Cosmic Numbers
The Numbers That Define Our Universe
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- US$10.99
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Our fascination with numbers begins when we are children and continues throughout our lives. We start counting our fingers and toes and end up balancing checkbooks and calculating risk. So powerful is the appeal of numbers that many people ascribe to them a mystical significance. Other numbers go beyond the supernatural, working to explain our universe and how it behaves.
Cosmic Numbers, mathematics professor James D. Stein traces the discovery, evolution, and interrelationships of the numbers that define our world. Everyone knows about the speed of light and absolute zero, but numbers like Boltzmann's constant and the Chandrasekhar limit are not as well known, and they do far more than one might imagine: They tell us how this world began and what the future holds. Much more than a gee-whiz collection of facts and figures, Cosmic Numbers illuminates why particular numbers are so important -- both to the scientist and to the rest of us.
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Cal State professor Stein's "history by the numbers" breathes warm, surprising life into the constants that define the shape, breadth, and scope of our lives and our universe. The stories behind the measurement of scientific values like the speed of light and absolute zero are the history of modern science itself. Each value is a stepping stone to the next: Henry Cavendish's ingenious experiment to reveal the universal gravitational constant led to chemist Robert Boyle's painstaking work, which defined the "Ideal Gas Constant." The speed of light wasn't nailed down until Albert Michelson improved an older, flawed experiment. Later numbers reach deeper into the atom and farther from Earth, like Planck's constant, part of the foundation of quantum theory, which paved the way for understanding nuclear fusion and stellar life cycles. Some numbers we still don't know for certain, like the number called Omega, whose value will determine the eventual fate of our universe. Stein (How Math Can Save Your Life) expertly weaves together math, history, and biography into a thoroughly entertaining story of hard work and discovery.
