Best science essays books according to redditors
We found 136 Reddit comments discussing the best science essays books. We ranked the 42 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 136 Reddit comments discussing the best science essays books. We ranked the 42 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
"Without a bunch of jargon" is your interpretation of what Dr. Feynman said. If you read Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, you'll find that Dr. Feynman's actual teaching is loaded with physics jargon, and a big part of his genius lay in offering supporting intuitions for the very precise terminology physics uses.
Actual computer science—as opposed to the dressed-up vocational training that calls itself "computer science," not that there's anything wrong with vocational training—is the same way. It's mathematical, painstakingly precise, and the terminology shows it. With that said, there are Feynmans out there to help lead us through it. For example, Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories is a text suitable for a bright high-schooler that nevertheless will have you understanding the terms "monad," "monoid," "category," and "endofunctor" by the time you're through it, should you choose to work through it.
As a scientist myself, I can tell you that it is difficult but not impossible to reach a scientific consensus.
Since it seems like you want practice good skepticism, I have a good book and podcast recommendation for you.
What part of evolution? Common ancestry is as solid as anything in biology. The role of natural selection is more controversial these days. Some people (e.g., Dawkins) think natural selection is absolutely central; the only way you can get complexity in the natural world. Others (e.g., Stuart Kauffman, Mary Jane West-Eberhard) think the role of natural selection has been overstated. They emphasize things like development, self-organization, etc.
EDIT: Just to make it clear if it wasn't, when I say the role of natural selection in evolutionary theory is becoming more disputed, I am not talking at all about Intelligent Design. Kauffman, West-Eberhard, and the rest are thoroughly committed to a naturalistic, scientific understanding of complexity in the natural world. If you'd like to learn more, check out Stuart Newman's page for his articles, Mary Jane West-Eberhard's page for her articles, Stuart Kauffman on PubMed, Gerd Müller's page for his articles, and the collection of articles in Evolution: The Extended Synthesis.
Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is a fantastic new book to start with.
https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760525/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1575002564&sr=8-1
skeptics guide to the universe
The main tenets of Darwin's ideas, mainly the idea that evolution occurs because of natural selection on variations, has stayed the core of evolutionary theory. However, the processes and scope of evolutionary theory have expanded dramatically and have done away with some of the assumptions that Darwin held. As Timizle and civilizedanimal have mentioned, Darwin was operating in a world that didn't know about Mendelian inheritance so many of his theories on how variation occurred are often very wrong. Darwin had a brilliant understanding to the What, but he didn't have the evidence to explain the How.
Darwin, and most evolutionary biologists through the 1960s, thought that evolution was only the result of slow, gradual change selected upon by natural selection. However, there are growing bodies of evidence, mostly from epigenetics and Evo-Devo (Evolutionary developmental biology) that evolution can occasionally happen in larger jumps and also take some different paths than gradual genetic change. As is the usual disclaimer, these Wikipedia articles are not definitive science texts, but good introductions to the topics.
A good book that opened my eyes to how much evolutionary theory has advanced beyond the basic concepts of Darwinism was Evolution: The Extended Synthesis. It gives a great account of the last 30-40 years of evolutionary biology written by scientists who are active today. It can get a little technical at times, but a decent understanding of the basics of evolution should be enough to understand almost all of it.
Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.
Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).
The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).
Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.
Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.
Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.
After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.
Happy reading!
edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.
Vice comes off as hilariously naive in that post. "Every year, the online magazine Edge--the so-called smartest website in the world, helmed by science impresario John Brockman--asks top scientists, technologists, writers, and academics to weigh in on a single question...And the list is long. Like, book-length long."
Um, Brockman is a literary agent and publisher. Some or all of those folks are his clients. Every year he sells the answers, indeed in book form. Not that that's bad or that Brockman isn't interested in science, but come on, Vice, let's frame things realistically.
Excellent points.
> If your brother came to you and said, "I had a spiritual experience in which God told me that I needed to sell all my stuff and move to Canada because vampires are eating their way north from South America." What would you say? According to OmniCrush you would say something like:
We can even use a more concrete example, such as described here by /u/bwv549 where a friend of his claims to have spoken with Jesus and has special knowledge about a destructive flood coming to Utah valley. Besides cases like this, adherents of almost every single religion can describe to you the supreme feelings of peace or love they've experienced while worshiping (many do interpret this to mean that their religion is the true one [see here and here as well]).
