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Physics for Poets
This classic text retains the flavor of earlier editions but includes updated discussions of Chaos, Relativity, Quantum Theory, and Cosmology. The text appeals to a wide range of students because of the author's entertaining writing style and use of descriptive examples instead of equations.
282 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 2, 2024
La scienza dovrebbe insegnarci a dubitare [...] Molte delle convinzioni da noi accettate come vere possono derivare dall'abitudine, dal pregiudizio o semplicemente essere sbagliate
August 26, 2016
I remembered that my freshman year roommate took a class nicknamed Physics for Poets in order to get one of her lab science requirements out of the way. When I found a book by that title, I dove in. In hindsight, I wish I had not. Physics for Poets is disappointingly not enough detail about physics and not enough beauty to satisfy even the most casual armchair poet. The author would attempt to simplify by giving a complex looking formula, but then not explaining it (frustrating!), or mention that a concept impacts technology but not explain how. It was simultaneously too much and not enough. The author ends with the following quote, “It is customary, in conventional physics courses, to equate understanding with the ability to calculate.” Sadly, the book failed to deliver either.
{Read more from the longer review of books on scientific topics in the original post on A Spirited Mind.}
{Read more from the longer review of books on scientific topics in the original post on A Spirited Mind.}
January 19, 2016
"To be human is to wonder."
My love of science fiction has also kept me fascinated with physics and astronomy, though I don't always understand all of it. But isn't that part of the point of "wondering"? To read a story that postulates what the universe may one day look like, to question the science behind the story, to learn, to read another story, to question, to learn. Read. Question. Learn. Those three steps work for everything in life. Never stop reading; never stop questioning; and never stop learning.
"To be human is to wonder."
My love of science fiction has also kept me fascinated with physics and astronomy, though I don't always understand all of it. But isn't that part of the point of "wondering"? To read a story that postulates what the universe may one day look like, to question the science behind the story, to learn, to read another story, to question, to learn. Read. Question. Learn. Those three steps work for everything in life. Never stop reading; never stop questioning; and never stop learning.
"To be human is to wonder."
February 10, 2023
Eh. I really wanted to like this book and some of the chapters are better than others. I suppose it's a decent physics 101 book, it gives you some history and key players, concepts and helpful diagrams. The poetry is left to the reader to determine because it is not plainly in sight. As an artist and something of a poet I find physics exciting and will look for more books for outsiders about it. I don't believe this book hit the spot and when I misplaced it for months I wasn't really missing it.
May 15, 2025
May 2025 Re-read Review:
March sidesteps two fundamental points made by Galaleo-Newton (the principle of inertia) and Einstein (gravity is not attractive and is not a force). Working with Galieleo’s formulation on inertia, Newton’s first law says that a body in motion or a body at rest stays in motion or at rest unless acted upon by another body. March focuses on Newton’s question - why is there deviation from straight-line motion or a state of rest? In doing so, the question of inertia’s origin gets lost. Is inertia created by the outward expansion of matter-energy from the big bang or supernova explosions, and does inertia shed clarity on gravity? And, despite Einstein’s reformulation, gravity as an attractive force persists in popular literature. Einstein sees gravity as a concentration of mass that draws space via spacetime lines toward or into a gravitational center. These lines are pathways that inertial bodies follow. In other words, a gravitational body doesn’t “pull.” Rather, it is a body’s inertial motion, itself, that supplies the movement.
March and others also see spacetime as a “fabric,” yet doesn’t that convey a wrong image? Fabric suggests a flat sheet with a depression in the middle by a large mass, and it is typically depicted that way. But isn't it more like a surrounding cloud from which matter-energy moves via its inertial properties toward the gravitational center? And, to take this a step further, doesn’t “fabric” suggest substance, i.e. spacetime consists of stuff, “matter-energy” that moves, inertially?
March says that the center of mass on a teeter totter is a balance point. He says the balance point is a product of “weight and distance,” which means that the effect of weight (concentration of mass) is diluted by distance, which is the inverse square law. So far, so good. But, in the discussion of the big bang, nothing is said about the effects of the inverse square law. As matter-energy moves outward, it dissipates as it moves further from the initial concentration of mass. In doing so, matter-energy becomes, progressively, less subject to gravity's effect per the inverse square law, i.e. the trajectory of spacetime changes from inward to outward (unless the big bang leaves a massive void behind as the explosion blows everything outward). As matter-energy moves outward in this scenario, would inertial matter-energy increase its speed because it is, again, progressively free of gravitational effects? And might it be this dynamic that accounts for the role of so-called dark energy’s expansive effects?
As a side note (not related to what March puts forward), can the center of mass as a balance point be explained by Einstein’s theory of general relativity? If spacetime, which consists of substance (gas and dust), moves toward a spherical (gravitational) center from all (spherical) directions, does it merge at a center point where the inertial forces of matter-energy converge from all directions and can move no more? Wouldn’t this be the effect of a singularity and where, to use March’s teeter-totter example, “the center of mass is a balance point?”
