A New Understanding of the Atom

Science & Discovery

by John T. Sanders, Pat Childs (Producer), Edwin Newman (Reader)

Einstein overthrew Newtonian physics but like Newton he still believed that physical events have definite causes. Then Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, joined others in describing a strange new world of uncertainty and mystery. Quantum mechanics has intrigued and confounded many by joining keen insights with apparent contradictions and indeterminacy. Quantum theory also was later used to create semiconductors, the technology of the computer revolution. The Science and Discovery Series recreates one of history's most successful journeys--four thousand years of scientific efforts to better understand and control the physical world. Science has often challenged and upset conventional wisdom or accepted practices; this is a story of vested interests and independent thinkers, experiments and theories, change and progress. Aristotle, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and many others are featured.

Genres: Science, History, Audiobook, Physics

Audio CD

First published April 15, 2006

Reviews

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was reasonably happy with this summary of the h1story of science and the atom until they tried to explain the Heisenberg uncertainty principle near the end of the audiobook.

FYI, on Star Trek whenever the "Heisenberg compensators" go down, they are talking about a fictional device that fixes or compensates for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. I find it funny when Star Trek script writers do that. It shows that they don't understand the consequences of the principle.

I barely understand the Heisenberg uncertainty principle from a layperson's perspective. It is more that simply saying that any measurement you make on a sub-atomic particle will disturb it sufficiently that your measurements of the other parameters will be off. No. As I understand it, when one measures one of a certain number of properties the other properties change not because you disturbed them. They are doing something else freakishly weird that I cannot explain, but had demonstrated to me in various books, over and over again. So, if the writers of this audiobook couldn't explain it properly, they should have simply said so.

For better explanation of how weird this stuff is, I recommend reading "Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time—and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything" by George Musser.

The book finally ended with Bell Theorem for which I was glad they mentioned, but didn't explain it any better probably because there simply wasn't enough time. I suppose they left these things as an exercise for the reader.

I'm not sure if I will return to this audiobook.

[Aditya Sundararajan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent watered down summary of the discourses and breakthroughs in modeling the atom. For a work on technical matter, I spotted a few errors. One that stuck out was stating that the "atomic weight of Uranium is 92."

[Arvind Sethuraman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good concise book which describes the quantum mechanics understanding of the atom as envisioned and interpreted by Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli et al.