Book picks similar to
Introduction to Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena by H. Eugene Stanley
physics
genre-thermodynamics
hcl
p-stat
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.
Elements of Electromagnetics
Matthew N.O. Sadiku - 1993
The book also provides a balanced presentation of time-varying and static fields, preparingstudents for employment in today's industrial and manufacturing sectors. Streamlined to facilitate student understanding, this edition features worked examples in every chapter that explain how to use the theory presented in the text to solve different kinds of problems. Numerical methods, including MATLAB and vector analysis, are also included to help students analyzesituations that they are likely to encounter in industry practice. Elements of Electromagnetics, Fifth Edition, is designed for introductory undergraduate courses in electromagnetics.
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.
Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality
Anil Ananthaswamy - 2018
Thomas Young devised it in the early 1800s to show that light behaves like a wave, and in doing so opposed Isaac Newton. Nearly a century later, Albert Einstein showed that light comes in quanta, or particles, and the experiment became key to a fierce debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality. Richard Feynman held that the double slit embodies the central mystery of the quantum world. Decade after decade, hypothesis after hypothesis, scientists have returned to this ingenious experiment to help them answer deeper and deeper questions about the fabric of the universe.How can a single particle behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle exist before we look at it, or does the very act of looking create reality? Are there hidden aspects to reality missing from the orthodox view of quantum physics? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and the familiar classical world of our daily lives begins, and if so, can we find it? And if there's no such place, then does the universe split into two each time a particle goes through the double slit?With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. Through Two Doors at Once is the most fantastic voyage you can take.
Engineering Electromagnetics
William H. Hayt Jr. - 1950
This edition retains the scope and emphasis that have made the book very successful while adding over twenty new numerical examples and over 550 new end-of-chapter problems.
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.
The Faraway Paladin: Volume 3 Secundus
Kanata Yanagino - 2016
After a nostalgic reunion and an unexpected encounter, the curtain of battle must rise in the lost underground kingdom. What fate awaits the Faraway Paladin? The god of undeath is clear: "I will say it once more. If you challenge him, you will die.”
The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity
Pedro G. Ferreira - 2014
Their work has uncovered a number of the universe’s more surprising secrets, and many believe further wonders remain hidden within the theory’s tangle of equations, waiting to be exposed. In this sweeping narrative of science and culture, astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira brings general relativity to life through the story of the brilliant physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers who have taken up its challenge. For these scientists, the theory has been both a treasure trove and an enigma, fueling a century of intellectual struggle and triumph.. Einstein’s theory, which explains the relationships among gravity, space, and time, is possibly the most perfect intellectual achievement of modern physics, yet studying it has always been a controversial endeavor. Relativists were the target of persecution in Hitler’s Germany, hounded in Stalin’s Russia, and disdained in 1950s America. Even today, PhD students are warned that specializing in general relativity will make them unemployable. Despite these pitfalls, general relativity has flourished, delivering key insights into our understanding of the origin of time and the evolution of all the stars and galaxies in the cosmos. Its adherents have revealed what lies at the farthest reaches of the universe, shed light on the smallest scales of existence, and explained how the fabric of reality emerges. Dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and string theory are all progeny of Einstein’s theory. We are in the midst of a momentous transformation in modern physics. As scientists look farther and more clearly into space than ever before, The Perfect Theory reveals the greater relevance of general relativity, showing us where it started, where it has led, and where it can still take us.
Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
Sean Carroll - 2019
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: physics has been in crisis since 1927. Quantum mechanics has always had obvious gaps—which have come to be simply ignored. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is, how impossible it is to understand. Academics discourage students from working on the "dead end" of quantum foundations. Putting his professional reputation on the line with this audacious yet entirely reasonable book, Carroll says that the crisis can now come to an end. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us. Copies of you are generated thousands of times per second. The Many Worlds Theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn't happen. Step-by-step in Carroll's uniquely lucid way, he tackles the major objections to this otherworldly revelation until his case is inescapably established. Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. We are on the threshold of a new understanding—of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of.
Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages, And The Infinite Weirdness Of Programmable Atoms
Wil McCarthy - 2003
But it's coming, and when it does, it will change our lives as much as any invention ever has. Imagine being able to program matter itself-to change it, with the click of a cursor, from hard to soft, from paper to stone, from fluorescent to super-reflective to invisible. Supported by organizations ranging from Levi Strauss and IBM to the Defense Department, solid-state physicists in renowned laboratories are working to make it a reality. In this dazzling investigation, Wil McCarthy visits the laboratories and talks with the researchers who are developing this extraordinary technology, describes how they are learning to control it, and tells us where all this will lead. The possibilities are truly astonishing.
Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Charles D. Ferguson - 2011
Worries about the dangers that nuclear plants and their radioactive waste posed to nearby communities grew over time, and plant construction in the UnitedStates virtually died after the early 1980s. The 1986 disaster at Chernobyl only reinforced nuclear power's negative image. Yet in the decade prior to the Japanese nuclear crisis of 2011, sentiment about nuclear power underwent a marked change. The alarming acceleration of global warming due to theburning of fossil fuels and concern about dependence on foreign fuel has led policymakers, climate scientists, and energy experts to look once again at nuclear power as a source of energy.In this accessible overview, Charles D. Ferguson provides an authoritative account of the key facts about nuclear energy. What is the origin of nuclear energy? What countries use commercial nuclear power, and how much electricity do they obtain from it? How can future nuclear power plants be madesafer? What can countries do to protect their nuclear facilities from military attacks? How hazardous is radioactive waste? Is nuclear energy a renewable energy source? Featuring a discussion of the recent nuclear crisis in Japan and its ramifications, Ferguson addresses these questions and more inNuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), a book that is essential for anyone looking to learn more about this important issue.What Everyone Needs to Know(R) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
Godel: A Life Of Logic, The Mind, And Mathematics
John L. Casti - 2000
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.
The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide
Paweł "Sariel" Kmieć - 2012
Using motors, gears, pneumatics, pulleys, linkages, and more, you can design LEGO models that really move.The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide is filled with building tips for creating strong yet elegant machines and mechanisms with the Technic system. Author Pawel "Sairel" Kmiec will teach you the foundations of LEGO Technic building, from simple machines to advanced mechanics, even explaining how to create realistic to-scale models. Sariel, a world-renowned LEGO Technic expert, offers unique insight into mechanical principles like torque, power translation, and gear ratios, all using Technic bricks. You'll learn how to:Create sturdy connections that can withstand serious stressRe-create specialized LEGO pieces like casings and u-joints, and build solutions like Schmidt and Oldham couplings, when no standard piece will doBuild custom differentials, suspensions, transmissions, and steering systemsPick the right motor for the job—and transform its properties to suit your needsCombine studfull and studless building styles for a stunning lookCreate remote-controlled vehicles, lighting systems, motorized compressors, and pneumatic enginesThis beautifully illustrated, full-color book will inspire you with ideas for building amazing machines like tanks with suspended treads, supercars, cranes, bulldozers, and much more. Your Technic adventure starts now!
The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe
Julian Barbour - 1999
Although the laws of physics create a powerful impression that time is flowing, in fact there are only timeless `nows'. In The End of Time, the British theoretical physicist Julian Barbour describes the coming revolution in our understanding of the world: a quantum theory of the universe that brings together Einstein's general theory of relativity - which denies the existence of a unique time - and quantum mechanics - which demands one. Barbour believes that only the most radical of ideas can resolve the conflict between these two theories: that there is, quite literally, no time at all. The End of Time is the first full-length account of the crisis in our understanding that has enveloped quantum cosmology. Unifying thinking that has never been brought together before in a book for the general reader, Barbour reveals the true architecture of the universe and demonstrates how physics is coming up sharp against the extraordinary possibility that the sense of time passing emerges from a universe that is timeless. The heart of the book is the author's lucid description of how a world of stillness can appear to be teeming with motion: in this timeless world where all possible instants coexist, complex mathematical rules of quantum mechanics bind together a special selection of these instants in a coherent order that consciousness perceives as the flow of time. Finally, in a lucid and eloquent epilogue, the author speculates on the philosophical implications of his theory: Does free will exist? Is time travel possible? How did the universe begin? Where is heaven? Does the denial of time make life meaningless? Written with exceptional clarity and elegance, this profound and original work presents a dazzlingly powerful argument that all will be able to follow, but no-one with an interest in the workings of the universe will be able to ignore.