Check out this passage from Dr. Steven Novella's book in the section on neuropsychological humility:
> Perception Is Constructed
> The bottom line is this: Your real-time perceptions are not a passive recording of the outside world. Rather, they are an active construction of your brain. This means that there is an imperfect relationship between outside reality and the model of that reality crafted by your brain. Obviously, the model works well enough for us to interact with that reality, and that's actually the idea. Constructed perception is not optimized for accuracy but rather for functionality. ...
>
> Now you have crafted an image, but it doesn't mean anything yet. The next area of the visual cortex assigns meaning to the image--is that a tree or a whale? Okay, it finds a match, then makes further adjustments to the basic processing so that the image it constructed matches better with the thing it thinks it's seeing.
>
> Did you catch that? Visual processing is a two-way street. The basic visual information is processed up the chain as your brain constructs a meaningful image, and then the brain communicates back down the chain to tweak the construction so it fits better. Essentially, if your visual association cortex thinks you are looking at an elephant, it communicates back to the primary visual cortex and says, "Hey, make that look even more like an elephant." It changes what you actually see, not just how you interpret it. This all happens automatically, outside of your awareness. ...
>
> If you think that's it, think again, because so far I've only been talking about visual processing. Our brains are simultaneously processing auditory information, sensation from our bodies, vestibular information about gravity orientation and acceleration, and feedback from our muscles to tell how we're moving. Our brains favor continuity and internal consistency over accuracy, so all these streams are compared in real time and further adjustments made so they all fit together nicely. In a way, our brains are constructing a narrative about what is happening, and making that narrative make sense to us.
>
> Also in the stream, however, are our prior knowledge and expectations. We know elephants are big, so when we see a small elephant our brains tend to assume it is big and therefore must be far away. ...
>
> The lesson here is that even the most basic components of your existence are actively constructed by your brain. Each component can be disrupted and erased.
>
> How does all this affect critical thinking? Well, just as with memory, be wary of saying, "I know what I saw [or felt (my addition)]." Hmm...no, you don't. You have a constructed memory of a constructed perception based on filtered partial sensation and altered by your knowledge and expectations.
This (among a number of other biases to be aware of) has very significant implications for testimony development. Mormons either grow up learning (or accept based on hearing the testimonies of others, such as the missionaries) that a god exists and that the Holy Ghost will manifest the truth of all things to them and then come to embrace (through elective/religious faith it seems) that Moroni 10 and Alma 32 are valid heuristics to reach objective truth. However, just because the Church as an organization formally embraces a more logical process for reaching objective truth than many other faith traditions does not mean that that process has ever been demonstrated to be reliable (especially to the point of having sufficient confidence in it to warrant being willing to commit your entire life to that ideology by following specific guidelines and spending a significant amount of both time and money).
Most universities have a physics 101 class tailored to people like you. If you are already in school, you could express your interest to the teacher and ask to sit in on the class. I've done this for several classes and never had a teacher refuse my request, but if they say no, you can always just pay a little money and audit the class. The cost varies per school, but at my university it was only $30.
If you are looking for a book, I'd suggest Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces. I don't remember it containing any math at all, but is excellent for understanding some of the fundamental concepts of physics.
If you have a particular concept you'd like to understand, you can ask me! I would love to talk about physics to anyone at anytime.
YES YES YES.
this book is great, but you must buy the special illustrated edition of it, it really brings the subject matter alive
http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything-Illustrated/dp/0767923227
Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense was my introduction to semi-woo while I was still a hardcore atheist (I'm now "agnostic" ... I refer to Brahman as "God" but it isn't a "deity," IMO). It doesn't have this same level of weirdness, but it's certainly got hints that we have no idea what's really going on in several fields of study: http://www.amazon.com/Things-that-Dont-Make-Sense/dp/0307278816?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
Taking introductory chemistry in college fucked me up in good and bad ways (that is, I was too busy obsessing over functional minutia to comprehensively study the most relevant material needed for tests, that class got me my first and only C in college). I was trying to comprehend how electron shells work and almost broke down crying because, as I now understand, it's impossible to understand quantum activity through a standard model lens. The more I thought about how and why subatomic particles function, the more I came to understand string theory (without realizing at the time that's what I was doing). Just meditating on what science understands about the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity, the forces, etc. is enough to make me question if any of this is more than a pop-up book of 2-d information.
