Book picks similar to
Nuclear Physics Explained (Great Courses) by Lawrence Weinstein
physics
science
the-great-courses
nonfiction
Jung: The Key Ideas
Ruth Snowden - 2010
Explaining Jung's complex ideas in simple terms, and backing it up with references to his own texts, you will learn all the essential concepts, from the collective unconscious to archetypes in dreams. You will learn about Jung's upbringing and the development of his thinking. Discover his early work and influences and how they came to shape his ideological and spiritual development. The intricacies of Jung's complex systems of thought are discussed in a straightforward and jargon-free way with particular focus on his lifelong fascination with the spiritual, the numinous, the inner world and the self-realization of the unconscious. Jung's exploration of mythology, dreams, visions and fantasies, as well as his studies into the journey of the psyche, are all explained, making often complex theories easy to get to grips with and the book also looks at his legacy and how his work and ideas have shaped psychology with many therapists still trained in the Jungian method.
Wealth Made Easy: Millionaires and Billionaires Help You Crack the Code to Getting Rich
Greg S. Reid - 2019
You need to win and keep winning. To get there you need great connections and insider advice.But it's not as simple as tracking down the elite few - the wealth hackers of the world - and getting them to spill their secrets. . . Or is it?©2019 Dr. Greg Reid (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Brain Myths Exploded: Lessons from Neuroscience
Indre Viskontas - 2017
To start building a more straightforward, accurate understanding of current breakthroughs in neuroscience, you have to start by shattering popular brain myths.Each of these 24 lectures takes as its focus a single powerful, prevalent brain myth, and uses it as a launch pad from which to explore myriad topics in neuroscience: decision making, memory, dreams, emotions, neuroplasticity, consciousness, mental illness, and much more.Our memory is an accurate, objective record of the past. Our senses reflect the world as it really exists. Our dreams have hidden meanings. We are only using 10% of our total brain power. Modern technology (including social media) is making us less intelligent. Dr. Viskontas doesn't just settle for obliterating these and other myths. Instead, she replaces them with scientific facts gathered from experiments, research, and case studies. The result is an eye-opening adventure into the latest understanding of why the brain works the way it does.Whatever order you enjoy these lectures in, you'll be left with insights that will help you better determine the hard scientific truths behind the breaking news (and myths) of tomorrow.
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
Yuval Noah Harari - 2015
This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.
Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age
W. Bernard Carlson - 2013
His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius. Even at the end of his life when he was living in poverty, Tesla still attracted reporters to his annual birthday interview, regaling them with claims that he had invented a particle-beam weapon capable of bringing down enemy aircraft.Plenty of biographies glamorize Tesla and his eccentricities, but until now none has carefully examined what, how, and why he invented. In this groundbreaking book, W. Bernard Carlson demystifies the legendary inventor, placing him within the cultural and technological context of his time, and focusing on his inventions themselves as well as the creation and maintenance of his celebrity. Drawing on original documents from Tesla's private and public life, Carlson shows how he was an idealist inventor who sought the perfect experimental realization of a great idea or principle, and who skillfully sold his inventions to the public through mythmaking and illusion.This major biography sheds new light on Tesla's visionary approach to invention and the business strategies behind his most important technological breakthroughs.
Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics
Michael Zeilik - 1987
It has an algebra and trigonometry prerequisite, but calculus is preferred.
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate
Rose George - 2013
Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work.Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system of "flags of convenience." Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates.Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales.Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.
This Book Will Blow Your Mind
New Scientist - 2018
You just need this book.What's the nature of reality? Does the universe ever end? What is time and does it even exist? These are the biggest imagination-stretching, brain-staggering questions in the universe - and here are their fascinating answers.
From quantum weirdness to freaky cosmology (like white holes - which spew out matter instead of sucking it in),This Book Will Blow Your Mind takes you on an epic journey to the furthest extremes of science, to the things you never thought possible. This book will explain:
Why is part of the universe missing (and how scientists finally found it)
How time might also flow backwardsHow human head transplants might be possible (in the very near future)Whether the universe is a hologramAnd why we are all zombiesFilled with counterintuitive stories and factoids you can't wait to share, as well as lots of did-you-knows and plenty of how-did-we-ever-not-knows, this new book from the bestselling New Scientist series will blow your mind - and then put it back together again.
