Engineering Physics

Time and time again, great thinkers like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have credited their success to mental models: simple representations of how the world works that can be applied in a wide array of contexts. Mastering a small number of these concepts enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others don’t, and better anticipate outcomes.

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of the field. The one definitive text on the development of the periodic table by van Spronsen (1969), has been out of print for a considerable time. The present book provides a successor to van Spronsen, but goes further in giving an evaluation of the extent to which modern physics has, or has not, explained the periodic system. The book is written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested lay-persons alike.

Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on Gothic horror and science fiction genres. The name Frankenstein has become part of our everyday language, often used in derogatory terms to describe scientists who have overstepped a perceived moral line. But how did a 19-year-old woman with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel such as Frankenstein?

Buckle up for a joy ride through physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists and her own work as an award-winning science writer, Natalie Angier does the impossible: she makes science fascinating and seriously fun, even for those of us who, in Angier's words, "still can't tell the difference between a proton, a photon, and a moron".

In Waves, Fredric Raichlen traces the evolution of waves, from their generation in the deep ocean to their effects on the coast. He explains, in a way that is readily understandable to nonscientists, both the science of waves themselves and the technology that can be used to protect us against their more extreme forms, including hurricanes and tsunamis.

A thrilling scientific investigation and the portrait of an extraordinary genius, The Seashell on the Mountaintop gives us new insight into our planet, revealing how we learned to read the story told to us by the Earth itself, written in rock and stone.

Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious – comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants.

Atom Land brings the impossibly small world of particle physics to life, taking listeners on a guided journey through the subatomic world. Listeners will sail the subatomic seas in search of electron ports, boson continents, and hadron islands. The sea itself is the quantum field, complete with quantum waves. Beware dark energy and extra dimensions, embodied by fantastical sea creatures prowling the far edges of the known world. Your tour guide through this whimsical - and highly instructive - world is Jon Butterworth, leading physicist at CERN.

Let There Be Light presents a simple, beautiful, and elegant view of the oneness of all life, subjective and objective. It demonstrates the unity of the physical world with conscious experience of the physical world. Consciousness is not inside space and time, space and time are within consciousness; they are a special structure of the perceptual portion of consciousness.

Detective thriller meets astrophysics in this adventure into neutrinos and the scientists who pursue them. For more than 80 years, brilliant and eccentric scientists around the world have been searching for the incredibly small bits of matter we call neutrinos. Trillions of these ghostly particles pass through our bodies every second, but they are so pathologically shy that neutrino hunters have to use Olympic-size pools deep underground and a gigantic cube of Antarctic ice to catch just a handful.

The product of research around the globe and interviews with dozens of prominent scientists, God's Equation tells us it is almost as though Einstein were God's mouthpiece, revealing the most fundamental truths about our larger environment, truths scientists are just now confirming.

Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light - the core of what we now know as quantum theory - than he did about relativity.

In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.

The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest, and by far the most powerful, machine ever built. A project of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, its audacious purpose is to re-create, in a 16.5-mile-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss countryside, the immensely hot and dense conditions that existed some 13.7 billion years ago within the first trillionth of a second after the fiery birth of our Universe. The collider is now crashing protons at record energy levels never created by scientists before, and it will reach even higher levels by 2013.

Rising from the depths of the North Pacific lies a fabled island, now submerged just 15 feet below the surface of the ocean. Rumors and warnings about Cortes Bank abound, but among big wave surfers, this legendary rock is famous for one simple (and massive) reason: this is the home of the biggest rideable wave on the face of the earth.

Few recognize how the Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Einstein’s life and work. While Einstein never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity blockaded in Berlin, literally starving. He lost 50 pounds in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues. Some of those colleagues fought against rabid nationalism; others were busy inventing chemical warfare - scientists trapped in the power plays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct.

In the summer of 1921, Philo T. Farnsworth was not all that different from any other farmer's son in rural Idaho, until he came up with an idea that would change the world–and thrust him into a titanic struggle with one of the most monolithic monopolies in the world. Farnsworth's story of divine inspiration facing off against corporate avarice is a compelling–though seldom told–saga from the 20th century that is still relevant in the 21st.

Why can your foot move halfway to the brake pedal before you're consciously aware of danger? Why do you notice when your name is mentioned in a conversation that you didn't think you were listening to? Why are people whose name begins with J more likely to marry other people whose name begins with J? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? Renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate these surprising mysteries.

Are you seeking a deeper understanding of consciousness? Are you interested in meditation or currently practicing meditation? The Buddha and the Quantum is about the connection between meditation and physics. Many books show parallels between consciousness and physics; a few of these attempt to explain consciousness in terms of the physics of everyday experience. This is the only book that explains physics and the everyday world in terms of consciousness alone.

Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the enlightening power of reason, a new kind of demon mischievously materialized in the scientific imagination itself. Scientists began to employ hypothetical beings to perform certain roles in thought experiments―experiments that can only be done in the imagination―and these impish assistants helped scientists achieve major breakthroughs that pushed forward the frontiers of science and technology.