Short Physics

Physics, the fundamental science of matter and energy, encompasses all levels of nature from the subatomic to the cosmic, and underlies much of the technology around us. Understanding the physics of our universe is an essential aspect of humanity's quest to understand our environment and our place within it. Doing physics enables us to explore the interaction between environment and human society, and can help us to work towards the future sustainability of the planet.

Following the discovery of the Higgs boson, Frank Close has produced this major revision to his classic and compelling introduction to the fundamental particles that make up the universe. Frank Close takes us on a journey into the atom to examine known particles such as quarks, electrons, and the ghostly neutrino, and explains the key role and significance of the Higgs boson. Along the way he provides fascinating insights into how discoveries in particle physics have actually been made, and discusses how our picture of the world has been radically revised in the light of these developments.

Philosophy of Physics is concerned with the deepest theories of modern physics - notably quantum theory, our theories of space, time and symmetry, and thermal physics - and their strange, even bizarre conceptual implications. A deeper understanding of these theories helps both physics, through pointing the way to new theories and new applications, and philosophy, through seeing how our worldview has to change in the light of what we learn from physics.

Akari is Outlander meets Farewell to Manzanar from New York Times bestselling authors Andrews & Wilson. Applied quantum physicist Akari Sato is working late at Los Alamos National Laboratory one night when she hears commotion from her lab. She finds intruders dressed in dated clothing rifling...

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? This audiobook introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the size of the Earth while their caliphs conquered much of it and more.

Physics: A Quick Read is an engaging book designed to make learning physics fun and easy. It features short, simple articles covering a wide range of topics in physics. The book starts with the basics of motion, including scalars, vectors, and Newton's laws. Readers will explore energy concepts like kinetic and potential energy, along with work, power, and momentum. It also covers electricity and magnetism, discussing circuits, Ohm's Law, and electric motors. There's a section on waves and sound, explaining how musical notes work and how we hear. Light and optics are explored, including ...

The timeline is fracturing. Dive into Book 1 of the complete Time Slicer trilogy. *** He lost his mother when he was four. He’s about to meet her before he was born. University student Isaac Harris wasn’t expecting much from a mysterious inheritance. He certainly wasn’t expecting it to send him into the past—and into his mother’s living room. But Isaac’s connection to time runs deeper than the device that brought him here. In 2021, Philippa Harris is alive, pregnant, and preparing to unveil the invention she has spent five years developing. The grown son standing before her is ...

Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827) shocked the scientific elite with his unique understanding of the physics of light. The lens he invented was a brilliant feat of engineering that made lighthouses blaze many times brighter, farther, and more efficiently. Battling the establishment, his own poor health, and the limited technology of the time, Fresnel was able to achieve his goal of illuminating the entire French coast. At first, the British sought to outdo the new Fresnel-equipped lighthouses as a matter of national pride.

Embark on a gripping journey to the edges of the known universe with "The Prometheus Protocol." When the starship Astarte arrives at Kepler-186f, Captain Zara Vega and her team find more than an alien landscape—they discover a mysterious artifact pulsing with otherworldly energy. As they delve into its secrets, the artifact unlocks a power that transforms one crew member and forces them to confront the boundaries of human morality, knowledge, and survival. Racing against time, the crew faces a pivotal choice: harness the artifact’s power to elevate humanity or risk annihilation. In this...

In Chapter 3: The Quantum Arch and the Nanite Grove, our four fearless Siberian Husky brothers—Smokie, Bandit, Rocky, and Loki—are back in action, pushing the boundaries of space-time, outsmarting high-tech galactic bounties, and delivering the ultimate blend of comedy, sci-fi world-building, & real-world canine antics. If you loved the fast-paced action of the earlier chapters, get ready for a quantum-leaping thrill ride that bridges the gap between gripping storytelling and interactive multimedia! What Happens in Chapter 3? The Quantum Rescue at the Red Giant Arch: The story picks up ...

The beauty of fractal patterns and their relation to chaos, as well as the history of chaos, and its uses in the real world and implications for the philosophy of science are all discussed in this Very Short Introduction audiobook. 

We have always looked up at the sky and wondered. The desire to explore and understand what lies beyond us is at the heart of scientific discovery. Ever since the ancient Babylonians tracked celestial objects on clay tablets, the search for meaning in an infinitely vast universe has been a...

Nuclear physics began long before the identification of fundamental particles, with J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron at the end of the nineteenth century, which implied the existence of a positive charge in the atom to make it neutral. In this Very Short Introduction, Frank Close gives...

You turn down the radio to park your car. What does the volume even have to do with trying to fit a car into a parking place? It is one of those small habits that seems perfectly reasonable until someone asks you why you are doing that. The same happens for whispering back when someone whispers, or checking a phone that actually never vibrated, or walking into a room and forgetting why. This is a book of questions about the brain, the body, everyday physics, common objects, shopping, technology and the social behaviours that connect us all. Why does blowing on soup cool it down but ...

Superconductivity is one of the most exciting areas of research in physics today. Outlining the history of its discovery and the race to understand its many mysterious and counterintuitive phenomena, this Very Short Introduction audiobook explains in accessible terms the theories that have been developed and how they have influenced other areas of science, including the Higgs boson of particle physics and ideas about the early universe. 

Brought to you by Penguin. From cyborgs, starships, UFOs, aliens and antimatter to telepathy, invisibility, psychokinesis and precognition, Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible is an exciting look at how science fiction could soon become science fact. Albert Einstein said, 'If at first an...

In this Very Short Introduction, John Heilbron draws on sources never before presented in English to cover the life and work of one of the most creative physicists of the 20th century. In addition to his role as a scientist, Heilbron considers Bohr as a statesman and Danish cultural icon, who built scientific institutions and pushed for the extension of international cooperation in science to all nation states. As a humanist he was concerned with the cultivation of all sides of the individual, and with the complementary contributions of all peoples to the sum of human culture.

The Meridian casino spent four years and twenty million dollars proving its signature game cannot be beaten. The randomness behind it isn't just secure — it's drawn from light itself, audited in real time, unhackable by any computer on Earth. Then security architect Mireille Okafor finds a flaw. Not in the machine. In the room around it. Someone inside the building has learned to bend a fair game without ever touching a card — a few dollars at a time, patient enough to look like nothing but luck. As Mireille closes in, she uncovers a scheme built out of desperation, not greed, and is ...

Scientist, resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi was one of Italy's greatest writers and an internationally renowned chronicler of human nature. In his masterpiece The Periodic Table, he charts his incredible life story through the medium of chemistry, using the titular list of...