OER Lecture Materials - So Far They Don't Impress Me Much!

I mentioned a while back that the dept. is migrating to using Open Educational Resources (OER) texts this coming Fall. I'm all for it because the texts are quite reasonable and it will save the students a lot of money when their textbooks are free.

I'll be teaching two different courses that use to different OER texts out of OpenStax. I'm so freaking glad that I looked at the so-called lecture materials that accompanied each of these texts early this month because I would have been in a panic mode if I were to start preparing just 2 weeks before classes start! This is because the PowerPoint lecture materials are nothing more than a collection of the figures from the texts. That's it!

My first reaction when I first opened them was "What the......?"

Then blood drained from my face because I realized that I had to produce the lecture notes from scratch for both classes! And I had 3 weeks to do that!

Now you could tell me that I can just copy the lecture presentations from the same course that I had taught previously. True, but I want to stick with the content of the texts that the students will be using, especially in going over the same examples, using the same notations and format, etc. I want to use the same symbols for the various quantities that we will be using, so that the lecture presentation is consistent with the text. So I can't just copy old lecture notes verbatim, and I certain have to change the examples to match the examples in the text.

But even that is not that easy. My PowerPoint presentations often have links, animation, and other interactive stuff that are specific to that text and course. We were using Pearson's Mastering Physics, and I used quite a number of their videos to illustrate various physics principles. I can't use that anymore because those are copyrighted to Pearson and to be used only with their material. This means that I have to redo the animation and find new videos to include in the lecture presentation.

I did a Google search online to see if there are lecture notes using these two textbooks. There are, but all the ones that I have encountered so far are in PDF, meaning that I could not modify them to suit my needs.

Ugh! This semester is going to be a nightmare! I hate not already be prepared by this time!

This is why you haven't seen a lot of blog posts from me these past few weeks. Sigh....

Zz.

The Migration to OER

For the past couple of years, the school has been pushing various departments to start adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) for various courses to help reduce educational costs to students. It has finally trickled down to our department where, starting this coming Fall, the General Physics courses will start using OER texts for the first time.

I have zero problem with doing this. I remember when I was a student, textbooks were hugely expensive. Adopting OER texts for General Physics courses will save students quite a chunk of change, especially if they, or their parents, are footing the costs.

The only issue I have is that, using texts from various publishers doesn't stop just at the textbook itself. I've been using Pearson and Cengage for General Physics texts, and they come with their online services consisting of the e-text and homework/quizzes capabilities.

But even that does not convey everything. Both Cengage and Pearson's website offers rather substantial student support that I have made used of, especially when we went remote. When I assign homework on Pearson's Mastering website, for example, I often select one or two "tutorial" items. These are questions in which, if the students are stuck, there are guided hints and prompts to help students overcome the barrier or difficulty at that stage. I find these types of tutorial very useful for the students and often had the students attempt one of them during class session.

The other thing that I find useful is the "adaptive learning" feature. I can set it up so that if a student struggled with one problem and finally thinks that he/she understood how to solve it, it will prompt the student to solve a similar problem to that one to see if the understanding can be nailed down. The student then has the chance to really test his/her understanding in solving the similar problem, and I can see for certain of the student's progress.

Unfortunately, none of these extensive feature are available in any of the OER sources. These features were extremely useful during remote learning where I'm not there to help the students in person. Yet, these features gave real-time feedback on how the students are doing and assisting the students in solving the problem, all done automatically without needing my intervention. These are what I will miss when I start using OER texts because so far, from what I can see, they only provide the text and maybe a set of homework questions, and that's it. It is no different than the old-fashioned way when I was in college, except that these are in electronic form.

It is still months away from the start of the Fall semester, but I'm already thinking and planning ahead on how to approach this. We will definitely be back to in-person instructions, so maybe the need for all the bells and whistles of online capabilities might not be as great as it is now. Still, I'm anticipating a few hiccups as I dive into a new set of challenges in running a class.