March says that it’s the addition of energy that creates kinetic mass (the mass of motion, not the rest mass of substance). Is this the correct way to explain what’s going on here? If light is massless, is it, simply, free to move without “weight” to slow it down? Seen this way, light is the ultimate inertial “body,” a massless photon that travels at the speed of light.
In the structure of the atom, Marsh refers to the attractive force directed toward the nucleus and “the mutual repulsion of electrons.” I don't know what either of these mean. If the electron is negative and the proton is positive, why wouldn’t they merge together, i.e. why is there space between the electron and the nucleus? And, if electrons are negative, why do they hang out together in the same “orbit” versus repelling each other?
Original Review: In this 1970 edition, March walks the lay reader through the transition of physics from Newton's classical theory about the behavior of macro phenomena to the micro world of 20th century quantum physics. A key aspect to this transition was the growing recognition and acceptance - though uncomfortable for many, including Einstein - that, ultimately, interactions in the physical world were not deterministic in a linear, physical contact or "action at a distance" (e.g. gravitational "pull"), cause-effect sort of way. Rather, at the quantum level, and at the foundation of all physical reality, interactions are probabilistic and indeterminate. While we can know possible or probable outcomes among subparticle phenomena, it is inherently impossible to understand location and momentum simultaneously.
March hints at his belief that macro (Newton, then Einstein's special and general theories of relativity) and micro (quantum) physics are not inconsistent, but others see these, to date, as two separate worlds. While we know that precise cause-effect relationships occur at the macro level, in March's argument for the virtues of quantum theory, he does not address how such relationships are connected to probabilistic relationships. Presumably, the argument for a probabilistic, quantum world does not mean strict casual relationships do not, in fact, exist in the macro world.
The book's title is not accurate. The book is for technically inclined poets.
March sidesteps two fundamental points made by Galaleo-Newton (the principle of inertia) and Einstein (gravity is not attractive and is not a force). Working with Galieleo’s formulation on inertia, Newton’s first law says that a body in motion or a body at rest stays in motion or at rest unless acted upon by another body. March focuses on Newton’s question - why is there deviation from straight-line motion or a state of rest? In doing so, the question of inertia’s origin gets lost. Is inertia created by the outward expansion of matter-energy from the big bang or supernova explosions, and does inertia shed clarity on gravity? And, despite Einstein’s reformulation, gravity as an attractive force persists in popular literature. Einstein sees gravity as a concentration of mass that draws space via spacetime lines toward or into a gravitational center. These lines are pathways that inertial bodies follow. In other words, a gravitational body doesn’t “pull.” Rather, it is a body’s inertial motion, itself, that supplies the movement.
March and others also see spacetime as a “fabric,” yet doesn’t that convey a wrong image? Fabric suggests a flat sheet with a depression in the middle by a large mass, and it is typically depicted that way. But isn't it more like a surrounding cloud from which matter-energy moves via its inertial properties toward the gravitational center? And, to take this a step further, doesn’t “fabric” suggest substance, i.e. spacetime consists of stuff, “matter-energy” that moves, inertially?
March says that the center of mass on a teeter totter is a balance point. He says the balance point is a product of “weight and distance,” which means that the effect of weight (concentration of mass) is diluted by distance, which is the inverse square law. So far, so good. But, in the discussion of the big bang, nothing is said about the effects of the inverse square law. As matter-energy moves outward, it dissipates as it moves further from the initial concentration of mass. In doing so, matter-energy becomes, progressively, less subject to gravity's effect per the inverse square law, i.e. the trajectory of spacetime changes from inward to outward (unless the big bang leaves a massive void behind as the explosion blows everything outward). As matter-energy moves outward in this scenario, would inertial matter-energy increase its speed because it is, again, progressively free of gravitational effects? And might it be this dynamic that accounts for the role of so-called dark energy’s expansive effects?
As a side note (not related to what March puts forward), can the center of mass as a balance point be explained by Einstein’s theory of general relativity? If spacetime, which consists of substance (gas and dust), moves toward a spherical (gravitational) center from all (spherical) directions, does it merge at a center point where the inertial forces of matter-energy converge from all directions and can move no more? Wouldn’t this be the effect of a singularity and where, to use March’s teeter-totter example, “the center of mass is a balance point?”
March says that it’s the addition of energy that creates kinetic mass (the mass of motion, not the rest mass of substance). Is this the correct way to explain what’s going on here? If light is massless, is it, simply, free to move without “weight” to slow it down? Seen this way, light is the ultimate inertial “body,” a massless photon that travels at the speed of light.
In the structure of the atom, Marsh refers to the attractive force directed toward the nucleus and “the mutual repulsion of electrons.” I don't know what either of these mean. If the electron is negative and the proton is positive, why wouldn’t they merge together, i.e. why is there space between the electron and the nucleus? And, if electrons are negative, why do they hang out together in the same “orbit” versus repelling each other?
