| |
| The
Bluffer's Guide to the Quantum Universe | | By
Jack Klaff |
| Available
now as an audio download, click here |
| Extracts
from the book | |
| | | Quantus |
| The
study of subatomic particles is called quantum mechanics. This is strange because
the word 'quantum' is derived from the Latin noun 'quantus' meaning 'how much'.
In this case, not a lot. And it can be seen within a nanosecond that it is entirely
alien to this subject to talk of anything 'mechanical', 'mechanistic' or 'machine-like'. |
| | | Quantomime |
| Einstein,
whose work with light and electrons had opened the curtains on the whole quantomime,
wavered between calling quantum mechanics 'incomplete' and declaring its ideas
to be 'the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac, concocted
of incoherent elements of thought'. | | |
| Quantity |
| All
matter can be broken down into atoms. Atoms are small. They are smaller than affordable
apartments in Manhattan, they are smaller than portions at the Ritz, they are
even smaller than the chance that a politician will be honest. The full stop at
the end of this sentence will be a tiny blob of ink about a millimetre wide which
will contain close to four billion atoms. | | |
| Quantifiably |
| Never
commit yourself about the outer limits of the Universe or the quantum realm even
to a 'probably'. Anything you utter with certainty, or declare to be 'probably
true' could return to haunt you and, it can be said with confidence, probably
will. If you know what's good for you, a 'possibly' is the farthest you will go. |
| | | Reviews |
|
| | | With
the vital information from these books there should be no subject upon which you
can't give an informed opinion (or at least one that sounds informed.) |
| Aberdeen
Evening Press | | |
| Never
make fun of physicists! (They'll take you seriously.) Using this book to bluff,
you'll never fool a physicist. But there are no dangers to that, because he or
she would most likely refrain from starting to talk about Hilbert spaces and unitary
operators and the like, since this would bring any dinner discussion to a screeching
halt. After passing that hurdle, you're guaranteed to fool everybody else. Besides,
the opening sentence of the book ends with "nobody understands what's going
on", which also applies to the physicists.
Apart
from giving the reader an overview of what these people have been up to the past
100 years, the book is filled to the brim with hilarious anecdotes about the many
colourful characters who created quantum mechanics, and struggled in vain to make
sense of it. In fact, it paints a fairly accurate picture of the physics community
as it is. My advice to my fellow victims would be: fear the day when some sociology
student decides to base his thesis on this book!
Even (or rather,
especially) if you wear the robes of the physicist priesthood, this book is indispensable
- read it in the closet if you must. | |
A
physicist from Belgium | | |
| Table
of Contents | |
| | |
Preparing Yourself
The Big and the Small
The Paradox of the Belief System
Two Schools of
Thought
The Language Barrier
Tactics for Tight Corners The
Quantum Realm
The Quantum Moment
The Medium and the Message
Quantum
Mechanics
Matter
Quarks and the Standard Model
Antimatter
The
Quantum Leap The
Shocks
Causality
Predictability
Reversibility
Continuity
Accurate and Informative Measurement
Objectivity
Locality
Order
Clear Definition
Separateness
Either/or Thinking
Certainty
Cooking your
own GUT
Stepping towards a TOE
Superstrings and M-Theory
Famous
Physicists
David Bohm
Niels Bohr
Max Born
Louis-Victor de Broglie
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
Paul Ehrenfest
Albert Einstein
Enrico Fermi
Richard Feynman
Murray Gell-Mann
Stephen Hawking
Werner Heisenberg
Max Planck
Wolfgang Pauli
Ernest Rutherford
Erwin Schrùdinger
The Implications
What it all Means
The Cutting Edge
To be Continuedƒ Glossary
| | |
| |
Fortune
Telling