Stay tuned....

Zz.

Is Theoretical Physics Wasting Our Best Minds?

Before you continue reading this, let me be very clear right off the bat that there are TWO separate issues here that I will be discussing, and they are thinly connected simply by the over-general reference of "theoretical physics" made by the author of the article that I will be citing.

In this Forbes article, Ethan Siegel highlights the main point made by Sabine Hossenfelder in her book "Lost In Math". Siegel not only pointed this out, but also did an in-depth description leading up to the "naturalness" philosophy that is prevalent in the esoteric fields of physics such as string, etc.

If you are a theoretical particle physicist, a string theorist, or a phenomenologist — particularly if you suffer from cognitive dissonance — you will not like this book. If you are a true believer in naturalness as the guiding light of theoretical physics, this book will irritate you tremendously. But if you're someone who isn't afraid to ask that big question of "are we doing it all wrong," the answer might be a big, uncomfortable "yes." Those of us who are intellectually honest physicists have been living with this discomfort for many decades now. In Sabine's book, Lost In Math, this discomfort is now made accessible to the rest of us.

Certainly this is thought-provoking, and it isn't something I disagree about. For science to give up on empirical evidence, and simply pursue something that looks "natural" or "beautiful" is dangerous and verging on being a religion. So my feelings are consistent with what has been said in the article.

Now comes the other part of the issue. It has always been my pet peeve when someone over-generalize physics as being predominantly being "high-energy physics, astrophysics, string theory, etc...", i.e. the esoteric fields of study. In this case, "theoretical physics" certainly is NOT dominated by those fields. There are theoretical studies in condensed matter physics, atomic/molecular physics, medical physics, accelerator physics, etc... etc., i.e. fields of studies that are certainly not esoteric, have lots of practical applications, etc.

In fact, I would argue that the esoteric fields of physics represents the MINORITY in terms of the number of practicing physicists that we have around the world. As a zeroth-order approximation of this claim, I decided to look at the members of the APS. The APS Divisions correspond to the number of members who declared themselves to be in a certain field within physics. Note that not all members made the declaration, and it is also not uncommon for a member to declare more than one division.

First of all, 79% of APS members are accounted for in this chart for the 2018 membership. Now, what is the percentage of members within the so-called esoteric fields of Astrophysics, Gravitation, and Particles and Fields? 14.9%. Even if you include Nuclear Physics into this, it will come up to 19.8%

Now, forget about theoretical or experimental. Can 19.8% represents ALL of physics? The fields of studies that a lot of people associate physics with are done by ONLY 19.8% of physicists! Using them, one will get a severely inaccurate representation of physics and physicists.

In fact, if you look at the fields more commonly associated with the physics of materials (condensed matter physics and Materials Physics), we get 18.2%, almost as big as Astrophysics, Gravitation, Particles and Fields, and Nuclear Physics combined! Condensed matter physics alone dwarfs other fields, being almost twice as big as the next division, which is Particles and Fields.

But what is more important here is that outside of the 19.8% of physicists in these esoteric fields, an overwhelming percentage of physicists (59.2%) are in fields of studies that are associated with practical applications of physics. So if you were to bump randomly into a physicist, chances are, you will find someone who works in a field related to something of practical importance and NOT a high-energy physicist, a nuclear physicist, etc.

This is my round-about way of complaining that Ethan Siegel article should not be a damnation of "theoretical physics" in general, because the overwhelming percentage of theoretical physics is NOT about these esoteric topics that have been mentioned in his article. Rather, theories in other parts of physics rely very heavily on empirical observations and verification, i.e. the good and tested way of doing science. In those areas, we are definitely NOT wasting our best minds!

A while back, I said that physics is not just the LHC. It is also your iPhone. Even that requires modification. We should say that physics is predominantly your iPhone, with only a smidgen of LHC added as garnishing. That is a more accurate representation of the field as a whole.

Zz.