Original Review: In this 1970 edition, March walks the lay reader through the transition of physics from Newton's classical theory about the behavior of macro phenomena to the micro world of 20th century quantum physics. A key aspect to this transition was the growing recognition and acceptance - though uncomfortable for many, including Einstein - that, ultimately, interactions in the physical world were not deterministic in a linear, physical contact or "action at a distance" (e.g. gravitational "pull"), cause-effect sort of way. Rather, at the quantum level, and at the foundation of all physical reality, interactions are probabilistic and indeterminate. While we can know possible or probable outcomes among subparticle phenomena, it is inherently impossible to understand location and momentum simultaneously.
March hints at his belief that macro (Newton, then Einstein's special and general theories of relativity) and micro (quantum) physics are not inconsistent, but others see these, to date, as two separate worlds. While we know that precise cause-effect relationships occur at the macro level, in March's argument for the virtues of quantum theory, he does not address how such relationships are connected to probabilistic relationships. Presumably, the argument for a probabilistic, quantum world does not mean strict casual relationships do not, in fact, exist in the macro world.
The book's title is not accurate. The book is for technically inclined poets.
March 31, 2022
I had this book as the textbook in high school physics. Years later I tracked down and bought a copy. The book teaches both physics and an appreciation of the pleasure of learning. The writing is fantastic. The math is understandable. The diagrams are perfect. This should be the only physics textbook to consider for high school students.
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January 11, 2020eestikeelne e-raamat: https://opik.fyysika.ee/index.php/boo...
March 3, 2020
Landau and Lifshitz wish they could write like this
February 5, 2022
Mi aspettavo qualcosa di più, a volte troppo difficile da comprendere, ma carino.
August 10, 2016
I think this book actually works really well as a popular science book, for those that want to learn about modern (i.e. quantum) physics but don't want the math in the way. It's a pretty good read.
But I'm trying to evaluate it as a textbook, because that's how it's conceived. The early chapters about mechanics, setting up the basics, aren't that great. They're heavy with biography, but not much else that's new. They just need to make some definitions.
Most of the book is about 1905 onward. Relativity (special and general) are first. He does a pretty good job with these ideas. Then on to quantum and particle physics. His explanations of these ideas are exemplary. Really great. You can tell that that's what he loves. Then there's an add-on chapter about cosmology and astronomy and it's, well, okay.
So a course based on this book would be in danger of being more of a history of science class than a real science class, more biography than ideas, in most areas except quantum and particle physics. But man, he does that part well. So the course would really be an "ideas of modern physics" course. That's not bad. But it's not as extensive as it's billed, and most importantly, it's not quite constructed well for that. He ended up with that focus, but I feel like he wasn't trying to do that. So it feels a little wrong. But not terrible. Mmph. It just could have been better.
But I'm trying to evaluate it as a textbook, because that's how it's conceived. The early chapters about mechanics, setting up the basics, aren't that great. They're heavy with biography, but not much else that's new. They just need to make some definitions.
Most of the book is about 1905 onward. Relativity (special and general) are first. He does a pretty good job with these ideas. Then on to quantum and particle physics. His explanations of these ideas are exemplary. Really great. You can tell that that's what he loves. Then there's an add-on chapter about cosmology and astronomy and it's, well, okay.
So a course based on this book would be in danger of being more of a history of science class than a real science class, more biography than ideas, in most areas except quantum and particle physics. But man, he does that part well. So the course would really be an "ideas of modern physics" course. That's not bad. But it's not as extensive as it's billed, and most importantly, it's not quite constructed well for that. He ended up with that focus, but I feel like he wasn't trying to do that. So it feels a little wrong. But not terrible. Mmph. It just could have been better.
January 23, 2017
Üsna söödavaks tehtud füüsika ka väga uduseid eelteadmisi omavale lugejale. Aga kuigi too lugeja võib küll füüsika asjus loll olla, ent igakülgselt loll olles see raamat teda ka targemaks ei tee. Sest ta ei saa midagi aru ega viitsi lugedagi =)
July 3, 2008
Historical account of classical, relativistic and quantum of physics. Very light on math, heavy on exrordinary experiments, discoveries, theories and biographies.
July 31, 2008
Quantum physics for people who can't do maths. A fun read which will twist your brain out of shape.
April 2, 2010
non-fiction. liked it. short chapters with diagrams that really pull in the visual learner. well better than that - how can you explain some things without the visual ?
Read
July 25, 2011This one took me a while.
Read
February 12, 2011Read this back in the early '80s while in college. Remember that I hadn't the damnedest idea what it was about. Will have to give it a re-read, just for Kicks. Penelope
May 1, 2020
Easy to read and it lays out the history of development of Physics is quite an adventure!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews