The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (Paperback)

by Kenneth W. Ford (Author), Diane Goldstein (Contributor)
Key Phrases: downhill rule, muon flavor, spacetime map, John Wheeler, Niels Bohr, Big Bang (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Albert Einstein's objections to the theoretical underpinnings of quantum physics are usually summed up in his famous quote, "God doesn't play dice." Unfortunately for Einstein, experimental evidence over the past 75 years has consistently showed that the cosmos does indeed play dice. Whereas what we can see obeys laws of certainty (we know where Mars will be in five years or when the next lunar eclipse will occur), the subatomic world obeys laws of probability: you never know for sure where an electron will be at any given moment; worse, it may be in two places at once. In this approachable book for the armchair science buff or student struggling through a physics class, Ford (Quantum Foam), retired director of the American Institute of Physics, offers his services as cicerone through the subatomic world. He explains why quarks are said to have "flavors," and why scientists refer to "strange" and "charm" quarks and their being red, blue or green. Ford provides readers with a brief but adequate history of the early development of quantum theory and introduces the present-day scientists who use multimillion-dollar machines to detect particles that pop in and out of existence in less than the blink of an eye. If readers blink, they might miss the author's mention of string theory, which deserves more discussion than it receives here. Even scientists never really understand the quantum world, but this book will help readers wrap their minds around the paradoxical concepts of how the building blocks of existence lead a strange, if not charmed, life. 33 photos, 52 line illus., 6 tables.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
An excellent book--one of the best popular accounts of quantum theory I have read. Ford has a deep understanding of his demanding subject and he leavens his account with color and anecdote
--Elizabeth Sourbut (New Scientist )

Ford deals with topics as difficult as granularity, quantum numbers, superposition, entanglement, and the uncertainty principle, but he uses explanations and examples that make these concepts easy to understand and quantum weirdness far less daunting. (Science News )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067401832X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674018327
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

130 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brings the reader closer to QM than anything else I've read, September 21, 2005

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (Hardcover)

This is the best book on quantum physics that I've ever read. What Kenneth Ford, retired director of the American Institute for Physics, set out to do (and I think largely accomplishes) is to make the world of the quantum (somewhat!) accessible to the general reader. Using a minimum of mathematics and a maximum of analogy and explanation expressed in a direct and readable style, Ford brings the "eerie theory" (p. 247) as close to the everyday mind as might be possible. Part of the reason for the book's success is that Ford had high school seniors at Germantown Academy carve "up the book among themselves and" provide "valuable (and unvarnished) feedback."

But let's face it, even great physicists, entirely enmeshed in the difficult mathematics of QM--people who have devoted their lives to understanding the quantum world--can't answer John Wheeler's famous question: "How come the quantum?" The problem is not so much that the quantum world is complicated or that the math is difficult. The problem is that the "reality" of QM is fundamentally at odds with our everyday experience.

Some of the ideas such as superposition, entanglement, fundamental probability, exclusion, and the famous uncertainty principle discovered by Werner Heisenberg, to mention just a few, are completely alien to our experience as human beings. In this regard I am reminded of the saying from Eastern religion that the world is not as we think it is. The world we see is a representation constructed by our minds in collaboration with our senses, honed through the ages by the evolutionary experience so that what we see and hear and feel and taste and smell and especially "understand" is conditioned by our need to survive. We do not see x-rays or radio waves or individual atoms, nor do we know intuitively that atoms are mostly empty space, nor do we appreciate that the colors we see are really just inside our heads, our way of apprehending the differing wave lengths of light coming from the objects in the world, not something intrinsic to those objects.

Et cetera, one might say. So vast is the world and so tiny can things be (but not tinier than the Planck limit!--or so it is postulated) and so remote from our day-to-day needs that until recent times the extremes had no relevance for us. But everything has changed. Lasers, computers, nuclear reactors (and bombs) stem from knowledge of things impossible to see and even impossible to visualize or to fully appreciate. The technology works, the math rings true, and our world is changed for the better, for the worse, but regardless, changed forever.

But how much can the average educated person with no mathematic training learn about QM? Is it a hopeless case? Certainly the complexities presented in this book just in terms of the number of particles and their properties are formidable. I would have to take notes and construct charts and review and re-review in order to keep the particles straight in my mind. (Ford provides a particle appendix with four tables that helps.) But even so, I would not understand quantum mechanics. However I think there is something wonderful in what I do learn and appreciate. Namely, that the world really is not as we think it is. Such knowledge ushers in feelings of humility and awe and leads to a greater appreciation of how amazing everything is.

Implicit in Ford's presentation is the idea that quantum mechanics is not complete. He writes, "Many physicists believe that some reason for quantum mechanics awaits discovery." (p. 99) The implication is that something more fundamental underpins QM, and when that is discovered our understanding will be perhaps complete, or (more likely, I suspect) a whole new world of mystery will be opened to us. The fact that relativity and QM are yet to be completely reconciled, and that gravity does not fit into the equations of QM, fairly cries out for a larger theory.

Most important for me and I think for most people interested in QM are its philosophic and even religious implications. Facile ideas of gods that talk to humans only through the words of ancient books, or of gods that cannot do their will in the world except through the work (sometimes malicious) of humans, or gods that communicate with no inkling of anything beyond the Age of Bronze, dissipate like fairy tales when one contemplates the world of the very large and the very small. In particular, when I think about the idea that the entire universe was once (before the Big Bang) stuffed into a mathematical point, I am led to wonder what could be contained within the relatively vast expanse of a particle as defined in QM. Who is to say there cannot be worlds within worlds within worlds?

Anyway, I believe that even a cursory or hurried reading of this book will prove valuable to the interested reader, and for those with the time and energy to study Ford's presentation, a lot more can be gained even for the non-mathematical.

150 of 166 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most readable description of quantum physics, March 4, 2004

By	LaVon Hall (Fulton, SD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (Hardcover)

This book is pure pleasure. It reads a bit like an adventure story as the author explains how the concepts of the quantum theory were developed to make sense of experimental results in the subatomic realm. The author's engaging style makes quantum theory seem almost easy! This book is by far the best effort to bring the meaning of quantum theory to the nonscientist that I have read

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not for those who want to ease in, August 29, 2006

By	Vanessa L. Wolter "VanessaLW" (St. Petersburg, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've always wanted to learn more about quantum physics, so I figured I would start with a book that was for "Everyone." Me defenitely being that "Everyone" and not having a very strong background in the subject, I thought this book would fit me perfectly. However, about 30 pages in, I realized I was quickly being left behind by Kenneth Ford. He starts out at a good pace in the first few pages, explaining the kinds of measurements in quantum physics and also a little bit of the history behind the field, but then he becomes increasingly technical, referrencing terms unknown to the average layman without prior explanation. Sometimes I realized that these explanations did exist in an abbreviated manner farther along in the book, so many times I found myself searching for terms in the index and jumping around to put everything together.

Basically, I think this book might be great for people who already have an intermediate understanding of quantum physics and have heard of the terminology at least once. But the rest of us "everyonish" people who come with less experience on the subject might find that it might be possible to gain a good understanding of quantum physics reading this book but only after some dedicated work on our part. Personally, I think I will buy a more quantum-physics-for-dummies kind of book first and then move on to this one.