Reviews of "The Quantum Labyrinth"

Paul Halpern's story of "when Feynman met Wheeler" in his book "The Quantum Labyrinth" has two interesting reviews that you can read (here and here). In the history of physics and human civilization, the meeting of the minds of these two giants in the world of physics must be rank up there with other partnerships, such as Lennon and McCartney, Hewlett and Packard, peanut butter and jelly, etc....

I have not read the book yet, and probably won't get to it till some time next year. But if you have read it, I'd like to hear what you think of it.

Zz.

10 Years Of Not Even Wrong

Physics World has a provocative article and podcast to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Peter Woit's devastating criticism of String Theory in his book "Not Even Wrong".

Not Even Wrong coincided with the publication of another book – The Trouble with Physics – that had a similar theme and tone, penned by Woit’s friend and renowned physicist Lee Smolin. Together, the two books put the theory and its practitioners under a critical spotlight and took string theory’s supposed inadequacies to task. The books sparked a sensation both in the string-theory community and in the wider media, which until then had heard only glowing reports of the theory’s successes. 

Interestingly enough, the few students that I've encountered who told me that they want to go into String Theory have never heard or were not aware of Woit's book. I can understand NOT WANTING to read it, but to not even be aware of it and what it is about sounds rather .... naive. This is a prominent physicist who produced a series of undeniable criticism of a particular field of study that you want to go into. Not only should you be aware of it, but you need to read it and figure it out.

It is still a great book to read even if it is 10 years old now.

Zz.

Simple Physics?

I'm all for explaining things in simple terms that the general public can understand. I do that frequently, especially when I'm doing an outreach project or hosting visitors to the facility.

So when I read a review of this book, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff In Simple Words by Randall Munroe, it sounds like something that can be recommended to a lot of people who are curious about how various things around them work.

However, this author, and the reviewer of this book, fall into the same cliche trap that is one of my pet peeve.

There’s a nice quote attributed to the physicist Ernest Rutherford (or is it Einstein?): “If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid, it is probably not very good physics.” There are variations of the theme, such as, “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother”. In essence, keep it as simple as possible.

I had already addressed the fallacy of this statement (and yes, I am challenging Rutherford or Einstein if they actually said such a silly thing). I have plenty of evidence to point to the contrary. I wish people who keep repeating this would actually read my counter point, but hey, what are the odds?

Zz.

Review of Leonard Mlodinow's "Upright Tinkers"

This is a review of physicist's Leonard Mlodinow's new book "Upright Tinkers: : The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos."

In it, he debunks the myths about famous scientists and how major discoveries and ideas came about.

With it, he hopes to correct the record on a number of counts. For instance, in order to hash out his theory of evolution, Darwin spent years post-Galapagos shifting through research and churning out nearly 700 pages on barnacles before his big idea began to emerge. Rather than divine inspiration, Mlodinow says, achieving real innovation takes true grit, and a willingness to court failure, a lesson we’d all be wise to heed.

“People use science in their daily lives all the time whether or not its what we think of as ‘science,’” he continues. “Data comes in that you have to understand. Life’s not simple. It require patience to solve problems, and I think science can teach you that if you know what it really is.”

Scientists would agree. Recently, psychologist Angela Duckworth has begun overturning fundamental conventional wisdom about the role intelligence plays in our life trajectories with research illustrating that, no matter the arena, it’s often not the smartest kids in the room who become the most successful; it’s the most determined ones.

As I've said many times on here, there is a lot of value in learning science, even for non-scientists, IF there is a conscious effort to reveal and convey the process of analytic, systematic thinking. We all live in a world where we try to find correlations among many things, and then try to figure out the cause-and-effect. This is the only way we make sense of our surrounding, and how we acquire knowledge of things. Science allows us to teach this skill to students, and letting them be aware of how we consider something to be valid.

This is what is sadly lacking today, especially in the world of politics and social policies.

Zz.