I will admit that I've always loved stories of woo-woo, but always believe there's a solid scientific explanation to any of it that may be true. I used to say, "Well, maybe ghosts are actually people in over-laying dimensions, and 'haunted' places are places where the 'veil' between realities is thinner than usual." But often I'd just reject "weirdness" as people hallucinating; however, I've had several SOBER experiences myself which defy explanation, and it's a lot harder to reject one's own experiences than it is to reject others'. Specifically, I've had others tell me what I'm thinking, verbatim, when I asked them to do so (a random, unpredictable thought that would be IMPOSSIBLE to fucking guess - BLEW MY FRIGGIN MIND), and I have, on NUMEROUS OCCASIONS, predicted exactly what was about to happen, prior to it happening, with no way of knowing how or why (ie no clues beforehand, that I was consciously aware of). Just digging around the web looking for explanations (but rejecting anything that's particularly "woo"ey), I started realizing that there's tons of experimental data showing that everything is whackier than we think.
Check out this video about consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJh-bcaw7SY
Then check out THIS video about how WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ANYTHING (kidding; it's about the double slit and similar experiments; but I'm pretty sure the former statement is the correct conclusion anyway): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shWRKpf7Hwg
[Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher] (http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Explained/dp/0465025277/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373335527&sr=1-3&keywords=richard+feynman)
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Extended-Synthesis-MIT-Press/dp/0262513676
How do you feel about anthologies? The Best American Science and Nature Writing is an annually-published collection and since each entry is by a different author, you don't have to worry about stopping points as much - each "chapter" is self-contained.
Gracias!
No, el de Feynman es biográfico, basado en grabaciones que hizo un cuate de él. Es excelente. Acaba de salir una versión en novela gráfica que se llama Feynman.
Para divulgación de Feynman ahorita estoy leyendo uno que se llama Six Easy Pieces, que es un extracto para mensos de sus famosas lecturas de física.
I've heard nothing but awesome things about A Day In The Frontal Lobe from people who love reading and love neuroscience. It's one of my next planned reads.
Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was a good read and the illustrated version was awesome.
If you want something a little lighter with an easy writing style and low base knowledge entry 13 Things That Don't Make Sense is good and fun to read.
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
I'm a science noob and I was told this is a good layman-introductory book. Fingers crossed people haven't read this already.
I highly recommend Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson for your son. Not only is Wilson the most renowned entomologist in the world, but his book is meant to inspire young students to find a passion in sciences and how to be successful in it.
I think a a fantastic book was released today to help with this exactly. The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake
Feynman.
Anything you can find on him. "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is a brilliant introduction. It is aimed at college level but there's a significant portion of general audience material. A book was written that is a subset of the Feynman lectures that concentrates on the non-mathematical (which apparently means "easy") parts.Edit: Okay, perhaps not anything you can find.
I can help a bit, I'm an American but I live in Brittany and speak Breton.
Here are a list of books that should help
http://www.amazon.fr/Le-Bezen-Perrot-nationalistes-luniforme/dp/2952144613
http://www.amazon.fr/Lhermine-croix-gamm%C3%A9e-mouvement-collaboration/dp/2843982391/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
http://www.amazon.fr/Agents-du-Reich-en-Bretagne/dp/2915623805/ref=pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/miliciens-maquisards-enqu%C3%AAte-r%C3%A9sistance-Centre-Bretagne/dp/2737350638/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380923884&sr=8-1&keywords=9782737350634
Here's a decent article in English
http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol4/4_1/leach_4_1.pdf
If you have any other questions let me know. Chañs vat dit gant da destenn ha kenavo ar c'hentañ tro.
I don't think you understood my post. If you aren't aware of the scientific discussions surrounding antidepressants you might want to read up on the literature. I'm simply explaining the uncertainties and limitations of science, as anyone trained in science will recognize. When I say trained in science, I'm not referring to someone with a STEM degree, but a well educated scientist. The sort of critical thinkers we used to refer to as scientists, such as the writers in this anthology, which is a good starting point:
https://www.amazon.ca/Oxford-Book-Modern-Science-Writing/dp/0199216819
But yes, I have two STEM degrees from the best universities in this country as well as a graduate degree in the politics, philosophy, sociology, and public policy of science and technology.
