A brilliantly clear and penetrating exposition of developments in physical science and mathematics brought about by the advent of non-Euclidean geometries, including in-depth coverage of the foundations of geometry, the theory of time, Einstein's theory of relativity and its consequences, other key topics.

    He shows rather that new tools are more often the sparks that ignite scientific discovery. Such tool-driven revolutions have profound social consequences--the invention of the telescope turning the Medieval world view upside down, the widespread use of household appliances in the 1950s replacing servants, to cite just two examples. In looking ahead, Dyson suggests that solar energy, genetics, and the Internet will have similarly transformative effects, with the potential to produce a more just and equitable society. Solar power could bring electricity to even the poorest, most remote areas of third world nations, allowing everyone access to the vast stores of information on the Internet and effectively ending the cultural isolation of the poorest countries. Similarly, breakthroughs in genetics may well enable us to give our children healthier lives and grow more efficient crops, thus restoring the economic and human vitality of village cultures devalued and dislocated by the global market.Written with passionate conviction about the ethical uses of science, The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet is both a brilliant reinterpretation of the scientific process and a challenge to use new technologies to close, rather than widen, the gap between rich and poor.

    His Incompleteness Theorem turned not only mathematics but also the whole world of science and philosophy on its head. Equally legendary were Gö's eccentricities, his close friendship with Albert Einstein, and his paranoid fear of germs that eventually led to his death from self-starvation. Now, in the first popular biography of this strange and brilliant thinker, John Casti and Werner DePauli bring the legend to life. After describing his childhood in the Moravian capital of Brno, the authors trace the arc of Gö's remarkable career, from the famed Vienna Circle, where philosophers and scientists debated notions of truth, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived and worked until his death in 1978. In the process, they shed light on Gö's contributions to mathematics, philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence -- even cosmology -- in an entertaining and accessible way.

    Language is informal, examples are vivid and lively, and the perspectivie is fresh. Based on lectures delivered to engineering students, this work will also be valued by scientists, engineers, technicians, businessmen, anyone facing energy challenges of the future.

    --Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Helgoland You've got questions: about space, time, gravity, and the odds of meeting your older self inside a wormhole. All the answers you need are right here.As a species, we may not agree on much, but one thing brings us all together: a need to know. We all wonder, and deep down we all have the same big questions. Why can't I travel back in time? Where did the universe come from? What's inside a black hole? Can I rearrange the particles in my cat and turn it into a dog?Researcher-turned-cartoonist Jorge Cham and physics professor Daniel Whiteson are experts at explaining science in ways we can all understand, in their books and on their popular podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. With their signature blend of humor and oh-now-I-get-it clarity, Jorge and Daniel offer short, accessible, and lighthearted answers to some of the most common, most outrageous, and most profound questions about the universe they've received.This witty, entertaining, and fully illustrated book is an essential troubleshooting guide for the perplexing aspects of reality, big and small, from the invisible particles that make up your body to the identical version of you currently reading this exact sentence in the corner of some other galaxy. If the universe came with an FAQ, this would be it.

    

    This edition contains NEW tables on Properties of Ionic Liquids, Solubilities of Hydrocarbons in Sea Water, Solubility of Organic Compounds in Superheated Water, and Nutritive Value of Foods. It also updates many tables including Critical Constants, Heats of Vaporization, Aqueous Solubility of Organic Compounds, Vapor Pressure of Mercury, Scientific Abbreviations and Symbols, and Bond Dissociation Energies. The 88th Edition also presents a new Foreword written by Dr. Harold Kroto, a 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

    You'll find out how to unknot your DNA, how to count like a supercomputer and how to become famous for solving mathematics' most challenging problem.

    

    Theories that contain time as a simple quantity form the basis of our understanding of many scientific disciplines, yet the debate rages on: why does there seem to be a direction to time, an arrow of time pointing from past to future?In The Arrow of Time, a major bestseller in England, Dr. Peter Coveney, a research scientist, and award-winning journalist Dr. Roger Highfield, demonstrate that the commonsense view of time agrees with the most advanced scientific theory. Time does in fact move like an arrow, shooting forward into what is genuinely unknown, leaving the past immutably behind. The authors make their case by exploring three centuries of science, offering bold reinterpretations of Newton's mechanics, Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and advancing the insights of James Gleick's Chaos.

    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.

    Beginning near the speed of light and proceeding to explorations of space-time and curved spaces, "Introducing Relativity" plots a visually accessible course through the thought experiments that have given shape to contemporary physics. Scientists from Newton to Hawking add their unique contributions to this story, as we encounter Einstein's astounding vision of gravity as the curvature of space-time and arrive at the breathtakingly beautiful field equations. Einstein's legacy is reviewed in the most advanced frontiers of physics today - black holes, gravitational waves, the accelerating universe and string theory. This is a superlative, fascinating graphic account of Einstein's strange world and how his legacy has been built upon since.

     This top-selling, theorem-proof text presents a careful treatment of the principal topics of linear algebra, and illustrates the power of the subject through a variety of applications. It emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between linear transformations and matrices, but states theorems in the more general infinite-dimensional case where appropriate.

    Jerry King is no exception. His informal, nontechnical book, as its title implies, is organized around what Bertrand Russell called the 'supreme beauty' of mathematics--a beauty 'capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.'NATUREIn this clear, concise, and superbly written volume, mathematics professor and poet Jerry P. King reveals the beauty that is at the heart of mathematics--and he makes that beauty accessible to all readers. Darting wittily from Euclid to Yeats, from Poincare to Rembrandt, from axioms to symphonies, THE ART OF MATHEMATICS explores the difference between real, rational, and complex numbers; analyzes the intellectual underpinnings of pure and applied mathematics; and reveals the fundamental connection between aesthetics and mathematics. King also sheds light on how mathematicians pursue their research and how our educational system perpetuates the damaging divisions between the two cultures.

    This 8-hour free course introduced the study of philosophy and the methods employed by The Open University in teaching philosophy.