SCI055000 Archives - Duckworth Books

Through Two Doors at Once

The clearest, most accessible explanation yet of the amazing world of quantum mechanics.

How can matter behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle exist before we look at it or does the very act of looking bring it into reality? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and our perceivable world begins?

Many of science’s greatest minds – including Thomas Young, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman – have grappled with the questions embodied in the simple yet elusive ‘double-slit’ experiment in order to understand the fabric of our universe. With his extraordinary gift for making the complicated comprehensible, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed, to reveal the answers.

Youniverse

Your guide to science, from the Big Bang to AI

Whether you wish to discover the basics of science or catch up on its latest developments, this short accessible guide is for you.

YOUNIVERSE describes in simple terms the world you are inseparably a part of: what it is, how it works and your place in it – insofar as these things are known. The text has been vetted by 13 distinguished scientists.

Journey now through time and space, a world of the unimaginably big and the inconceivably small – though the marvels of science.

The Edge of Physics

A scientific and globetrotting exploration of the physics experiments changing the ways we understand our universe.

Why is the universe expanding? What is the nature of dark matter? Do other universes exist? In this timely and original book, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy embarks on a global journey to some of the world’s most inhospitable and dramatic research sites to witness first-hand the audacious physics experiments conducted to answer profound questions about the nature of the universe.

From the Atacama Desert in the Chilean Andes to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope on Mount Paranal to deep inside an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota and to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, Ananthaswamy weaves together stories about the people and places at the heart of this cosmological research.

While explaining the immense questions that scientists are trying to answer, Ananthaswamy provides an accessible and unique portrait of the universe and our quest to understand it. An atmospheric, engaging and illuminating read, The Edge of Physics depicts science as a human process and brings cosmology with all its rarefied concepts down to earth.

Gravity

How did we come to understand the force that binds the universe together? In Gravity, Brian Clegg offers a succinct history of gravity from the perspectives of great thinkers including Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and today’s leading scientists. He explores theories of general relativity, quantum mechanics and our attempts to link the two, as well as time travel, black holes, string theory and why gravity only works at the speed of light.

Gravity is anything but simple, but Brian Clegg has written the most accessible book yet on the subject – the perfect introduction to a complicated theory.

The Physics Of Superheroes

If superheroes stepped off the comic book page, could they actually work their wonders in a world constrained by the laws of physics? How strong would Superman have to be to ‘leap tall buildings in a single bound’? Could Storm of the ‘X-Men’ possibly control the weather?

James Kakalios provides an engaging and witty commentary while introducing the reader to classical and cutting-edge concepts in physics, including:

what Superman’s strength can tell us about the Newtonian physics of force, mass, and acceleration;

what villains like Electro and Magneto tell us about electricity and magnetism;

how Iceman’s powers show the principles of thermal dynamics;

what the Human Top can tell us about angular momentum;

why physics professors gone bad are the most dangerous evil geniuses… and more!

Amazing Story Quantum Mechanics

In the pulp magazines and comics of the 1950s, it was predicted that the future would be one of gleaming utopias, with flying cars, jetpacks, and robotic personal assistants. Obviously, things didn’t turn out that way. But the world we do have is actually more fantastic than the most outlandish predictions of science fiction from the mid-20th century. The internet, mobile phones and MRI machines have changed the world in unimaginable ways.

In The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, James Kakalios explains the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and nuclear energy through speculative science fiction, space adventures, graphic novels and films that have led to technological innovations – breakthroughs that will make possible a future beyond our wildest imaginings.

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