Physics over easy breakfasts with Beth and physics - Azároff, Leonid V. (World Scientific, 1996)
Cover -- Contents -- Introduction: What Keeps Us Going? -- Physicists, and Other People -- Breakfast One: Hard-Boiled Eggs with Inertia -- How It All Began -- with Rolling Balls -- Breakfast Two: Eggs Bene-Bricked -- What Keeps the Ball Rolling? -- Breakfast Three: Apple-Gravity Pancakes -- Why Does an Apple Fall From a Tree? -- Breakfast Four: Cereal and Calories -- But It Takes Energy to Keep Moving -- Breakfast Five: Hot Cakes with Energy -- How Hot is It? -- Putting Heat to Work -- Breakfast Six: French Toast -- First Law: You Cant Win -- Second Law: Nor Can You Break Even -- Breakfast Seven: Cold Cuts -- Go Fly a Kite! -- Storing Electicity -- Breakfast Eight: Blueberry Muffins -- Electricity in Matter -- a.c./d.c. -- Breakfast Nine: Apple Fritters and Love -- Magnetic Forces -- Magnetic Fields -- What Maxwell Wrought -- Breakfast Ten: Eggs and Crisp Bacon -- Making Waves -- What Waves Can Do -- Breakfast Eleven: Oat Meal with Light Cream -- What is Light? -- How and What We See -- Its a Colorful World! -- Breakfast Twelve: Lox And Bagels -- Whats the Speed of Light? -- Is it Really Relative? -- The Paradoxes of Relativity and Black Holes -- Breakfast Thirteen: Farina -- Does Anyone Believe in Quanta? -- What About Atoms? -- Breakfast Fourteen: Danish Pastry -- Whats a Wave Function? -- Born and Heisenberg Have the Answer -- Breakfast Fifteen: Waffles -- Atoms Can Be Fun -- What Attracts Atoms to Each Other? -- Breakfast Sixteen: 0. J., Donuts, and Coffee -- Surrounded by Fluids -- We Depend on Solids -- Breakfast Seventeen: Rice Krispies -- Whos Afraid of Radioactivity? -- Whats Inside the Nucleus? -- For Better or For Worse -- Nuclear Energy -- Our Nuclear Legacy -- Breakfast Eighteen: 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 -- Whats Left? -- Glossary of Physics Terms -- Acknowledgments
In easy-to-follow conversational language, this book reveals the mysteries of physics and tells about the physicists who made it possible, from the discovery of the laws of gravity by Isaac Newton and the construction of the first electric battery by Alessandro Volta, to the present century's development of solid-state electronics, nuclear arms and nuclear reactors, lasers, etc. The evolution of physics during four centuries is related in sixteen conversations that actually took place between the author, a professor of physics, and his wife, an intelligent listener not familiar with the subjec