Feynman Lectures

This news was posted only yesterday, regarding the availability of Feynman Lectures online for free. However, if you have followed this blog, I announced this availability almost a year ago! Mike Gottlieb announced this on Physics Forums way back then when he started the project. I posted the latest update on the project from him also on this blog.

So there, you are ahead of the curve! :)

Zz.

"An Engineering Guide To Photoinjectors"

How would you like to own a 335-page book on the physics and engineering of electron photoinjectors? For free!

That is what you will get if you click on the link. If you are ever interested in electron accelerators, especially at the "birthing" end where the electrons are generated and given the initial acceleration, this is the review book to get. It explores not only the engineering aspect of the photoinjectors, but also the physics of photocathodes, and what makes a good photocathode for accelerator applications.

Highly recommended.

Zz.

"Introduction to superfluidity -- Field-theoretical approach and applications"

A very useful book chapter on superfluids if you are so inclined to study this subject in a bit more detail.

Zz.

The Ghost Particle

No, not the often-used "god particle" that was designated to the Higgs, but rather the "ghostly" particle being used to describe neutrinos.

This NPR review of Ray Jayawardhana's book "Neutrino Hunters" has some basic intro to the history and mysteries of neutrinos if you are not familiar with it. And it is certainly true that, unlike the Higgs, the study of neutrinos has not received the same amount of publicity that it should have.

Neutrinos rarely get the press they deserve. Writers love to wax breathless about Higgs Bosons, antimatter, hypothetical thingies like tachyons (faster-than-light particles) and, of course, whatever makes up Dark Matter. But the ghostly neutrino turns out to be essential to everything from the physics of the early universe to the fusion reactions that keep the sun burning to the supernovas that light up the cosmos.

But as important, while the US has completely closed down all high energy collider physics, neutrino physics is the one area in which it still has a lot of involvement, both within the US and outside. Current projects within the US such as MINOS, NOvA, etc. are pushing our knowledge in neutrino physics, and future projects such as LBNE should ensure, if it gets continued funding, that the US will have a strong involvement in neutrino physics study.

BTW, if there's any crackpot out there who thinks that by calling neutrinos as "ghost particle" allows them the poetic license of justifying the existence of "ghosts", then they'd better read an earlier blog entry I made on this. Don't laugh! You'd be surprised at the extent these crackpots will go to simply to justify their incoherent and faulty logic.

Zz.

More Update On Feynman Lectures Online

I've been posting updates on the availability of the infamous Feynman Lectures online. Mike Gottlieb has posted a new update on Vol. 2 at Physics Forums.

I have just posted FLP Volume II at The Feynman Lectures Website and at it's speedy Caltech mirror. This more or less completes the online edition of the book, though there are still some improvements to be made that I will be working on as time allows. For example: in Volume II you will notice under the title of many chapters (linked) recommendations for review of chapters or sections in Volumes I or II, references to other books and papers, and helpful reminders such as, "In this chapter c=1." Though this kind of supplementary information was never present in Volume I, it is present in (the printed and PDF editions of) Volume III but is currently missing from the HTML edition, and I intend to add it. I also plan to improve the tables, and the typography of the text and mathematics in Volume I, and to improve figure and table placements throughout all volumes.

In addition to posting Volume II, I have made some systemic style changes. Previously the pages had margins 70 pixels wide on each side. I have reduced that to 10 pixels (max) on the left, and 65 on the right to make room for the floating menu, which is slightly narrower and now also includes a "style changer," implemented mostly for the sake of iOS users who wrote to inform us that our text was un-readable on their devices: too small. The default font sizes are the same as before (12 pt body text), but now you have a choice: you can scale the size of all fonts up by 125% or 150%, and when you do so the left margin becomes narrower and the text is no-longer justified, which saves screen space. You're style preference is remembered between pages and between sessions, so you should only have to choose once on each device you use to read FLP. (There was another problem too on tablets: our pages were sometimes not opening zoomed to fit the device width: now they should.)