Doctors: The Biography of Medicine
Sherwin B. Nuland - 1988
But as renowned Yale surgeon and medical historian Sherwin B. Nuland shows in this brilliant collection of linked life portraits, the theory bears little resemblance to the truth. Through the centuries, the men and women who have shaped the world of medicine have been not only very human, but also very much the products of their own times and places. Presenting compelling studies of great medical innovators and pioneers, Doctors gives us a fascinating history of modern medicine. Ranging from the legendary Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, to Andreas Vesalius, whose Renaissance masterwork on anatomy offered invaluable new insight into the human body, to Helen Taussig, founder of pediatric cardiology and co-inventor of the original blue baby operation, here is a volume filled with the spirit of ideas and the thrill of discovery.
Quantum Mechanics
Jim Al-Khalili - 2017
You'll discover how the sun shines, why light is both a wave and a particle, the certainty of the Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger's Cat, Einstein's spooky action, how to build a quantum computer, and why quantum mechanics drives even its experts completely crazy.
'Jim Al-Khalili has done an admirable job of condensing the ideas of quantum physics from Max Planck to the possibilities of quantum computers into brisk, straightforward English' The Times
IoT Inc.: How Your Company Can Use the Internet of Things to Win in the Outcome Economy
Bruce Sinclair - 2017
They’re in our companies, in our homes, in our pockets. People love these products. But what they love more is what these products do—and for anyone running a business today, outcomes are the key. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the point of connection between products and the results they deliver—it’s where products become software. IoT Inc. explains everything you need to know to position your company within this powerful new network. And once you do, you’ll leave the competition in the dust. Founder and president of today’s leading IoT business consulting firm, Bruce Sinclair has been helping companies develop IoT strategies for a decade—far longer than the term has even existed. This essential guide provides an in-depth look into IoT—how it works and how it is transforming business; methods for seeing your own business, customers, and competitors through the lens of IoT, and a deep dive into how to develop and implement a powerful IoT strategy. IoT isn’t a new business trend. It’s the new way of business. Period. The IoT wave is heading for your industry. You can either meet it head-on, and ride it to success, or you can turn your back and let it swamp you. This is your playbook for transforming your company into a major player in the IoT Outcome economy.
The Dance of Life: The New Science of How a Single Cell Becomes a Human Being
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz - 2020
In The Dance of Life, developmental and stem-cell biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz takes us to the front lines of efforts to understand the creation of a human life. She has spent two decades unraveling the mysteries of development, as a simple fertilized egg becomes a complex human being of forty trillion cells. Zernicka-Goetz's work is both incredibly practical and astonishingly vast: her groundbreaking experiments with mouse, human, and artificial embryo models give hope to how more women can sustain viable pregnancies. Set at the intersection of science's greatest powers and humanity's greatest concern, The Dance of Life is a revelatory account of the future of fertility -- and life itself.
The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos
Robert P. Kirshner - 2002
One of the world's leading astronomers, Robert Kirshner, takes readers inside a lively research team on the quest that led them to an extraordinary cosmological discovery: the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of a dark energy that makes space itself expand. In addition to sharing the story of this exciting discovery, Kirshner also brings the science up-to-date in a new epilogue. He explains how the idea of an accelerating universe--once a daring interpretation of sketchy data--is now the standard assumption in cosmology today.This measurement of dark energy--a quality of space itself that causes cosmic acceleration--points to a gaping hole in our understanding of fundamental physics. In 1917, Einstein proposed the cosmological constant to explain a static universe. When observations proved that the universe was expanding, he cast this early form of dark energy aside. But recent observations described first-hand in this book show that the cosmological constant--or something just like it--dominates the universe's mass and energy budget and determines its fate and shape.Warned by Einstein's blunder, and contradicted by the initial results of a competing research team, Kirshner and his colleagues were reluctant to accept their own result. But, convinced by evidence built on their hard-earned understanding of exploding stars, they announced their conclusion that the universe is accelerating in February 1998. Other lines of inquiry and parallel supernova research now support a new synthesis of a cosmos dominated by dark energy but also containing several forms of dark matter. We live in an extravagant universe with a surprising number of essential ingredients: the real universe we measure is not the simplest one we could imagine.
Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
Matt Parker - 2019
Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes . . . until it doesn't. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences.Math is easy to ignore until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the middle of the ocean.Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
Three Roads To Quantum Gravity
Lee Smolin - 2000
"Provocative, original, and unsettling." -- The New York Review of Books "An excellent writer, a creative thinker." -- Nature