The Physics AS/A Levels are a funny lot of modules; I believe they're designed to be doable without any A Level-equivalent Maths knowledge, so they're riddled with weird explanations that really try to avoid maths - which often just makes everything harder in the long run. (I did AQA Physics A, but all were pretty similar as far as I gathered.)
With that in mind, if you're looking to study Physics further on, I'd recommend supplementing your mathematics. If you're doing Further Maths, you probably needn't bother, as the first year of any university course will bore you to death repeating everything you learnt about calculus etc.; if you're doing single Maths, I'd recommend getting confident with C1-4, and maybe purchasing the Edexcel (Keith Pledger) FP1/FP2 books to get slightly ahead before uni. They're great books, so might be useful to have for Y1 of uni and reference thereafter regardless. I was quite put off by the attitude towards Y1 maths of the Further Maths people (about half the cohort), who kept moaning about having done it all already, so found focusing in lectures a tad harder; I wish I'd bothered to read just a little ahead.
The second thing I'd recommend would be reading fairly broadly in physics to understand what aspect in particular you enjoy the most. In my experience, the students who have even a rough idea of what they want to do in the future perform better, as they have motivation behind certain modules and know how to prioritise for a particular goal, e.g. summer placement at a company which will look for good laboratory work, or even as far as field of research.
To that end (and beginning to answer the post!), books that aren't overly pop-science, like Feynman's Six Easy Pieces/Six Not-so-Easy Pieces are good (being a selection of lectures from The Feynman Lectures). Marcus Chown does a similarly good job of not dumbing things down too much in Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and We Need to Talk About Kelvin, and he talks about a good variety of physical phenomena, which you can look up online if they interest you. I could recommend more, but it really depends how you want to expand your physics knowledge!
E - darn, just read you're not in the UK. Oops. Mostly still applies.
No not reliable at all. New age spiritual nonsense with the word quantum thrown around with no rhyme or reason!
Read any of these instead. Actual physics books for new to physics readers;
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0393609391/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_.n-xDb972EWGF
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/178416075X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Po-xDbCXBA3FT
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by its Most Brilliant Teacher https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0465025277/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_sq-xDbBG45M3D
I'd disagree. While the Lectures book itself is a harder lift, he further adapted it for lay audiences as Six Easy Pieces.
http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Explained/dp/0465025277
All pandas are fluffy.
Some pandas have red fur.
Therefore, some pandas are fluffy with red fur.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins We read that book in my Philosophy of Science class! There's a little bit of everything in it! You should check it out! My Intro to Logic class is also ending! Boooo!
All the video sources I'm finding seem... spotty, but Richard Feynman's lectures on physics are the best in my opinion. He starts out with the basic foundations modern physics and progresses into much more difficult territory. They're well written, and definitely a good read for anyone who wants a basic understanding of physics.
I have these copies of his lectures which I like because they split up the easy and the hard topics in to separate books. But this is just personal opinion, and there are many, many copies of his works out there.
Oh shit I have this book
15 might be a good age to introduce her to some Dick.
As one commenter has already pointed out, this kind of thing has been going on for a long time. Sometimes it's punctuated equilibrium, sometimes it's niche construction, sometimes it's group selection, and sometimes it's epigenetics, but debates about whether we need an extended synthesis to accomodate 'new' mechanisms of evolution are nothing new. In fact, go back fifty years and you'll find it was the hot topic of biology (see [G.C. Williams' Adaptation and Natural Selection] (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/558.html)).
That being said, it's important not to give the people defending these ideas short shrift (not saying anyone here is). There's a lot of impressive empirical and philosophical work meant to show the traditional framework can't readily accomodate the processes above, i.e. that they lead to new predictions and explanations which weren't really available before, so they can't be dismissed lightly.
Here's some resources to shed light on your question:
Comes out in a few weeks.
​
https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533
Audio Books are your friend, like seriously pick up something to listen to.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration by Michio Kaku
Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time: Great Discoveries by Michio Kaku
The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind (This one I recommend on the highest degree, personally I have read it 3 times)
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe by Stephen W. Hawking
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan
Contact by Carl Sagan
Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
All these books I've listened to or read, and I recommend all of them some more then others, I have tons more about Quantum Mechanics, Physics, Biology, Cosmology, Astronomy, Math etc. But I'm to lazy to list all of them here.
https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533
Also there are things that cant be explained thought scientific method
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/scientific-method10.htm|
What We Believe but Cannot Prove:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Believe-but-Cannot-Prove/dp/0060841818
Pareil pour moi. Le Paul Arnaud est LA référence en Chimie en France. J'ai acheté les versions de chimie organique et chimie physique à l'époque, et je ne regrette pas du tout.