I would also like to inform you that Dr. Rudi Pfeiffer and I have (finally!) completed the manuscript for our edition of "Exercises for The Feynman Lectures on Physics," which was started in 2008. It's 306 8.5"x11" pages include approximately 1000 exercises covering the main sequence material in all three volumes of FLP, with 28 pages of answers/solutions in the back. According to our Executive Editor at Basic Books, the exercise book will be available in paperback online and in stores in the summer of 2014. We will also offer a PDF edition in our "Desktop" format (the same as the printed book, but with margins all on the right). My next project will be to produce a "Tablet" edition of the new exercise book to go with our recently released Tablet Edition of FLP.

In closing, I would like to thank all those people who have written to us. You're appreciation and interest in FLP is very rewarding and encouraging. I wish to particularly thank those who informed us of _problems_ with our web interface, or errors in the text or equations of the online edition of FLP; you're input helps make FLP more accessible, and more comprehensible. So, please keep those emails coming!

Best regards,
Mike Gottlieb
Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition
---
www.feynmanlectures.info
www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

There ya go!

Zz.

Update on Feynman Lectures On Physics

I posted earlier on the availability of Feynman Lectures on Physics on the web. Mike Gottlieb just posted an update on Vol 2 and 3 of the text on Physics Forums.

Since the release of the free online edition of FLP Vol. I in September many people have written to ask whether we will publish the other two volumes of FLP online. Many have also asked whether we intend to publish PDF editions of FLP that can be read offline. In fact we originally planned to publish all three volumes online when our PDF editions became available, so we could use the release of the online edition to promote sales of the PDFs, which help support our activities. However, that plan didn't materialize for two reasons: (1) the people hired to do the LaTeX->HTML conversion only completed Vol. I, and (2) our publisher had some technical problems that delayed the publication of our PDF editions.

Today I am writing to inform you that I have been working on the conversion of FLP Vols. II and III into HTML, and I finished Volume III yesterday, so I have just published it. Please check it out at The Feynman Lectures Website or at the Feynman Lectures Mirror at Caltech. You may notice some new behavior in the floating menu's navigational controls, which now function as follows when the floating menu appears over a Volume's Table of Contents: the next/last buttons cycle through the tables of contents of the three volumes, and the "up" button takes you to the home page of the edition. (When the floating menu appears over a chapter, the navigational controls function as before: "next/last" cycle through the chapters of the volume and "up" takes you to the table of contents.)

I also wish to inform you that our PDF editions have (finally!) appeared for sale online; you can now find them listed by our other publications, with links to retailers, on The Feynman Lectures Website Buy page. Please note that while sales of the printed books benefit Caltech and Basic Books, only sales of electronic editions benefit 'The eFLP Group' (myself and Rudolf Pfeiffer), creators of the New Millennium Edition's LaTeX manuscript, who bring you the free online edition of FLP. So, if you want to help support our efforts, please buy the PDFs!

Finally, I want to give you a "heads up" to check out the Books & Arts section in the upcoming December 5th edition of Nature (International weekly journal of science), where there will be a very nice two-page spread about The Feynman Lectures on Physics written by Rob Phillips (Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology at Caltech).

I hope you enjoy FLP Vol. III. It is my personal favorite of the three volumes! [Regarding Volume II: 10 (out of 52) chapters remain to be converted to HTML. I'm working on it as time permits, and am not sure how long it will take to finish -- hopefully not too long.]

Best regards,
Mike Gottlieb
---
Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition
www.feynmanlectures.info

P.S. Caveat Reader: In converting a book as long and complex as FLP from one format to another, inadvertent errors are inevitably introduced. Moreover, you are most likely reading the online edition on a platform I don't have (since I only have three: an iPad, a PC and a Mac) so you may see things I don't. If you see anything that looks wrong in the online edition -- suspicious-looking text or equations, broken links, or other errata -- we would greatly appreciate it if you would push the "contact us" button on the floating menu, and inform us of the problem. (For this free online edition, we could not afford to hire proofreaders. So, you get to be the proofreaders ;->! Thanks.

