First You Build a Cloud First You Build a Cloud

First You Build a Cloud

And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life

    • $9.99
    • $9.99

Publisher Description

This clearly written and compelling look at physics and physicists offers “thousands of new ways to see our daily world more richly” (Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach).
 
For many of us, physics has always been a thing of mystery and complexity. K. C. Cole, an award-winning science writer, specializes in making its wonders accessible to the everyday reader.
 
This book uses lively prose, metaphors, and anecdotes to allow us to comprehend the nuances of physics: gravity and light, color and shape, quarks and quasars, particles and stars, force and strength. It also shows us how the physical world is so deeply intertwined with the ways we think about culture, poetry, and philosophy, and explores the workings of such legendary scientific minds as Richard Feynman, Victor Weisskopf, brothers Frank Oppenheimer and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Philip Morrison, Vera Kistiakowsky, and Stephen Jay Gould.
 
“An exemplary science writer . . . For readers without scientific background, Cole gracefully introduces relativity, quantum theory, optics, astrophysics, and other significant disciplines, never getting bogged down in unnecessary explanation. Thus, you may not learn all about thermodynamics from reading her chapter on it, but you will learn enough to think seriously about the entropy in your own life. Cole sprinkles her text with comments from famous scientists—‘Space is blue, and birds fly in it,’ said Heisenberg, and Faraday said, ‘Nothing is too wonderful to be true’—that are not only delightful in themselves but perfectly suited to her own text. No review of Cole’s book could be too wonderful to be true.” —Booklist 

GENRE
Science & Nature
RELEASED
2012
July 18
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
240
Pages
PUBLISHER
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
SELLER
OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC
SIZE
4.4
MB
Mind Over Matter Mind Over Matter
2004
Waves in an Impossible Sea Waves in an Impossible Sea
2024
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
2016
The Island of Knowledge The Island of Knowledge
2014
The Edge of Knowledge The Edge of Knowledge
2023
The Fabric of the Cosmos The Fabric of the Cosmos
2004
The Universe and the Teacup The Universe and the Teacup
1998
The Hole in the Universe The Hole in the Universe
2012
Mind Over Matter Mind Over Matter
2004
Gravity's Century Gravity's Century
2019
Seeing Science Seeing Science
2018
13.8 13.8
2016
We Are All Stardust We Are All Stardust
2015
Science and the Modern World Science and the Modern World
2021
Void Void
2016