Edit
Ce que j'ai utilisé en plus, si ça peut t'aider :
Chimie organique de René Milcent
Chimie organique en 25 fiches de Nadège Lubin-Germain & Jacques Uziel
Chimie organique hétérocyclique de René Milcent
Si tu veux une lecture de chevet le soir, je recommande vivement cet ouvrage aussi (en anglais) : Classics in Spectroscopy de Stefan Berger & Dieter Sicker
a. Stanford. But a lot of people who work with me did not go to big-name schools. UC Irvine, Iowa State, Oregon state, etc. Where I work, there's lots of UW. Where I used to work before that; lots of RPI and USC.
b. I got great grades in high school, but slipped a little bit in college. (This made my life difficult later. A good GPA makes it easier to be hired, and is practically necessary if you want a Masters, something that many many many engineers have today). Classes: I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you this, but take all the math and physics you can. And try to learn some of this stuff outside of school (it can be more fun that way), pick up some books, try to get through the Feynman Lectures on Physics (or just Six Easy Pieces and QED to start off), some Martin Gardner, books like Euler's Gem, learn HTML, try your hand at programming, build LEGO robots... all that kind of stuff will make it easier to learn the stuff you need to learn to become an engineer.
It's great that you want to study particle physics and String Theory! It's a really interesting subject. Getting a degree in physics can often make you a useful person so long as you make sure you get some transferable skills (like programming and whatnot). I'll reiterate the standard advice for going further in physics, and in particular in theoretical physics, in the hope that you will take it to heart. Only go into theoretical physics if you really enjoy it. Do it for no other reason. If you want to become a professor, there are other areas of physics which are far easier to accomplish that in. If you want to be famous, become an actor or a writer or go into science communication and become the new Bill Nye. I'm not saying the only reason to do it is if you're obsessed with it, but you've got to really enjoy it and find it fulfilling for it's own sake as the likelihood of becoming a professor in it is so slim. Then, if your academic dreams don't work out, you won't regret the time you spent, and you'll always have the drive to keep learning and doing more, whatever happens to you academically.
With that out of the way, the biggest chunk of learning you'll do as a theorist is math. A decent book (which I used in my undergraduate degree) which covers the majority of the math you need to understand basic physics, e.g. Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics and Electromagnetism. Is this guy: Maths It's not a textbook you can read cover to cover, but it's a really good reference, and undoubtably, should you go and do a physics degree, you'll end up owning something like it. If you like maths now and want to learn more of it, then it's a good book to do it with.
The rest of the books I'll recommend to you have a minimal number of equations, but explain a lot of concepts and other interesting goodies. To really understand the subjects you need textbooks, but you need the math to understand them first and it's unlikely you're there yet. If you want textbook suggestions let me know, but if you haven't read the books below they're good anyway.
First, particle physics. This book Deep Down Things is a really great book about the history and ideas behind modern particles physics and the standard model. I can't recommend it enough.
Next, General Relativity. If you're interested in String Theory you're going to need to become an expert in General Relativity. This book: General Relativity from A to B explains the ideas behind GR without a lot of math, but it does so in a precise way. It's a really good book.
Next, Quantum Mechanics. This book: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a great introduction to the people and ideas of Quantum Mechanics. I like it a lot.
For general physics knowledge. Lots of people really like the
Feynman Lectures They cover everything and so have quite a bit of math in them. As a taster you can get a couple of books: Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces, though the not so easy pieces are a bit more mathematically minded.
Now I'll take the opportunity to recommend my own pet favourite book. The Road to Reality. Roger Penrose wrote this to prove that anyone could understand all of theoretical physics, as such it's one of the hardest books you can read, but it is fascinating and tells you about concepts all the way up to String Theory. If you've got time to think and work on the exercises I found it well worth the time. All the math that's needed is explained in the book, which is good, but it's certainly not easy!
Lastly, for understanding more of the ideas which underlie theoretical physics, this is a good book: Philsophy of Physics: Space and Time It's not the best, but the ideas behind theoretical physics thought are important and this is an interesting and subtle book. I'd put it last on the reading list though.
