During a sequence of meals, the author relates the principal features of physics in easy-to-understand conversations with his wife Beth. Beginning with the studies of motion by Galileo and Newton through to the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics in the 20th century, all important aspects of electricity, energy, magnetism, gravity and the structure of matter and atoms are explained and illustrated.The second edition similarly recounts the more recent application of these theories to nanoparticles, Bose–Einstein condensates, quantum entanglement and quantum computers. By including accurate measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background and supernovae in near and distant galaxies, an understanding of how the universe was formed in an Inflationary Big Bang is now possible. We've also gained a much better picture of the life of stars and how they may turn into red giants, white dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars or pulsars.
What keeps us going? - physicists, and other people; breakfasts - hard
boiled eggs with inertia - how it all began with rolling balls; eggs
bene-bricked - what keeps the ball rolling?; apple-gravity pancakes - why
does an apple fall from a tree?; cereal and calories - but it takes energy to
keep moving; hot cakes with energy - how hot is it?, putting heat to work;
french toast - you can't win, nor can you break even; cold cuts - go fly a
kite, storing electricity; blueberry muffins - electricity in matter, ac/dc;
apple fritters and love - magnetic forces, magnetic fields, what Maxwell
wrought; eggs and crisp bacon - making waves, what waves can do; oat meal
with light cream - what is light?, how and what we see, it's a colourful
world; lox and bagels - what's the speed of light?, is it really relative?,
the paradoxes of relativity and black holes; farina - does anyone believe in
quanta?, what about atoms?, what is a wave function?, Born and Heisenberg
have the answer; waffles - atoms can be fun, what attracts atoms to each
other?, surrounded by fluids, we depend on solids; rice crispies - who's
afraid of radioactivity?, what's inside the nucleus?, for better or for worse
- nuclear energy, our nuclear legacy; corn fritters - a mess of particles,
what, more conservation laws?, quarks and more quarks, the GUTS of physics;
epilogue - what lies ahead? - searching for a beginning, symmetry and chaos,
what's left?.