There you go!

Zz.

When Belief Trumps Scholarship

The most significant argument against Creationism/Intelligent Design is that the proponents of these beliefs tends to try to find faults in existing concept of evolution, but without providing evidence of their own in support of their beliefs. The most often line of attack by these people is what we often normally refer to using the concept of "god of the gaps", where one tries to find some evidence or observations that defies current scientific explanation.

The problem with this, of course, is that these "gaps" often continue to shrink over time, and as our understanding of the world around us expand and improve. The ancient civilization used to think that the moving clouds, the eclipses, the ebb and flow of ocean tides, etc., were all due to some act of gods, because they didn't have any knowledge of what caused them. Now, we know better and these events are no longer mysterious or mystical.

And that's where we come back to the ID crowd. More often than not, they lack the necessary scientific evidence to strengthen their arguments. And when they try, the only people they could convince are people who really are not well-equipped to actually decipher the science. This appears to be the case of the latest book titled "Darwin's Doubt" written by Stephen Meyer, who runs the Discovery Institute. He's a non-biologist, who is trying to argue that the rapid explosion of animal phylia in the Cambrian period cannot be explained via the slow and tedious process of evolution, and thus, via invoking the god-of-the-gaps, points to evidence of an intelligent designer.

Whenever someone brings up a scientific point, it must be countered with equivalent scientific point. And this is exactly what has been done in this case. A review of this book written by UC Berkeley's Charles Marshall in this week's issue of Science (Science, v.341, p.1344 (2013)) did just that. In this review, Marshall pointed out several flaws in the biological/scientific points presented in Meyer's book.

However, my hope soon dissipated into disappointment. His case against current scientific explanations of the relatively rapid appearance of the animal phyla rests on the claim that the origin of new animal body plans requires vast amounts of novel genetic information coupled with the unsubstantiated assertion that this new genetic information must include many new protein folds. In fact, our present understanding of morphogenesis indicates that new phyla were not made by new genes but largely emerged through the rewiring of the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) of already existing genes (1). Now Meyer does touch on this: He notes that manipulation of such networks is typically lethal, thus dismissing their role in explaining the Cambrian explosion. But today's GRNs have been overlain with half a billion years of evolutionary innovation (which accounts for their resistance to modification), whereas GRNs at the time of the emergence of the phyla were not so encumbered. The reason for Meyer's idiosyncratic fixation with new protein folds is that one of his Discovery Institute colleagues has claimed that those are mathematically impossibly hard to evolve on the timescale of the Cambrian explosion.

In other words, this scientific argument doesn't hold water.

Unfortunately, and I can see this happening often, the counter argument to this book will not reach those who should be aware of it. The same with the perpetual argument that evolution violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, those who belief in ID will use this as the scientific argument against the evolution of life on Earth, without being aware of the holes in Meyer's book.

But at least now, you know that there is a scientific counter argument to what Meyer has brought up, and you can point to this Science review article.

Zz.

Feynman Lectures On Physics

I just read a note by Mike Gottlieb on the availability of the famous Feynman Lectures on Physics online, for free!

Not sure how long this has been available, but in case you didn't know, now you do!

Now, let me clarify something. I think this book is a classic, and advanced physics students, and graduate students, should read parts of it (or if you have time, read as much as you want). It provide quite a bit of insight into many different physics subjects.

However, as a pedagogical tool to teach physics to new students, I think this book is unsuitable and may be beyond what such students can comprehend. So if you are a freshman, or just trying to pick up some physics, you may still read it, but don't be surprised if you find it rather difficult to learn from. It is one of the reasons why this book isn't a popular intro physics text in most schools.

Zz.

It's About Time

One of the most common arguments that I've seen online is the question on whether time is "real" or is it an "illusion" or doesn't exist. I've addressed this before quite a while back. In fact, that blog entry actually became a "reference" in a Wikipedia entry!

