to invent the world's first atomic bomb.Serber's lecture notes, nicknamed the "Los Alamos Primer," were mimeographed and passed from hand to hand, remaining classified for many years. They are published here for the first time, and now contemporary readers can see just how much was known and how terrifyingly much was unknown when the Manhattan Project began. Could this "gadget," based on the newly discovered principles of nuclear fission, really be designed and built? Could it be small enough and light enough for an airplane to carry? If it could be built, could it be controlled?Working with Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the development of the atomic bomb, Professor Serber has annotated original lecture notes with explanations of the physics terms for the nonspecialist. His preface, an informal memoir, vividly conveys the mingled excitement, uncertainty, and intensity felt by the Manhattan Project scientists. Rhodes's introduction provides a brief history of the development of atomic physics up to the day that Serber stood before his blackboard at Los Alamos. In this edition, The Los Alamos Primer finally emerges from the archives to give a new understanding of the very beginning of nuclear weapons. No seminar anywhere has had greater historical consequences.

Beyond Weird


Philip Ball - 2018
    But when Feynman said he didn’t understand quantum mechanics, he didn’t mean that he couldn’t do it – he meant that’s all he could do. He didn’t understand what the maths was saying: what quantum mechanics tells us about reality.Over the past decade or so, the enigma of quantum mechanics has come into sharper focus. We now realise that quantum mechanics is less about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information: about what can be known and how.This is more disturbing than our bad habit of describing the quantum world as ‘things behaving weirdly’ suggests. It calls into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and knowledge itself.The quantum world isn’t a different world: it is our world, and if anything deserves to be called ‘weird’, it’s us. This exhilarating book is about what quantum maths really means – and what it doesn’t mean.

The Manhattan Project: The Making of the Atomic Bomb


Al Cimino - 2015
    The atomic bombs that came out of it brought an end to the war in the Pacific, but at a heavy loss of life in Japan and the opening of a Pandora's box that has tested international relations.This book traces the history of the Manhattan Project, from the first glimmerings of the possibility of such a catastrophic weapon to the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It profiles the architects of the bomb and how they tried to reconcile their personal feelings with their ambition as scientists. It looks at the role of the politicians and it includes first-hand accounts of those who experienced the effects of the bombings.

Vector Mechanics for Engineers: Statics and Dynamics


Ferdinand P. Beer - 1972
    Over the years their textbooks have introduced significant theoretical and pedagogical innovations in statics, dynamics, and mechanics of materials education. At the same time, their careful presentation of content, unmatched levels of accuracy, and attention to detail have made their texts the standard for excellence. The new Seventh Edition of Vector Mechanics for Engineers: Statics and Dynamics continues this tradition. The seventh edition is complemented by a media and supplement package that is targeted to address core course needs for both the student and the instructor.

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality


Manjit Kumar - 2007
    And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its heart.For 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. Yet Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century.Quantum sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age. In 1925 the quantum pioneers nearly all hailed from upper-middle-class academic families; most were German; and their average age was 24. But it was their irrational, romantic spirit, formed in reaction to the mechanised slaughter of the First World War that inspired their will to test science to its limits.The essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story and by the band of young men at its heart.

Electrical Engineering: Principles and Applications


Allan R. Hambley - 1996
    Emphasizing the basic concepts of the field, this book covers circuit analysis, digital systems, electronics, and electromechanics. This book develops theoretical and experimental skills and experiences in the following areas: basic circuit analysis and measurement, first- and second-order transients, steady-state ac circuits, resonance and frequency response, digital logic circuits, microcontrollers (68HC11), computer-based instrumentation, diode circuits, electronic amplifiers, field-effect and bipolar junction transistors, operational amplifiers, ac and dc machines, and more. For engineers or any other professionals who need a solid foundation in the basics of circuits, digital systems, analog electronics, and electromechanics.

A Pause in Space-Time


Laurence E. Dahners - 2019
    They tell us about Kaem Seba, a sickly and financially destitute young man who uses his extraordinary math talents to work out a way to stop time within limited volumes of space-time. He and Arya Vaii, a business student, set out to develop the phenomenon. It quickly becomes obvious that, beyond the fact that time stops inside the stasis field, the volume of space-time in stasis might be useful for some of its other phenomenal properties. Since it essentially can’t be altered (time’s stopped inside) it’s stronger than any known substance and, unlike matter, does not melt. This makes it the perfect material for building rocket engines. They set out to sell such engines in order to provide their budding business enough profit to let them develop other useful products. Unfortunately, the owner of the lab that tested the properties of their samples also recognizes their potential. His desire to share in their profits unhinges his shaky grasp on reality. When he can’t talk them into letting him join their enterprise, he demands a share at gunpoint.