Customer Reviews

Q IS FOR QUANTUM: An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics

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For all you Douglas Adams fans out there ( The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy) we have now got definitive, non-fictional guides to the Cosmos and the micro-world of Quantum Phenomena.

John Gribbin's latest book "Q is for Quantum" is the perfect companion to his 1996 masterpiece "Companion to the Cosmos".

Gribbin's presents his work in a well illustrated, encyclopaedic (A to Z) style with nearly all topics having hyperlinks to cross-references elsewhere in the book. He puts great emphasis on the human dimension of science as well as on the purely physical phenomena and theories he describes so well. The mini-biographies of the scientists are fascinating in their own right, particularly when looking at the historical context and the geographic, social and academic connections/parallels that have led to these great advances in human thought.

Gribbin guides us along those amazing scientific paths of the past half millennia , from Galileo and Newton to Einstein and Hawking. He has this reader convinced that we are very close to realizing the ultimate dream of a Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) which ties together all the links between the forces of nature. His work is right up to date and includes the latest ideas on M-branes and superstrings.

The best way to read the book is to open it at random , find a topic of interest and see how far the hyperlinks can take you. Bliss for a net-head! The real strength of Gribbin's writing is to help us cover that great spectrum (in time and space) between the sub-atomic microworld of Quantum phenomena through to the edges of the Cosmos. Somewhere in the middle is the human dimension, dare I say, the "real world".

It was our friend Douglas Adams who posed that trickiest of tri-lemmas ... What is the answer to that ultimate question, that is, the Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything ? He told us ... it is 42 !

John Gribbin's agrees - look up his section on Planck. What is the smallest unit of time? Answer: zero, decimal point, FOURTY TWO zeros, one second.

Before Planck time nothing much happened ... but then again ...

This quantum physics encyclopedia is beautifully crafted to be as entertaining as it is informative. John Gribbin is a master at providing an element of human interest to each of the entries in Q IS FOR QUANTUM, along with photographs and illustrations in every place you'd wish for them, in order to further enhance the reading experience. I love browsing through this book any time I have the slightest excuse, and I suspect you will, too!

If you read physics popularizations you have noticed (and appreciated) the glossaries that appear in the back of many of these books. If you've wanted a more thorough reference resource for quantum physics terminology -- here it is. Reference texts are not generally going to tempt the reader to start at the beginning and read through the entire volume, but this one will. Gribbin, familiar to many readers of physics books, writes clearly and covers all of the significant developments, personalities, and ideas of particle physics over the past century. An excellent resource, from `Absolute zero' to `Z particles.'

This book is very readable and enjoyable to dip into.It is in no way a technical treatise, more a detailed glossary (topics are presented from A to Z ),yet a great deal of work has gone into making it such a comprehensive overview.It is a handy quick-reference guide to conceptually challenging subject matter.No knowledge of higher mathematics is required to understand most of the material in this book yet most topics and people concerned with the development of modern physics are covered.I particularly liked the appendix at the back which is in the form of a timeline of notable events,discoveries and dates of birth of contributing physicists.As a teacher of physics in the 16-19 age range I would recommend it (and have done so on several occasions)as a background reference to all students intending to study physics at degree level. The interested layperson will also find it stimulating and accessible.Well worth the money.Buy it.

This book is actually a dictionary. I own similar works in other fields (eg, medicine, law, economics) that are called dictionaries. I think of an encyclopedia as a book that consists of articles on broader topics that can be referred to as a primary source (ie, a stand-alone work). I think of a dictionary as a book that contains entries (not articles) on specific terms (not topics) that is used as a secondary source (ie, a work that explains something discussed in a primary source). For example, my standard desk dictionary includes the following definition for a kaon: "an unstable meson that occurs in both charged and neutral forms and is about 970 times more massive than an electron" while "Q is for Quantum" includes a definition for kaons that is longer (13 lines) and more detailed, but still very much a dictionary-style entry. In contrast, I would expect that an encyclopedia might refer the reader to a longer article on mesons and include much of the specifics on kaons in a table providing similar information on the other mesons while including a detailed textual explanation of mesons. There is nothing wrong with providing dictionary-style entries, but if buying this book my mail-order, the buyer might be quite surprised to receive a dictionary when expecting an encyclopedia.

Another complaint I have is that the entries do not include pronunciation guides. If someone does not know what Gargamelle is, they are not very likely to know how to pronounce it either. The same holds true for many of the personal name entries.

The illustrations are not of the caliber I would expect from an encyclopedia and seem almost an afterthought. There is on average about one illustration for every two pages and they are not especially relevant. For example, the caption under an image captured by the Gargamelle bubble chamber reads: "Inside Gargamelle. These seemingly insignificant bubble tracks actually provided the first direct evidence for neutral currents." In another excellent book I read (The Particle Odyssey by Close, Marten, Sutton) such an illustration would have been accompanied by a detailed explanation of the relevant particle tracks.

I am not sure who the target audience is for this book. It is not for the person who has no knowledge of quantum physics because the user must know what words to look up. It can be useful for someone who is reading another work on quantum physics when they need to look up a particular term. The entries seem too basic to be of use to a professional in the field of quantum physics, but I can see it being useful for someone who is being exposed to quantum terms as part of their work in another field (eg, a computer programmer who is writing code for a quantum experiment and wants to know what the physicists are talking about).

Before buying this book, it might be worthwhile to take a look at a copy in your local library. If you are reading another work on quantum physics and find that you need more detailed descriptions than those provided by your standard desk dictionary, this specialized dictionary might by worth having on hand.

Just diving into this book, I find that I am delighted with my purchase. It was just exactly what I had hoped to find; easy to understand definitions of amazing, sometimes complicated things. As you read the definitions, you may find yourself flipping through the entire book, looking up terms that are unfamiliar and used within individual definitions. Everything is well defined so you can get a true understanding of what's being presented. What I've read so far has been clear, concise and totally acessable. Not at all stuffy or "over-your-head". Important discoveries and discoverers are given attention as well, making the information even more complete and the read even more worthwhile. This is one of those books that makes you feel smarter just by owning it!

Every question i've ever had concerning particle physics, has been anwsered! You don't need to be a nuclear physicist to understand "properties" of this book. It relates to all in the quantum world.

In the past few months, I have become very interested in Quantum Mechanics. My math background is zilch. I started with Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", found I needed more background to understand it, went to "The Fabric of the Universe", still needed something simpler and ended up with John Gribbin's "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat". I am now reading "Schrodinger's Kittens". Somewhere along the line I purchased "Q is for Quantum". I have found it immensely helpful in explaining concepts or terms that I was confused about, plus explaining new concepts. If I don't understand something I have read in any of the other books, I go to "Q is for Quantum". John Gribbin's explanations are clear and easy to understand. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Quantum Mechanics. I am not sure how useful it would be for a "real" physicist with all the math needed to understand Quantum Mechanics, but for this layperson, it is a terrifically helpful book. It is truely an encyclopedia.

This is a great reference book for quantum mechanics! Covers a large variety of different topics of the quantum world. Full of interesting facts and diagrams! Great for any science nerd!

John Gribbin's "Schrödinger's Kittens" was a revelation for
the casual reader with an interest in particle physics. In "Q is
for Quantum" these amazing insights are presented in short,
succinct, manageable 'quanta'. Many of these statements and models
baffle, and read like the pronouncements of a first-century Gnostic on
how the universe and the fabric of reality are ordered. The difference
is that all these statements are buttressed by experiments and
mathematical models. Moreover, they are often ratified to a staggering
degree of accuracy.

How can we believe that reality is radically
altered by our observation of it? Even to the extent that our
observations of distant quasars today affect the way the light
emerged from them 10 billion years ago? How can particles be at two
places at once? How does every charged particle on the other side of
the Andromeda galaxy (2 million light years away) instantaneously
"know" if we poke an electron here on earth (see the entry
on "transactional interpretation")? I would suggest you read
the introduction to this book, and then the entry on "double-slit
experiment" and, as the author suggests, " ...follow your
nose from there." These shed light, albeit it a dim ray, on the
central mysteries of quantum mechanics.