Last week's issue of Science had an interesting article. It is actually a review of Smolin's book "Time Reborn", with the review written by Huw Price (Science v.341, p.960 (2013)). What is interesting about the review here is the impression that I got that, even in philosophical circles, there is really no serious argument on the question on whether time exists or not (it does!). Rather, the question is really on the nature of time.

The differences between the two camps on the nature of time is described in the article:

I’ll come back to that question, but first to the dispute itself, which is one of philosophy’s oldest feuds. One team thinks of time as we seem to experience it, a locus of flow and change, centered on the present moment-“All is flux,” as Heraclitus asserted around 500 BCE. The other, my clan, is loyal instead to Heraclitus’s near contemporary, Parmenides of Elea. We think of time as it is described in history: simply a series or block of events, lined up in a particular order, with no distinguished present moment. For us, now is like here—it marks where we ourselves happen to stand but has no significance at all from the universe’s point of view.

And it brings me to the main point in which the differences really is not about the question whether time exists, or if it is real.

To Parmenideans such as Williams and myself, this attitude is just linguistic imperialism, cheeky and rather uncharitable. Of course we believe that time is real, we insist. (It is as real as space is, the two being simply different aspects of the same fourdimensional manifold.) What we deny is just that time comes carved up into past, present, and future.

You'll notice that the argument that time is as real as space is the same argument that I used in that earlier post that I linked above.

So really, enough of this nonsense on whether time exists or not, or if it is real or not.

Zz.

"The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics"

One of the questions I get asked a lot online by members of the public is "what do I need to know if I want to be an amateur physicist?" There are many people who obviously are interested in "doing physics" without making a career out of it. While I am not quite sure what an "amateur physicist" actually do, or what they can accomplish, I can certainly understand why those who have a keen interest in physics but with an already-established career, might want to know that they need to be equipped with to continue trying to understand physics. This is especially true if one wants to know beyond the superficial level all the interesting discoveries and news from the world of physics.

So it is with that in mind that I'm highlighting a new book written by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky that attempts to address that very issue. A review of this book appears in this month's issue of Physics Today.

Enjoyable it was, but its utility is narrower than I might have hoped. In fairness, it seems to be excellent for its stated purpose: as a first textbook for the “ardent amateur” who is perhaps taking a continuing education course or seeking to learn about physics at a level a bit higher than in the usual gee-whiz, calculus-free course. I, however, was eager to analyze the book as a supporting resource for mechanics courses for two different classes of amateurs: life-science students taking physics as a premedical requirement and engineering or physics students with a comparatively weak background. There is a chronic need for a clearly written “theoretical minimum” textbook to help the many students who try to learn physics but cannot remember, or who never properly learned, the necessary elementary math skills—not to mention students whose high school physics course was so poor it actually obstructed their conceptual understanding.

A few minor issues notwithstanding, it does sound as if this is a worthwhile book to have especially if one is a physicist in academia.

Zz.

"Do You Read Science Fiction Books?"

I wrote a while back on one of the most frequent question that I get asked once people find out that I'm a physicist. "Do You Watch "The Big Bang Theory"?" is one of them. The one other most common question: do you read science fiction books? They think that since I deal with a lot of science, then reading science fiction would be almost second nature.

Simple answer: I don't!

First of all, I seldom read fiction books. I seldom read books anymore, actually. I just can't have any long-term relationship with a book of any kind. I do so much reading in a day, the last thing I want to do when I wind down is read some more. So putting in a lot of time to read and finish a novel is not my idea of a good time.

Secondly, while I know of many scientists who enjoy reading science fiction novels, and many find them "stimulating", I don't. This is because I often find it a bit annoying that that some parts of logic, reality, and even some aspects of physics is "bastardized" to such extent. I suppose it is my problem that I simply can't let go of reality when I try to read such novels. While I do enjoy watching sci-fi movies, I find them to be more of an entertainment for a couple of hours, view them more for the story than for the accuracy. The exception being some of the more awful sci-fi movies that simply makes no sense and force you to suspend logic and reality way too many times.

