This morning, I picked up a book that I love: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, by John Gribbin, and started flipping through it. It's one of those books I dip into, time and again, to either refresh my memory, or try to understand again ... It's a lovely book. I am not a scientist, and I do not have a scientific background AT ALL, but I have a lot of interest in it (maybe I should say childlike wonder and fascination ... that's where I'm at with it ... I'm still like a kid asking "why is the sky blue??") - and this book, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat was a JOY to read. I ADORED it. There were times when I felt like I actually understood, like I could get in there - between the cracks - (without squinting so hard my eyelids disappeared, I mean). Much of the math goes over my head. However the book is filled with diagrams and pictures - illustrating the theories, making the mathematical equations visible in really creative ways. I find this enormously useful, and am grateful to Gribbin for this book. I love it.
Einstein's been everywhere these days, due to the 100th anniversary of E=mc2 and all that ... so I thought I'd post some excerpts from the book, just for fun.
I've got a lot of science geeks out there, I know. So you guys can discuss the excerpts amongst yourselves ... I'm not posting them for any other reason than I find them really interesting and thought-provoking.
Onward! Into the netherword of Schrodinger's dead-but-not-dead cat!!
Posted by sheilaI love that book as well. Once you're done reading that, pickup the follow-up book "Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality". He goes past the "end point" of the first book and give you perhaps the best outline of where quantum physics is headed you're likely to find today (though Gary Zukav's "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters", though dated, runs a very close second.
Posted by: Jimmie at February 5, 2005 2:34 PMJimmie - Yeah, I saw that on Amazon - the Kittens one. i will definitely check it out. I very much like the style of the first book. It's a page-turner, in a weird way.
Posted by: red at February 5, 2005 2:35 PMGribbin is one of the best science writers around, Sheila.. when I started obsessing on the physics of the astros in my early teens he became the author I looked for first.. and he has plenty of books on the subject - he has background in astronomy, IIRC. "Spacewarps" is another of his that stands out in particular and it's companion "Timewarps". He was also the astronomy writer for the News Scientist magazine for many years. He's still writing too. There's a corner of a University server in England that has a small collection of his articles online (from 1996)
Posted by: peteb at February 5, 2005 3:02 PMand my apologies for the grocers' apostrophe in the middle of that comment.. sheesh.
Posted by: peteb at February 5, 2005 3:08 PMCool! I've only read Schrodinger's Cat ... and that was because Madeleine L'Engle (one of my favorite writers) said that she adored it. So I figured: okay, I'll check it out. This was years ago.
And I fell in love with it.
Posted by: red at February 5, 2005 3:58 PMSheila, I still re-read that book every once in a while to remind myself of the wonder of discovery. Sometimes in grad school I'd read passages just to remind me that there was a point to all the math I was doing.
Posted by: John at February 6, 2005 3:39 PMJohn - ha!!
"Why the heck am I doing all this math? Ah yes, that's why!!"
Posted by: red at February 7, 2005 4:30 PM