- Paperback: 64 pages
- Publisher: Oval Books; New edition edition (1 May 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1902825578
- ISBN-13: 978-1902825571
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11.2 x 1.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,759,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Synopsis
With this book, you can be an instant expert on the quantum universe and bluff your way in the subject with everyone you know. No science required, just a sense of humour. From 'gluons' to 'gravitons', and from 'certainty' to 'superstrings', here's all you need to know to sound all-knowing.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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 indispensible - read it in the closet if you must.
Format:Paperback
As an introduction to all things Quantum, this book is okay. However, as a witty insight into how physics messes with your head it is outstanding. Extremely well written, Mr Klaff was professor for public understanding of science at Starlab (a curious trajectory for a Springbok, admittedly) and it shows. It's a short, sharp, shock of spin, strangeness n' string-theory. And some other ssss'y subatomic stuff I'm too tired to come up with currently. Just buy the book and be informed and amused in equal measure.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Disappointment
12 Mar 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Not nearly as weird or funny as real quiantu mechanics. Most ny popular introduction is more interesting; eg. "Fearful Symmetry by A. Zee.
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