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List Price: £25.00
Our Price: £12.19
Author:
Stephen William Hawking
By Bantam Press
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 Excellent, 2009-06-19
The book arrived very quickly and in excellent condition. I was very impressed with it, thank you!
List Price: £7.99
Our Price: £3.65
Author:
Frank Close
By OUP Oxford
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pro antimatter, 2010-03-11
Thought provoking, informative and entertaining..a great little book. Especially liked the small section on the Dirac code...clearest explanation I have seen. A great example that truth is stranger then fiction when it comes to physics..the real stuff is even weirder than the pseudo-science..
List Price: £20.00
Our Price: £9.69
Author:
Ian Sample
By Virgin Books
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Great book on difficult topic for general public, 2010-07-12
Great book on a timely topic that is hard to write for general public. If you are looking for a book to explain what all the fuss is over the "God Particle" this is the one to read. Dr. Sample does a great job of bringing together the history, theory, and experimental aspects of the mass mechanism for everyone to understand. Everyone reads about the LHC and finding the "Higgs Boson" but little is written about the history and how this came to be.
It is a quick read and flows well with antidotes about the people involved that are pulled out through extensive interviews and research. Certainly there will be an updated version of this once the results are confirmed from Fermi or LHC and Nobels are awarded - along with the associated controversies.
Strengths of the book include:
1) Well written and easy to read
2) Quick read
3) Handles tough topic for non-physicist
4) Sets up well for next edition
5) Well researched with great interviews of subjects (Weinberg for example)
While the book is very Peter Higgs' centric in chapters three and four that probably makes sense given the name of the boson and need for the story to focus on someone. The years that Higgs spend after the 1964 papers toiling with an extension and defending the findings were interesting while the other theorists moved on to other work in the USA and Belgium. Higgs was not actually the first to work on this since Guralnik and Hagen were working with Gilbert on the issue well before 1964. But overall the book is a great overview of the theory work that is not often shared.
I am looking forward to how the story ends outside of the book, the USA edition, and the certain versions from Dr. Sample that will follow.
Great book. Great effort.
List Price: £18.99
Our Price: £10.78
Author:
Roger Penrose
By Vintage
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 A weighty tome but worth the effort, 2010-04-22
This book is a weighty tome - physically and mentally. Nonetheless, it is worth the effort and perseverance necessary to get through it. For those who have no post-secondary training in mathematics, some of the content can be challenging. A review of some of some of the reviews already presented suggests that Chapter 7 is where the challenge begins. "Complex-Number Calculus" is not something we think about on a daily basis. Yet it is important to understand this concept, before truly digesting the rest of this book.
There are some valid criticisms: Some will find this book too superficial in its treatment of mathematics and some will find that it is too mathematical. For example, thirty or so pages of basic calculus barely scratches the surface of that subject and many of his explanations of complex numbers, logarithms, Riemann surfaces, etc. while prosaic, could have been supported with broader explanations and some examples.
On the other side of the coin, it is to his credit that Mr Penrose does assume that some of his readers may freeze up at the thought of Mathematics or Physics. He therefore does try to make both subjects interesting for those less scientifically inclined and, in doing so, not get too rigorous. In his Preface, he recommends various ways to read and attempt to understand this book. He even suggests a way to read the book while skipping over the mathematical formulae. However, if you really want to enjoy the full essence of this book it would be better to understand the math.
A few suggestions which I think will help. The Bibliography, which incidentally occupies 35 pages, provides additional reference material. For those who want a better understanding of the math, I would recommend John Stillwell's "Mathematics and its History" (published by Springer). It will help to fill in the gaps of some of the earlier sections of Penrose's book, and provides a rich understanding of the concepts. For those who are having problems with Chapter 7, you should find that Stillwell's Chapters 14, 15 & 16 (each relating to complex numbers) quite rewarding. Another book is Tristan Needham's "Visual Complex Analysis". Penrose references this book. I have just received it and read the first few chapters. It is worth the investment.
Finally, while I do not presume to read Mr Penrose's mind, I do think he wrote this to encourage a broader understanding of scientific knowledge in the 21st. century. In this aspect I think he succeeds admirably. This book answers a lot of questions and poses a lot more. From reading the book I was encouraged to increase my own scientific knowledge, read a lot more and modify some of my own views.
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £4.44
Author:
Joanne Baker
By Quercus Publishing Plc
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A clearly written introduction to the main ideas, 2010-05-02
I am a non-physicist and a non-scientist, so I am coming at this book purely from the perspective of a layperson who is seeking to know more about a complex subject. This book fits the bill. In format it follows the others in the series. It breaks the subject up into 50 separate topics and provides a 4 page article on each, with timelines at the bottom of each page and little textboxes containing additional info; biographies and the like. I can't vouch for whether everything is 100% accurate, I'll leave that to those with a physics background, but what it does do is to explain complex ideas in a way that is (mostly) comprehensible to me.
It covers a huge variety of important ideas; Newton's laws, relativity, quantum theory, conservation of energy, chaos theory and the big bang amongst others. Like others in the series it is well written and set out and not aimed at the specialist. The book is also well presented and is supplied in hardback. Good value at the list price, excellent value at Amazon's price. As a well written and interesting introduction for the lay reader I recommend this book.
List Price: £7.99
Our Price: £2.97
Author:
John Polkinghorne
By Oxford Paperbacks
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Brilliant - and I've read a few books on this subject..., 2005-01-19
I have read a quite few 'pop science' books on this subject and this is the most lucid and enjoyable I have read. It encapsulates the main ideas so clearly and for once I understood the central mystery of quantum behaviour.I don't care about the error that another reviewer got excited about as it doesn't make any material difference to the level of understanding I wanted to get to. And, unlike another reviewer, I find Mr Tomkins both dull and patronising. This book, in contrast, is extremely well written and never patronising. I was extremely impressed and awed by the mastery of the subject the author has and that was demonstrated by the fact that he could explain the subject to a mathematical cretin like me...
List Price: £22.99
Our Price: £16.51
Author:
J Breithaupt
By Nelson Thornes
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AQA A2 Physics A: Student's Book (Aqa Physics for A2), 2010-04-16
Bought the book for my son to do AS2 revision said it was just what he needed, clear and detailed
List Price: £25.00
Our Price: £14.99
Author:
Stephen Hawking
By Bantam Press
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Life, the Universe, Everything?, 2010-07-12
Stephen Hawking does a great job of explaining the complexities of Space and Time so that us mere mortals can understand. I was completely hooked on this book once I started.
List Price: £7.99
Our Price: £3.61
Author:
Peter Atkins
By OUP Oxford
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Excellent Popularisation of a Subject at the Core of Science, 2010-04-22
I'm sure this is an excellent read.
However, it's pretty much a direct reprint of the same author's work Four Laws That Drive the Universe. If you've already read that book, then don't bother to buy this, the same book under a different title.
List Price: £22.99
Our Price: £16.51
Author:
J Breithaupt
By Nelson Thornes
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Worked well for me!, 2010-07-10
We used the Nelson Thorne book for AS and A2, and it is easy to understand and gives you a really thorough grounding in what you need to know, for A2 perhaps a little more detail in some areas would be nicer but really one of the objectives of A2 is to learn outside the syllabus. However this AS book showed me everything clearly and a revision guide wasn't needed as an extra to get my A from using it.
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