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Sync
- How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
The tendency to synchronize may be the most mysterious and pervasive drive in all of nature. It has intrigued some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Norbert Wiener, Brian Josephson, and Arthur Winfree.
At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
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The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
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For biologists to learn single molecule biophysics
- By A Synthetic Biologist on 09-04-14
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Life on the Edge
- The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
- By: Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: Nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation?
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More woo than new
- By Gary on 09-09-15
By: Johnjoe McFadden, and others
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13 Things That Don't Make Sense
- The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
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Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Science's best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. If history is any precedent, we should look to today's inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet 13 modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow's breakthroughs.
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10 interesting chapters-read epiloge first
- By Stephen on 06-10-09
By: Michael Brooks
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At the Edge of Uncertainty
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- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
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The atom, the big bang, DNA, natural selection - all are ideas that have revolutionized science; and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, best-selling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.
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All smoke, no fire
- By Kenton on 07-25-15
By: Michael Brooks
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Confessions of an Alien Hunter
- A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
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This engaging memoir reveals the true story of the Search for ExtraterrestrialIntelligence (SETI), and discloses what we may very soon discover. Chronicling the program’s history with insight and humor, SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak assures us that if there is sentient life in the universe, we are within decades of picking up its signal.
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Somewhat Disappointed...
- By Tim on 11-12-10
By: Seth Shostak
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
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- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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A great listen and fun way to learn some things
- By R. Mueller on 06-10-23
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A Beginner’s Guide to Reality
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A unique fusion of philosophy and metaphysics set against the backdrop of contemporary culture. Have you ever wondered if the world is really there when you're not looking? We tend to take the reality of our world very much for granted. This book will lead you down the rabbit hole in search of something we can point to, hang our hats on, and say this is real.
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A real great listen on the nature of reality
- By Patrick Mabry, Jr. on 07-30-14
By: Jim Baggott
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The Science of Discworld
- A Novel
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Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.
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Not the best Pratchett, but gets there in the end
- By Rachel on 07-30-14
By: Terry Pratchett, and others
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The Science of Rick and Morty
- The Unofficial Guide to Earth's Stupidest Show
- By: Matt Brady
- Narrated by: Joe Hempel
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
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Blending biology, chemistry, and physics basics with accessible - and witty-prose, The Science of Rick and Morty equips you with the scientific foundation to thoroughly understand Rick's experiments from the show, such as how we can use dark matter and energy, just what is intelligence hacking, and whether or not you can really control a cockroach's nervous system with your tongue. Perfect for longtime and new fans of the show, this is the ultimate segue into discovering more about our complicated and fascinating universe.
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Some good science in here?
- By Darin Harbert on 02-06-20
By: Matt Brady
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The Universe in the Rearview Mirror
- How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality
- By: Dave Goldberg
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
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A physicist speeds across space, time, and everything in between showing that our elegant universe from the Higgs boson to antimatter to the most massive group of galaxies is shaped by hidden symmetries that have driven all our recent discoveries about the universe and all the ones to come. Why is the sky dark at night? Is it possible to build a shrink-ray gun? If there is antimatter, can there be antipeople? Why are past, present, and future our only options? Are time and space like a butterfly's wings? No one but Dave Goldberg, the coolest nerd physicist on the planet, could give a hyper-drive tour of the universe like this one.
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Good, but for whom?
- By Michael on 08-31-13
By: Dave Goldberg
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In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.
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What listeners say about Sync
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Ryan
- 05-26-12
Engaging, but maybe better suited for non-audio
Self-organization -- it's a profoundly self-evident quality of nature, but one that so far has eluded much deep understanding in science. Strogatz makes it easy to see why: nature, from atoms up to cells up to societies, is made up of many non-linear components working together, and non-linear systems, with their feedback loops, impulses, and fractal components, are fiendishly difficult to get one's head around, nothing like the idealized systems we encounter in Freshman Physics. Yet, their non-linearity is the key to... well, maybe everything?
