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[seekingferret]

48. The Secret Life of Quanta by M.Y. Han

Wow, this is a singularly unique pop science book, to my eyes. Most science writers these days write under the banner of this Brian Greene op-ed, believing that the right approach to accessible science writing is to steer clear of the math and focus on the "Wow moments", especially those provoked by the

Comments

[sanguinity]

:: The book's focus is on getting the reader to have a deep enough understanding of quantum mechanics to understand why a laser works, why an integrated circuit works, and why we think a high temperature superconductor works. ::

Yay! Oh, please let the library have this!

And I'm as interested in how he handles the math as in the physics itself: all the math I've used in quantum applications was four-dimensional, which is hard to make accessible.

:: ...even if it proves undescriptive, mathematicians may find value in the work done by superstring theorists. ::

Bwahahahaha! I'm sorry, I should be more sympathetic, but-- Bwahahahaha!

For years now, I've been wondering how, exactly, string theory is considered physics. Because what they seem to be doing is what mathematicians do: "Oh, these theoretical constructs are so pretty! Let me poke at it more, and see what other pretty falls out!" Which, yanno, is what people are expecting you to do, if they're funding your mathematical research, so that's okay. (Well, it depends on who's

[seekingferret]

Ha, yeah... I mean, yes, it's funny because it's so ridiculous, but it's also kind of frustrating, or am I alone in this?

How can you write a text on contemporary physics for a broad lay audience and say something like Kaku's description of the SM? It's a total contempt for important, workmanlike science that actually advances our understanding of the world but isn't attractive mathematically. It's a desperate and pathetic attempt to invent the next paradigm shift before we have actual empirical results to underpin it, to wish the universe they want into existence.

Based on my understanding of where your interests lie, I think you'll probably find the math in the Han book a bit boring and simple, but I think you'll enjoy the book anyway. It's so hard to find books like that. The chapter on transistors was my favorite.

[sanguinity]

:: It's a total contempt for important, workmanlike science that actually advances our understanding of the world but isn't attractive mathematically. ::

I'm from a theoretical math background. I've spent loads of time around departments full of people who feel that contempt, and yet science is still proceeding somehow. That a nominal physicist is showing that contempt is new and amusing to me, but I have faith that someone, somewhere, will be taking up the important, workmanlike, practical advances, because humans tend to be like that. Part of the experience I'm drawing on, mind you, is the way that mathematics has splintered and resplintered because someones felt the need to do something unrespectably practical and workmanlike. So even though physics has been dinking around with string theory for a good long while now, I am confident still that the breakthrough will happen -- it just may not be the physics department that gets credit this go around

[seekingferret]

it just may not be the physics department that gets credit this go around.

I know my science history. It will be the physics department that gets credit. Remember, a meteorologist discovered chaos theory, but people forget that and think of it as a physics breakthrough because the physicists, when they finally clued in, piled on.

And part of my experience is the number of my agemates who grew up with popular science writing/communication built around string theory and the "ooh, pretty" mindset I spoke about in my original post, and I've seen these people become disillusioned in grad school when they realized that research was actually hard work with little immediate reward and little in the way of "ooh pretty". And I've seen people who would have made important contributions to science driven away because it wasn't what they were promised when they were growing up.