Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics


Jim Al-Khalili - 2012
    A fun and fascinating look at great scientific paradoxes.   Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense.  These we call paradoxes.  The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds.  For example, how can a cat be both dead and alive at the same time?  Why will Achilles never beat a tortoise in a race, no matter how fast he runs?  And how can a person be ten years older than his twin?   With elegant explanations that bring the reader inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.  Just as surely as Al-Khalili narrates the enduring fascination of these classic paradoxes, he reveals their underlying logic.  In doing so, he brings to life a select group of the most exciting concepts in human knowledge.  Paradox is mind-expanding fun.

Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality


Edward Frenkel - 2013
    In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man’s journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century’s leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat’s last theorem, that had seemed intractable before.At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality


Max Tegmark - 2012
    Our Big Bang, our distant future, parallel worlds, the sub-atomic and intergalactic - none of them are what they seem. But there is a way to understand this immense strangeness - mathematics. Seeking an answer to the fundamental puzzle of why our universe seems so mathematical, Tegmark proposes a radical idea: that our physical world not only is described by mathematics, but that it is mathematics. This may offer answers to our deepest questions: How large is reality? What is everything made of? Why is our universe the way it is?Table of ContentsPreface 1 What Is Reality? Not What It Seems • What’s the Ultimate Question? • The Journey Begins Part One: Zooming Out 2 Our Place in Space Cosmic Questions • How Big Is Space? • The Size of Earth • Distance to the Moon • Distance to the Sun and the Planets • Distance to the Stars • Distance to the Galaxies • What Is Space? 3 Our Place in TimeWhere Did Our Solar System Come From? • Where Did theGalaxies Come From? • Where Did the Mysterious MicrowavesCome From? • Where Did the Atoms Come From? 4 Our Universe by NumbersWanted: Precision Cosmology • Precision Microwave-Background Fluctuations • Precision Galaxy Clustering • The Ultimate Map of Our Universe • Where Did Our Big Bang Come From? 5 Our Cosmic Origins What’s Wrong with Our Big Bang? • How Inflation Works • The Gift That Keeps on Giving • Eternal Inflation 6 Welcome to the Multiverse The Level I Multiverse • The Level II Multiverse • Multiverse Halftime Roundup Part Two: Zooming In 7 Cosmic Legos Atomic Legos • Nuclear Legos • Particle-Physics Legos • Mathematical Legos • Photon Legos • Above the Law? • Quanta and Rainbows • Making Waves • Quantum Weirdness • The Collapse of Consensus • The Weirdness Can’t Be Confined • Quantum Confusion 8 The Level III Multiverse The Level III Multiverse • The Illusion of Randomness • Quantum Censorship • The Joys of Getting Scooped • Why Your Brain Isn’t a Quantum Computer • Subject, Object and Environment • Quantum Suicide • Quantum Immortality? • Multiverses Unified • Shifting Views: Many Worlds or Many Words? Part Three: Stepping Back 9 Internal Reality, External Reality and Consensus Reality External Reality and Internal Reality • The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth • Consensus Reality • Physics: Linking External to Consensus Reality 10 Physical Reality and Mathematical Reality Math, Math Everywhere! • The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis • What Is a Mathematical Structure? 11 Is Time an Illusion? How Can Physical Reality Be Mathematical? • What Are You? • Where Are You? (And What Do You Perceive?) • When Are You? 12 The Level IV Multiverse Why I Believe in the Level IV Multiverse • Exploring the Level IV Multiverse: What’s Out There? • Implications of the Level IV Multiverse • Are We Living in a Simulation? • Relation Between the MUH, the Level IV Multiverse and Other Hypotheses •Testing the Level IV Multiverse 13 Life, Our Universe and Everything How Big Is Our Physical Reality? • The Future of Physics • The Future of Our Universe—How Will It End? • The Future of Life •The Future of You—Are You Insignificant? Acknowledgments Suggestions for Further Reading Index

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.

Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe


Steven H. Strogatz - 2019
    We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket. Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous. Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS. As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.

Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics


William Dunham - 1990
    Now William Dunham gives them the attention they deserve.Dunham places each theorem within its historical context and explores the very human and often turbulent life of the creator — from Archimedes, the absentminded theoretician whose absorption in his work often precluded eating or bathing, to Gerolamo Cardano, the sixteenth-century mathematician whose accomplishments flourished despite a bizarre array of misadventures, to the paranoid genius of modern times, Georg Cantor. He also provides step-by-step proofs for the theorems, each easily accessible to readers with no more than a knowledge of high school mathematics.A rare combination of the historical, biographical, and mathematical, Journey Through Genius is a fascinating introduction to a neglected field of human creativity.

Real and Complex Analysis


Walter Rudin - 1970
    The basic techniques and theorems of analysis are presented in such a way that the intimate connections between its various branches are strongly emphasized. The traditionally separate subjects of 'real analysis' and 'complex analysis' are thus united in one volume. Some of the basic ideas from functional analysis are also included. This is the only book to take this unique approach. The third edition includes a new chapter on differentiation. Proofs of theorems presented in the book are concise and complete and many challenging exercises appear at the end of each chapter. The book is arranged so that each chapter builds upon the other, giving students a gradual understanding of the subject.This text is part of the Walter Rudin Student Series in Advanced Mathematics.

The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy


Sharon Bertsch McGrayne - 2011
    To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok.In the first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for 150 years—at the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty and scanty information (Alan Turing's role in breaking Germany's Enigma code during World War II), and explains how the advent of off-the-shelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a game-changer. Today, Bayes' rule is used everywhere from DNA de-coding to Homeland Security.Drawing on primary source material and interviews with statisticians and other scientists, The Theory That Would Not Die is the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest controversies of all time.

A Mathematician's Lament


Paul Lockhart
    He proposes his solution.

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics


David R. Lide - 1984
    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.

Mathematics


Keith Devlin - 1988
    A modern classic by an accomplished mathematician and best-selling author has been updated to encompass and explain the recent headline-making advances in the field in non-technical terms.

General Chemistry


Darrell D. Ebbing - 1984
    Known for its carefully developed, thoroughly integrated, step-by-step approach to problem solving, General Chemistry helps students master quantitative skills and build a lasting conceptual understanding of key chemical concepts. The Ninth Edition retains this hallmark approach and builds upon the conceptual focus through key new features and revisions.

Inorganic Chemistry


Catherine E. Housecroft - 2001
    It offers superior coverage of all key areas, including descriptive chemistry, MO theory, bonding, and physical inorganic chemistry. Chapter topics are presented in logical order and include: basic concepts; nuclear properties; an introduction to molecular symmetry; bonding in polyatomic molecules; structures and energetics of metallic and ionic solids; acids, bases, and ions in aqueous solution; reduction and oxidation; non-aqueous media; and hydrogen. Four special topic chapters, chosen for their currency and interest, conclude the book. For researchers seeking the latest information in the field of inorganic chemistry.

Quantum Physics Made Easy: The Introduction Guide For Beginners Who Flunked Maths And Science In Plain Simple English


Donald B. Grey - 2019
     99.99% of the world’s mysteries are yet to be discovered and/or solved. Why not… It’s time for you to rediscover science? One of the most compelling draws of the sciences for many people is the potential of discovering something that was not known before. Whether someone’s doing it for fame, for fortune, or just for the fun of it, discovering something new, leaving your own personal mark for the rest of humanity’s time in the universe, is a tempting prospect for many. How would you feel about naming a star, and for others to know that you named it? That star would be visible in the sky for the rest of your lifetime, and more than likely for your great-great-great-grandchildren’s lifetimes. Your discovery would be immortalized above for the life of the star. Inside this book you will discover: -String theory and how it came about -Black holes and quantum gravity -If Schrödinger’s Cat is really a cat? -Disagreements between Einstein and Bohr -The double slit experiment Attention! Quantum Physics is NOT for everyone! This book is not for people: -Who doesn’t want to impress their girl with science -Who are not curious about the universe -Who isn’t inspired to name their own science theory If you are ready to learn about quantum physics, Scroll Up And Click On The “BUY NOW” Button Now!

An Imaginary Tale: The Story of the Square Root of Minus One


Paul J. Nahin - 1998
    Addressing readers with both a general and scholarly interest in mathematics, Nahin weaves into this narrative entertaining historical facts, mathematical discussions, and the application of complex numbers and functions to important problems.