Energy, the Subtle Concept: The discovery of Feynman's blocks from Leibniz to Einstein

by Jennifer Coopersmith

Energy is at the heart of physics and of huge importance to society and yet no book exists specifically to explain it, and in simple terms. In tracking the history of energy, this book is filled with the thrill of the chase, the mystery of smoke and mirrors, and presents a fascinating human-interest story. Moreover, following the history provides a crucial aid to understanding: this book explains the intellectual revolutions required to comprehend energy, revolutions as profound as those stemming from Relativity and Quantum Theory. Texts by Descartes, Leibniz, Bernoulli, d'Alembert, Lagrange, Hamilton, Boltzmann, Clausius, Carnot and others are made accessible, and the engines of Watt and Joule are explained.

Many fascinating questions are covered, including:
*Why just kinetic and potential energies - is one more fundamental than the other?
*What are heat, temperature and action?
*What is the Hamiltonian?
*What have engines to do with physics?
*Why did the steam-engine evolve only in England?
*Why S=klogW works and why temperature is IT.

Using only a minimum of mathematics, this book explains the emergence of the modern concept of energy, in all its forms: Hamilton's mechanics and how it shaped twentieth-century physics, and the meaning of kinetic energy, potential energy, temperature, action, and entropy. It is as much an explanation of fundamental physics as a history of the fascinating discoveries that lie behind our knowledge today.

Genres: Physics, Science, History, Nonfiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2010

About the author

Jennifer Coopersmith took her PhD in nuclear physics from the University of London, and was later a research fellow at TRIUMF, University of British Columbia. She was for many years an associate lecturer for the Open University (London and Oxford) honing her skills at answering those 'damn-fool profound and difficult questions' that students ask.

Reviews

[Bob Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable journey through the history and philosophy of discovering energy. Such a simple-sounding concept, Coopersmith provides a complex and sometimes convoluted narrative to match the complexity buried in that multifaceted term. The author mixes biographical sketches of many key players, some of whom have faded from history's light, all of whom changed, in some fashion, the way we look at the world. The book traces a remarkable journey towards our modern understanding of what we -- that is physicists -- mean when we say "energy" and why it matters. The book is not a quick read, and can demand a lot from a casual reader of history of science. It can sometimes feel uneven, at times assuming basic understanding of mathematical concepts, while at others explaining even rudimentary notations (even after having first used them in the text many pages prior). Highly annotated, Coopersmith provides ample access to her sources, though many of her endnotes seem crucial to fully understanding the text, and so seem at times misplaced at the back of the book. Overall, an excellent contribution to the history of science. I am already planning to read her next book, "The Lazy Universe".

[Jalaluddin Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent explanation of energy! Strongly recommended. This work is full of surprises. It makes one think about energy in a new way, putting together everything available about the subject in one book historically. Does not contain a lot of math/equations but enough to get you started on a topic. Loved the notes and references as it is exhaustive. Strongly recommended at the undergraduate/graduate level!

[James Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, good writing, great pace, and the author is deft with intuitive descriptions of physical and mathematical concepts. It is not dry history by any means, and it also isn't too distilled so as to not unfold some of the important depths of understanding and human insight.

[Noah Clanton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just really dense for my taste, very good overview of the history though

[Nickdepenpan123 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an odd book, I struggle what to make of it. It had me with the acknowledgement and the first pages of the introduction, I liked the staccato, non-flowery, no-nonsense sentences, I thought that the book will be down to earth, matter of fact, and very informative. It then starts racing through the history of science (Aristotle, Galileo, etc), and the confusion begins. Graphs of experiments are included that are given no explanation in the text (apart from one sentence), and there's no way to understand the scientific developments in general. The book doesn't aim to provide biographical background either, except for random asides like X being an early riser or Y's troubles with the church. Not that I'm a fan of biographical stuff in science books (in fact, I dislike how they dilute the science), but I appreciate some consistency, either skip them completely or include them properly. Most of the discussion is on paradigm shifts, using occasionally somewhat idiosyncratic words to describe eras/mentalities/concepts (I don't mean scientific, technical language, although perhaps it's jargon among academics in philosophy or history of science? I don't know). Anyway, these parts don't help, and again, this approach inevitably takes for granted a lot of the actual science.

I stuck through it. The parts on the early history of science are often cursory and rushed in most books (and perhaps kind of obligatory, as most of the interesting and complicated developments are quite modern) but ten, twenty, thirty, fifty pages later, and it was obvious that the book wasn't racing to reach a point where the interesting stuff begins (with proper explanations and analyses), but that was just the style of the writing.

At the end, as another negative reviewer wrote, the book fails as a popular science (most of the content is incomprehensible unless one is already familiar with the issues) and it fails as an academic or scholarly work (too general, basic and meandering).

[Alexia M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel sorry for this book. The premise is great: write a history book on the discovery of the equations behind energy. The execution, sadly, didn't get the editor it deserved. There are long passages of high-bureaucratese straight out of a university setting, followed by short tidbits on physicists' or chemists' lives. Every once in a while, a concept will be described clearly, but those passages are few and relatively short, about once every 60 pages.

It wasn't clear who the intended audience was supposed to be. Was it for fellow university researchers? First year university students? The general public? History enthusiasts? The writing tried to be everything for everyone and couldn't get a handle on any of them.

In these situations, I always wonder whether the editor wasn't allowed to edit due to the prominence of the researcher involved or whether the researcher was fine with the editor, but the editor wasn't doing their job :( It's also possible that there *was* no editor involved, or that the author did their own editing. Or that they subcontracted the editing out to an online team at the lowest price possible. Who knows what really happened here. The result is disappointing.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways a book I wanted to write. After tripping over the relevant history in preparing a lecture. I thought it would expand out nicely to a book. Yet even at 300-odd pages, this is more of an overview: the number of twists and turns in the history of classical mechanics is amazing. Every couple of pages I was feeling the need to bookmark and review other sources for in-depth physics or history . That's not a strike against the book: it's highly readable, clear, funny, and does a great job of teasing order out of a very messy development.