Sync explores the synchronization phenomena inherent in many complex systems, the way they coordinate their actions with respect to time, building order out of seeming noise. From fireflies to circadian rhythms to swinging pendulums to brain neurons to orbiting bodies to Higgs boson fields, there's an eerie tendency in nature for things to fall in step.
Despite being free of equations, it's a book that delves into some pretty dense territory, and might not be well suited to audiobook form. In most chapters, I found that a moment of daydreaming or distraction would have me rewinding to get back on track with the lecture. Strogatz spends a lot of time explaining abstract models, which held my interest as an engineer (the runners-on-a-track metaphor actually mirrored a traffic simulation I’d developed, which had sync issues of its own), but might appeal less to other readers. There are also some rather esoteric topics in physics, which I didn’t understand very well. I kinda wish he'd put those chapters towards the end, because I almost quit listening after one frustrating section dealing with spiral waves, which luckily turned out to be followed by a much more interesting and accessible overview of Chaos Theory. I also liked the chapters that explore networks and their characteristics (think of the connections between film actors, exemplified by the party game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”).
If you're hoping for some grand unifying theory of synchronization, you won't find it here, just an examination of some different systems in which sync is present and praise for the work of several different researchers. I wouldn’t have minded more resonance between the separate parts (as it were), but I was curious about the topic and the book was worth my time. It’s always cool to learn about a field in which many key developments have happened within my own lifetime. Strogatz convinced me that the qualities that make self-organizing systems difficult to model with traditional mathematics might be the same qualities that are most important to understand. As a software developer, I found it exciting to think about how computers will be used to further exploration of the universe’s emergent interconnectedness, and how discoveries might feed back into how we think about software design. We might even find out something profound.
3.5 stars.
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24 people found this helpful
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- RS
- 11-02-12
The . . . .Narration . . . . . Is . . . . . Awful
Would you try another book from Steven Strogatz and/or Kevin T. Collins?
No . . . . . Never
Would you recommend Sync to your friends? Why or why not?
No
Would you be willing to try another one of Kevin T. Collins’s performances?
The . . . . . . Narrator . . . . . . Kevin . . . . . T . . . . . Collins . . . . . .Appears . . . . . To . . . . . Have . . . . . Some . . . . . . Sort . . . . . . of . . . . . .Reading . . . . . .Disability. . . . . . . . . . . . .I'm . . . . Not . . . . . Exaggerating . . . . . . When . . . . . I . . . . . Say . . . . . . That . . . . . .Listening . . . . . to . . . . . . Him . . . . . . Read . . . . . . This . . . . . . Book . . . . . . Is . . . . . . Like . . . . . Trying . . . . . . . To . . . . . . Read . . . . . . .This . . . . . . .Sentence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The . . . . . . .Cadence . . . . . . . And . . . . . . .Tonality . . . . . . .Are . . . . . . . Both . . . . . . .As . . . . . . Mind-numbing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This . . . . . . . . . .Is . . . . . . . . . The . . . . . . . . . .Worst . . . . . . . . . .Audio . . . . . . . . Book . . . . . . . . Narration . . . . . . . . I . . . . . . . . Have . . . . . . Ever . . . . . . . .Heard.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
A . . . . . .Strong . . . . . . Desire . . . . . .To . . . . . . Shove . . . . . . .My . . . . . . Head . . . . . . Through . . . . . . .A . . . . . . Plate . . . . . . . Glass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Window.
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Overall
- Joshua
- 03-10-11
Listen before you buy
This is my first review, I haven't ever felt compelled to write one before, but this time was different.
The content is great, or at least I'm sure its great had I been able to get through the first couple chapters. But the reader is boring and unenthusiastic, to say the least. Books like this require a conversational, realistic tone that this reader did not provide. My suggestion, pick up the physical copy of this one, the audiobook is disappointing.