Lastly, many of the sci-fi novels tend to use the more "sexy" aspects of physics, but they miss many more fascination parts that do not get wide press coverage. This is where I find stuff in physics a lot more imaginative and a lot more fascinating than even some of the most outlandish imagination in sci-fi. The concept of "phase coherence" is a conerstone in quantum mechanics. But has it been used and depicted in sci-fi novels? Or what about the fact that in 1D conductors, the many-body effect of spin-charge separation would cause a "particle"'s spin and charge to move separately?

These are details that those who are not in physics would not have understood, and thus, unable to exploit. Yet, to me, they are extremely fascinating. If I were a sci-fi writer, I could make one heck of a story using those principles alone.

As imaginative as sci-fi stories are, I find actual physics to be significantly more fascinating. So kids, that is why I don't really read science fiction books.

Zz.

Review of "Nuclear Forces: The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe"

Here's another name that is a giant among physicists, yet it isn't a household name for the general public. This is a book review of of a recent biography of Hans Bethe published in this month's issue of Physics Today.

Of course, my admiration for Bethe can be summed up in this paragraph of the review:

Among the most pervasive features of Bethe’s emerging style was his fundamental criterion that theory must be grounded in real-world observation—a view he shared with other young physicists in his circle, including Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, Nevill Mott, Enrico Fermi, and later Richard Feynman. Bethe’s physics would not be aimed at formulating radically new ideas, but rather at critically analyzing and extending theories and formulating models that could test their validity.

This is probably a good book to read about Bethe. I plan on getting it, but if you have read it, I'd like to hear your views on it.

Zz.

Science Fiction, or Engineering Fiction?

The death of Ray Bradbury brings out the common assertion that science fiction stories, novels, etc. such as those produced by him and Asimov and others "predicted" various devices such as cell phones, ipods, etc... etc. In fact, when talking to many of my friends, they often brought up a number of the modern-day devices that had some sort of a resemblance to devices in use in various science fiction stories.

I've always considered these to be "technologies", rather than science. After all, these are gadgets. In fact, in the few (again, this may not be representative) science fiction stories that I've encountered, there is more of an emphasis on the engineering aspects of the "fiction" rather than science itself. After all, these are devices that have been engineered to do amazing stuff. So the engineering capabilities are the ones that are being touted, not the science. And strangely enough, the science that usually accompany these amazing devices aren't that "sexy". After all, when was the last time the front page of a major newspaper proclaim the physics that is responsible for the capacitive touch screen on your iPhone? So, if one wants to claim that the science that made these devices possible is also astounding, I would ask "what science"?

And this brings us to really glaring omission in many of the coverage of articles on science fiction stories. The science is often missing or not well-highlighted. The few times that I think that I've seen a "science fiction" is in the dealing with worm holes and hyperspace. But even there, one often finds that it is the "gadget" or the space ship that gets center stage (again, engineering). But here, at least, you can see the direct connection between the device, and the science, and how the "scientific fiction" resulted in the device and the ability to do something. This is not often the case. More often than not, from my reading, it's the gadget that gets top billing, and the science is rather obscure.

I've often been asked why I don't normally read science fiction novels or books. I think people tend to think that if you're a physicist, then reading science fiction stories is almost a second nature. My usual reply here is that, I find more fascinating and mind-boggling SCIENCE (not engineering) in real physics than I can find in science fiction stories. Science fiction writers don't deal with CP violation, spin-charge separation, fractional quantum Hall effect, neutrino flavor mixing, etc.. etc. How about making use of the Luttinger Liquid property of spin-charge separation where a spy decompose himself into a series of signals in a 1D wire to avoid detection? He then transport himself to another location inside the 1D wire, where his charge and his spin moves with different dispersion rate and thus, cannot be detected easily. How's that for "science fiction"?

Zz.