Product Description
What does E=mc2 actually mean? Dr. Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of twenty-first century science to unpack Einstein’s famous equation. Explaining and simplifying notions of energy, mass, and lightwhile exploding commonly held misconceptionsthey demonstrate how the structure of nature itself is contained within this equation. Along the way, we visit the site of one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted: the … More >>
#1 by David Nichols on June 26, 2010 - 9:48 am
Cox and Forshaw have presented a streamlined, focused popular science book aimed at teaching relatively new physics readers the basics and history of the famous equation in the title. While experienced physics readers will not likely learn new information, the book offers an approachable description of relativity, how we know it works, and why it is important in the modern world and beyond.
While I personally didn’t gain much new from this book (as a reasonably experienced non-professional physics reader), I believe newer readers could be in for a treat. I’d certainly recommend starting a discovery of relativity with this book if the concept seems difficult. The authors take time to explain various points, and offer solid presentations and reasonable analogies to aid in the explanation. Combined with a singularly-focused subject, the book is an excellent starting point for curious, intelligent readers wishing to know more details about E=mc2. Four stars.
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by Yvonne A. Oliver on June 26, 2010 - 10:24 am
It’s a great feeling to come back tired from work and pick up such a book. After all, like most people I rarely have time to ponder seriously about the universe and the meaning of time and space.I am a high school French teacher so my training in science is rather limited. But after a few hours spent thinking about time,space, distance, energy and matter with Cox and Forshaw,I felt enlightened and rejuvenated! It really read like a thriller, whenever I put the book down I could not stop thinking about it and at dinner I could not shut up about it. The more my friends asked me questions about what I read the more I felt like going back and re-reading until I could explain it in my own words. Now that I am done with it, it’s haunting me, driving home or playing with my cat; it keeps me thinking…
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Michael H. Stone, MD on June 26, 2010 - 12:37 pm
I read Professors Cox & Forshaw’s new book on Einstein’s E = mc2 in one day: I couldn’t put it down. I have tried for years to get a handle on the equation and how to think about spacetime, have read many books for the lay public (I am a psychiatry professor, so I am a layman when it comes to physics) — and this new book is the only one that I could grasp and that really made sense. It’s a great tribute to the authors and a great service to the public.
Michael H Stone, MD
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Steve Reina on June 26, 2010 - 1:52 pm
E = mc2
The energy contained in anything is equal to its mass multiplied by the speed of light.
As the title of this book suggests this book seeks to answer the twin questions of why nature should work this way and why we should care that nature works this way.
Like all basic questions the ones posed in this book actually turn out to be quite instructive about why nature works the way it does.
Though admittedly we still have much more learning to do about whys and wherefores of this process this book was great in making the connection that there is a correlation between the mass of a thing and the potential energy it contains.
Burn a log and it weighs less. Start a uranium reaction and mass itself is extinguished in the process producing energy that travels at the speed of light.
Why the energy produced from such a reaction should travel at the speed of light tells us much about what Oxford’s John Barrow would term the impossibilities of science…inherent limits to nature and how it operates that give us useful guides to understanding it better.
And understanding nature, as both Einstein and Spinoza would have us believe is understanding God, “the old one,” himself…reason as good as any why we should care.
This book is highly recommended.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Sarah Black on June 26, 2010 - 3:12 pm
My husband is a math guy and has read books about relativity for fun. I’m not so keen on math myself, but have a master’s degree in organic chemistry (I can do math, sure, I just don’t do it for fun). I bought this book so that we would have something to read together – I keep buying him books as gifts, and they often collect dust.
It turned out to be a great idea. We have often forgone watching TV in order to read more about E = mc2. We read, stop, discuss, and try to wrap our brains around the ideas. I think I have come to understand more of the underlying ideas briefly presented in my physics classes, and in an environment of no stress and no time limit! I am not in a position to critique the physics itself, but I have found no errors or issues that suggest a problem.
However, as much as the author’s try to make the subject accessible, I am fairly certain my non-math and science family members would have been lost after the first few chapters. Without some experience in thinking in equations, it’s just hard to wrap your brain around the ideas.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone with at least a basic math or science background who is interested in understanding something fundamental that hardly ever gets explained outside of an upper level physics course, or someone without a math or science background who is interested in really stretching their brain.
Rating: 4 / 5