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16 people found this helpful
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- Tyler
- 05-23-11
One Dense Book
Maybe I'm dense, but I sure thought this book was a bit on the dry and hard to follow side. Good information to be sure, but a lot of the book goes into excrutiating detail about math experiments. If you're fond of reading academic math journals, this book is for you.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Jayram
- 10-25-11
Best math audio book
I would rate Sync as one of the best mathematics audiobook that can be enjoyed and understood (even in audio format). Steven Strogatz is a pioneering mathematics professor working on chaos theory and non-linear dynamics. He has successfully integrated his understanding of the principles of synchrony and emergence of synchrony in various natural phenomena and came out with a intuitive, entertaining book mixed with historical anecdotes. Must buy book for any science loving audible listeners.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Kim
- 04-13-11
Could not get past the narrator
The plodding pace of the narration, where "every syll a ble was care fully pro nounced" at a pace just slower than anyone would normally speak really grated on my nerves. I checked out my playback status and found I was still on chapter one! I don't think I can stand to listen to any more of this recording. The author's analogies were too frequently phrased with hyperbole. Very disappointed.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Gary
- 12-15-13
After listening, can't explain to others.
The book is not an easy listen. Be prepared for statements like "the coherence of the neurons in our brain are best thought of as solving a differential equation to determine the equilibrium solution involved in the non-linear system....".
The book covers many diverse topics, from why does the face of the moon always face towards us to how does a laser work. The author ties all of the topics together by showing how each of the constituent parts acts to produce the whole system.
Each of the different topics was exciting, but I did not understand the topic well enough to explain it to others after having listened to the topic. That probably means he didn't explain the topic at a simple enough level for me to understand.
Any high school student or college beginner who is thinking about majoring in mathematics should listen to this book. The author presents the exciting diverse fields available for the math practitioner.
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5 people found this helpful
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- jason
- 07-18-12
If you suffer from insomnia, the cure is at hand!
What disappointed you about Sync?
Monotonous delivery of an intermittently interesting book. I've read Rise and Fall..., Decline and Fall,... and everything from Wuthering to Principia Mathematicus. This was dry, boring, and more of an autobiographical overview of what the author has done than anything else.
Would you ever listen to anything by Steven Strogatz again?
No
How could the performance have been better?
Any variation in tone would have been welcome.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
It was relatively easy to understand give the subject.
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- serine
- 04-06-16
a great primer on complexity
I enjoyed this book every bit as much as Gleick's book on chaos. Strogatz is an excellent writer. Able to convey complex concepts of chaos and synchronicity to the general reader, this book is for anyone with interest in the topic. If you don't fully understand chaos from one perspective, don't worry. Storgatz provides many.
With discussions of his own work as well as the work of mentors, students, and others in the field, Strogatz addressed the broad application of sync in the world and universe. Skilled at capturing the various personalities of people he has worked with, Strogatz also included interesting stories about many researchers in the field as well as interesting stories about the inner workings of academia. With examples from biology (ie., neurons, heartbeat, and sleep/circadian rhythm), to physics and engineering (ie., metronomes, super conductors, power grids, and the bridge in London), to social connectedness (ie., 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon/small world model), and the future of sync studies (consciousness, evolution, immune system, the universe as a computer, and more), there are many fun things to learn about. I was also happy to learn about the lesser known role of Stanley Milgram in uncovering the 6 degrees of separation principle.
Who knew what the study of fireflies would bring? Excellent book.
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- Janet Gallagher
- 08-07-12
Not as intriguing as I expected.
Would you try another book from Steven Strogatz and/or Kevin T. Collins?
no.
Would you ever listen to anything by Steven Strogatz again?
no.
What about Kevin T. Collins’s performance did you like?
He showed enthusiasm for the subject.
Could you see Sync being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
no.
Any additional comments?
Not a read for fun. Educational, but not intriguing.
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4 people found this helpful