Drawing Physics: 2,600 Years of Discovery From Thales to Higgs by Don S. Lemons (PDF)

Description

Drawings and short essays offer engaging and accessible explanations of key ideas in physics, from triangulation to relativity and beyond.Humans have been trying to understand the physical universe since antiquity. Aristotle had one vision (the realm of the celestial spheres is perfect), and Einstein another (all motion is relativistic). More often than not, these different understandings begin with a simple drawing, a pre-mathematical picture of reality. Such drawings are a humble but effective tool of the physicist’s craft, part of the tradition of thinking, teaching, and learning passed down through the centuries. This book uses drawings to help explain fifty-one key ideas of physics accessibly and engagingly. Don Lemons, a professor of physics and author of several physics books, pairs short, elegantly written essays with simple drawings that together convey important concepts from the history of physical science.Lemons proceeds chronologically, beginning with Thales’ discovery of triangulation, the Pythagorean monocord, and Archimedes’ explanation of balance. He continues through Leonardo’s description of “earthshine” (the ghostly glow between the horns of a crescent moon), Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, and Newton’s cradle (suspended steel balls demonstrating by their collisions that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction). Reaching the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Lemons explains the photoelectric effect, the hydrogen atom, general relativity, the global greenhouse effect, Higgs boson, and more. The essays place the science of the drawings in historical context—describing, for example, Galileo’s conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over his teaching that the sun is the center of the universe, the link between the discovery of electrical phenomena and the romanticism of William Wordsworth, and the shadow cast by the Great War over Einstein’s discovery of relativity. Readers of Drawing Physics with little background in mathematics or physics will say, “Now I see, and now I understand.”

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐If you’re looking for a book to explain with clear simplicity the difficult concepts you missed in physics class, this is not it. If you’re looking for detailed drawings to express what your more intelligent friends are saying by the water cooler, this is also not it.However, if you have a reasonable foundation in physics material, and are looking to see forgotten concepts with fresh eyes and a new perspective, this is definitely your book. As a physics/engineering student who got by on just simply arranging equations until it got my unknown variable, and now a physics teacher determined NOT to teach that way, I take great pleasure from having conceptual breakdowns of the complex ideas that look daunting and impractical to first year students when written as a formula. Ever wonder what it mean’s when we say Newton “discovered” gravity? Like did things not fall before the 1700s? Many of us parrot of that phrase without knowing what it means, and I believe that that unconscious ignorance is what this books seeks to remedy. Drawing Physics puts big and revolutionary ideas in the context of history, without going overboard on names and and dates. From cover to cover, this is a story of how humans questioned and then discovered the truths of our universe. It’s an introduction to Galileo, to Copernicus, to Kepler, who turned out, just like us, to be people with deep philosophical questions and swayed by the movements of history, not just big-brained number crunchers. This book certainly does not help you “do” physics better, but for me personally, I love physics more, and I think many of my students do too! Highly highly recommended.

⭐This is a work that uses back of the envelope style drawings to explain important and complex concepts from physics. It is an OK read but unfortunately I think it is easiest for people who already have a reasonable grasp of these ideas. In many ways the figures could be better done. Some are or couldn’t be to scale BUT even then the proportions could have been done better – likewise the explanations could have been clearer.There is another work that covers many of the same notions but focusing on an overall survey of physics rather than “big” theories – this is Thinking Physics by Lews Epstein – worth a look. I have both works and Epstein’s work is superior.Still it is OK and a quick read, but for people not familiar with Euclid, Galileo, Kepler, and Bohr it may be confusing at times.For more expert readers hoping to find good examples to use with introductory talks, this isn’t the book.

⭐I majored in physics in college, yet this book taught me much I didn’t know, and in a fashion generally much more easily understood than my college classes. I also appreciated his historic detail, which brought alive the moments that grand principles and clever techniques were discovered. I wouldn’t call myself a “visual thinker,” but his drawings very often clarified concepts I’ve struggled with. I’d recommend this book to anyone curious about the physical world and what makes it tick.

⭐The book is fun to read and my son like it very much

⭐Excellent materials, easy to understand. Lots of the experiments can be easily reproduced at home.

⭐Delightful book. I am a physics buff. While little of the physics was new to me the stories and the presentation through illustrations was entertaining and taught me many new things. Highly recommended.

⭐The book lists explanations of basic phenomena. The level is for first-year high school.

⭐A keeper for my science library.

⭐good

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