Putting The Fizz Into Physics

by Andrew Chugg

This effervescent volume is aimed at those naturally curious students, who are blessed with such enquiring minds that they delight in delving into things a little bit deeper than the norm. It presents a collection of six articles by the author, which first appeared in Physics Review, a UK magazine targeted at high school physics students. Each of these articles was subjected to rigorous review and was approved by an expert editorial board and advisory panel prior to its original publication. The members of the panel included Professor Stephen Hawking and Professor Sir Hermann Bondi.
The subjects for these articles were specially chosen to add breadth to the high school physics curriculum by straying a little outside its conventional bounds. Equally, they have been presented so as to illustrate how the principles taught by physics can be applied to technical and technological topics to gain a deeper comprehension of the way the world works. In short, these articles aim to imbue the mental carbonation, so as to put the fizz into physics for students of all ages and backgrounds.
The specific topics treated
1)A Brief History of Gravity – describing the origins of physics in the realm of astronomy and how the greatest physicists in history brought gravity down to Earth and ended up warping space and time in the process.
2)Of Time and Tides – explaining how the ebb and flow of tides on the beach has extra-terrestrial origins and how the same forces are causing the Earth and the Moon to drift apart and are exploding volcanoes on a satellite of Jupiter and once created Saturn’s spectacular rings.
3)Planetary Radiation Belts – illustrating how the simplicity of the force exerted on a charged particle by a magnetic field gives rise to exotic trajectories for radiation particles that become trapped in the magnetic fields surrounding some planets including our own.
4)The Physics of Nuclear Weapons – looking at the basic principles of creating nuclear explosions that are now in the public domain and showing that high school physics is sufficient to gain a good appreciation of how these weapons work.
5)Stereograms and Magic Vision – showing that 3D (stereoscopic) vision works in a way rather different than is commonly supposed and how its principles can be used to hide 3D images in 2D patterns.
6)Paradoxes – demonstrating the importance of arguments and inferences that appear to lead to contradictions in progressing our understanding of the world.
The book is copiously illustrated with 55 figures and original diagrams.

Kindle Edition

Published August 13, 2014

About the author

Andrew's researches and writings are largely focussed upon the career and exploits of Alexander the Great, both in life and in the context of his equally remarkable adventures in death, through the quest for his lost tomb. See also his websites at www.alexanderstomb.com and www.alexanderslovers.com for videos, photos, news and his huge collection of antique engravings and maps.

Andrew has been actively researching the history of Alexander's tomb since 1998, including visits to Alexandria and Saqqara in Egypt. He has had academic articles on the subject published in the classics journal Greece & Rome and in the American Journal of Ancient History and he is the author of The Lost Tomb of Alexander the Great, published in London by Periplus in November 2004. He has also written pieces on the hunt for the tomb for Minerva, History Today and other magazines. In September 2006 he addressed the Eroi conference in the University of Padua on the subject of Alexander's tomb. Various new theories on the locations and appearances of Alexander's several tombs have emerged from his work. In particular, Andrew's novel theory that the Alexandrians might have given Alexander's corpse a new identity as the remains of St Mark the Evangelist, when the emperor Theodosius outlawed paganism in AD391, attracted international press attention in 2004.

Andrew's latest book on the history of Alexander's adventures in the afterlife, The Quest for the tomb of Alexander the Great, appeared at the end of 2007. It incorporates significant extensions of his theories, including a chapter on a section of a sculptural relief from a Macedonian tomb of royal importance dating to about the 3rd century BC and found embedded in the foundations of the main apse of the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. This is a comment from an Amazon reviewer: "I just finished this book deep into last night, and it did not want to leave my hands... The book will command your full attention -- no eating cookies or watching TV while reading... Chugg makes the book read like a fascinating, grandly presented detective study... The author admits early in the work that his quest is 'to enthrall readers with fresh revelations.' He indeed does that, covering highly complex materials with confidence and ease... The author and his book will most certainly keep Alexandria and its Founder's tomb on the front page of newspapers for years to come."

Andrew has also appeared in National Geographic television documentaries on Alexander and his tomb, including Beyond the Movie: Alexander the Great in 2004 and Alexander's Lost Tomb in 2008, the latter being shot on location in Alexandria, Egypt (also broadcast on Channel 5 in the UK). More recently, Andrew appeared in the Alexander the Great episode of National Geographic's Mystery Files series, which concentrated on the enigma of Alexander's tomb.

Andrew has also extensively researched Alexander's death with an article in Minerva in September 2004 and an academic paper on The Journal of Alexander the Great in the Ancient History Bulletin. In April 2006 he published a book on Alexander's Lovers, an examination of the king's personality through the mirror of the lives of the people with whom he pursued romantic relationships. One Amazon reviewer has written: "At first glance anyone interested in Alexander the great might dismiss this book as just another cash in on the Alexander legend presented with an irrelevant modern bias; that would be a mistake, as this is the most impressive and informative book on Alexander I have read in a long time."

Andrew's most recent project is an ambitious and far-reaching attempt to reconstruct the lost text of the most influential of all the ancient accounts of Alexander's career: the History Concerning Alexander by Cleitarchus of Alexandria. Andrew's painstaking detective work has unmasked Cleitarchus as the perpetrator of the most elaborate and potent account of Alexander the Great by progressively reconst