E=mc2
So much time has passed since I last wrote here. And this headline that I flagged up here last week really confronts me from writing about the stuff I really would like to write about. Anyway, maybe later this week...
The headline is a kind of sequence to the "The pleasure of finding things out" story I wrote a while ago. In a sense that I continued my research on the history of science and finished a book that I bought a while ago from the airport in Frankfurt- it’s the Bodanis' E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation. A book that has got a lot of praise by all kinds of magazines, newspapers- even the first pages of the book is spent on useless kudos...
And the book? It's initially about equation that Einstein developed in his five papers in 1905 setting the ground for the theory of special relativity. Bogdanis starts his story by looking at each of the elements in the equation: e, m, c and follows on by looking at the history of the application of the equation in the 20th century (basically the development of the nuclear bomb). Eventually he concludes the book by looking into the future and past of the universe.
Ok? The overall impression: not too bad (like the Englishmen say). Nice easy reading for a train trip from Brighton to London (that's where I started reading it). But then again, actually I would have liked the balance to be a bit more scientific. The main expression left from the book is that it’s written in a kind of schizophrenic manner. At one point it tries to explain the facts in a real neutral manner and at the other point it's falling into these literal descriptions and kind of artsy way of writing. I don't know, maybe I’m a bit picky, but it actually disturbed me a bit. Oh, and one more thing, why didn't the book look at notions that the Einstein's famous theory can't explain? That is really the weakest point of the book and kind of leaves the whole story a bit incomplete... But anyways, I still recommend it and as for myself I’ll try to continue this line of reading. But for now, I guess I have to really start focusing on my dissertation and read all the stuff that comes with it...
The headline is a kind of sequence to the "The pleasure of finding things out" story I wrote a while ago. In a sense that I continued my research on the history of science and finished a book that I bought a while ago from the airport in Frankfurt- it’s the Bodanis' E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation. A book that has got a lot of praise by all kinds of magazines, newspapers- even the first pages of the book is spent on useless kudos...
And the book? It's initially about equation that Einstein developed in his five papers in 1905 setting the ground for the theory of special relativity. Bogdanis starts his story by looking at each of the elements in the equation: e, m, c and follows on by looking at the history of the application of the equation in the 20th century (basically the development of the nuclear bomb). Eventually he concludes the book by looking into the future and past of the universe.
Ok? The overall impression: not too bad (like the Englishmen say). Nice easy reading for a train trip from Brighton to London (that's where I started reading it). But then again, actually I would have liked the balance to be a bit more scientific. The main expression left from the book is that it’s written in a kind of schizophrenic manner. At one point it tries to explain the facts in a real neutral manner and at the other point it's falling into these literal descriptions and kind of artsy way of writing. I don't know, maybe I’m a bit picky, but it actually disturbed me a bit. Oh, and one more thing, why didn't the book look at notions that the Einstein's famous theory can't explain? That is really the weakest point of the book and kind of leaves the whole story a bit incomplete... But anyways, I still recommend it and as for myself I’ll try to continue this line of reading. But for now, I guess I have to really start focusing on my dissertation and read all the stuff that comes with it...
posted by Oliver at 12:43 AM
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