Reviews etc
Reviews etc
Here is the text from a recent review in this month's Chemistry World:
The incessant dance
Review of 'Middle World' by Carol Stanier, (c) Royal Society of Chemistry
The untidiness of my bedroom is due to the second law of thermodynamics. Namely, the world tends towards increased entropy and disorder, and there are more ways to make a bedroom untidy than there are to keep everything in its rightful place. This is just one of the curious but instantly understandable analogies that Mark Haw uses to explain some of the complex physical concepts necessary to understanding Brownian motion.
The Middle world, according to Haw, is the tricky region between atoms and molecules, and the bulk assembly. It is a world occupied by such unlikely bedfellows as DNA, plastics, pollen, and the constituents of mayonnaise and shampoo. It is here that the incessant dance described by Robert Brown takes place.
As we journey through Middle world we meet (as one might expect) numerous Nobel prize winners and other eminent scientists, but also philosophers and even playwrights, their work set in context of the story. Peculiar and intimate details of their lives, such as Marie Curie’s scandalous affair with Paul Langevin, give this tale human as well as scientific interest.
There have been numerous books published in the past few years on nanotechnology and the history of science, several of which are listed in the further reading, but Middle world is certainly one of the most readable of these. It is written in such a way that it should be simple for even those with very little background in science to understand. Haw’s excellent descriptions involving rice pudding and jam (have you ever tried unstirring the jam from a rice pudding?) and giving oranges to school children (to demonstrate energy distribution in gases) ensure that concepts normally encountered only at degree level are just part of a riveting story that started with a botanist called Brown.
Here is the text from a recent review in this month's Chemistry World:
The incessant dance
Review of 'Middle World' by Carol Stanier, (c) Royal Society of Chemistry
The untidiness of my bedroom is due to the second law of thermodynamics. Namely, the world tends towards increased entropy and disorder, and there are more ways to make a bedroom untidy than there are to keep everything in its rightful place. This is just one of the curious but instantly understandable analogies that Mark Haw uses to explain some of the complex physical concepts necessary to understanding Brownian motion.
The Middle world, according to Haw, is the tricky region between atoms and molecules, and the bulk assembly. It is a world occupied by such unlikely bedfellows as DNA, plastics, pollen, and the constituents of mayonnaise and shampoo. It is here that the incessant dance described by Robert Brown takes place.
As we journey through Middle world we meet (as one might expect) numerous Nobel prize winners and other eminent scientists, but also philosophers and even playwrights, their work set in context of the story. Peculiar and intimate details of their lives, such as Marie Curie’s scandalous affair with Paul Langevin, give this tale human as well as scientific interest.
There have been numerous books published in the past few years on nanotechnology and the history of science, several of which are listed in the further reading, but Middle world is certainly one of the most readable of these. It is written in such a way that it should be simple for even those with very little background in science to understand. Haw’s excellent descriptions involving rice pudding and jam (have you ever tried unstirring the jam from a rice pudding?) and giving oranges to school children (to demonstrate energy distribution in gases) ensure that concepts normally encountered only at degree level are just part of a riveting story that started with a botanist called Brown.
posted by mark haw at 2:18 pm
1 Comments:
Dear Dr Haw
I read your book Middle World with great pleasure. However, as delightful and informative as it is, you make no mention of Nobel Laureate, Max Born.
Have you read his popular science book The Restless Universe? (Dover Publications,1951, ISBN 486-20412-X). Originally published in 1936, with Born's added postscript in 1951).
Max Born begins with this paragraph:
It is odd to think that there is a word for something which, strictly speaking, does not exist, namely, "rest".
and continues
We distinguish between living and dead matter; between moving bodies and bodies at rest. This is a primitive point of view. What seems dead, a stone or the proverbial "door-nail", say, is actually forever in motion. We have merely become accustomed to judge by outward appearances; by the deceptive impressions we get through our senses.
And he goes on to say, after describing what he calls the dance of the molecules:
"As a matter of fact, the most recent development in physics, quantum mechanics ... , has shown that we must drop the idea of strict laws, and that all laws of nature are really laws of chance, in disguise." (Born's italics)
Your book brought Born to mind, like you he had a very engaging way of explaining complex matters in simple terms.
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