Anyway, I hope that helps, keep learning about physics and asking questions! If there's anything else you want to know, feel free to ask.
Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists
by The A.V. Club
Imponderables
by Dave Feldman
Why Things Are: Answers to Every Essential Questions in Life
by Joel Achenbach
Don't Know Much About Geography: Everything You Need to Know About the World but Never Learned
by Kenneth C. Davis
The Jinn from Hyperspace: And Other Scribblings--Both Serious and Whimsical
by Martin Gardner
Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience
by Martin Gardner
What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained
by Robert L. Wolke
To experience a good physics class without actually taking a physics class, read Leonard Susskind's "Theoretical Minimum" series; start with The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics. To experience the poetry of physics, read everything by Richard Feynman; start with Six Easy Pieces.
I just saw Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson in a bookstore yesterday and am very tempted to read it. It seems like a great read for anyone interested in pursuing science (not specifically chemistry) as a career.
Fortunately, special relativity isn't that mathematically intensive. If you took college algebra and trigonometry, it will be familiar to you. If you took calculus, it will be mathematically easy. Although the concepts are certainly difficult.
This book presents it at a very simple level.
This book and this book present some very interesting physics at a layman level. I'd suggest it to anybody curious about topics such as relativity.
It's probably not quite as directly tied to the specifics of first-year curriculum as Klein, but Feynman's Six Easy Pieces is a great intro to the big picture in physics. If you really want to understand physics, Feynman is one of your best resources.
I have a book recommendation for you.
https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533/ref=mp_s_a_1_1
Really expensive collection of lectures
or
The third chapter of Six Easy Pieces which is the six easiest lectures from the same collection. I opted for cheap, but that complete set is looking mighty tempting.
I skimmed all your references and I find it a weird way to teach atheism as it seems to be largely an historical account and nothing explicitly to do with why/how.
The only reason atheism (without god(s)) exists is due to the large population of theists whom have no rational basis for that claim. The only sort of common trait is the use of logic and the scientific method, largely due to the departure from theism which required those skills. But this is not even a requirement either as the lack of belief could have been inherited from parents or from a separate false belief.
If one was to teach atheism, as in why people don't hold the belief that god(s) exist, I would think it would start with logic (valid, invalid, weak, strong arguments, soundness etc), the scientific method, skeptism/critical thinking, common fallacies(with a religious bias), some philosophy and some of the common arguments and counter points Some sort of challenge to try to prove one religion as true over another where you have to apply the same logic to both equally could also be useful for rooting out errors. ie if your holy book is true because the book/author states it is then you have to assume the other holy books self referential claim is true because it also makes the same claim with the same amount/quality of evidence which should show that it invalid as a method for proof.
Some better alternatives to your course material, in my opinion, are A Manual for Creating Atheists, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake and this youtube playlist on logic and argumentation
> Feynman
Feynman was the original ELI5 when it came to physics. I remember this book clearing up a lot of things for me.
Awesome.
A great book I read recently on the elements is Periodic Tales
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKRG0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
how about Scientific Skepticism as defined in the awesome new book The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake
https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533
Unfortunately, a good understanding of quantum mechanics requires a basic understanding of classical physics.
I would recommend "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukov. https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Wu-Li-Masters-Overview/dp/0060959681/ref=sr_1_1 "6 Easy Pieces" by Richard P. Feineman https://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Explained/dp/0465025277/ref=sr_1_1? My personal favorite is "Understanding Physics" by Isaac Asimov https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Physics-Volumes-Magnetism-Electricity/dp/B000RG7YPG/ref=sr_1_2? HTH
Un chercheur c'est pas un consensus. C'est un bouquin d'un chercheur. Puis foutre un lien de bouquin que t'as pas lu pour appuyer tes arguments ça n'a aucune valeur. Sinon on pourrait tous arrêter de prendre des médicaments et se mettre à l'homéopathie grâce à lui. Les botanistes se mettent déjà pas d'accord pour dire que les plantes sont dotées d'intelligence alors ton chercheur qui dit qu'une plante est plus intelligente qu'un être humain, bon, ça fait très sensationnel.
> ou bien c'est un phénomène objectif qui correspond à l'envoi d'un signal "je ne vais pas bien", et ce phénomène objectif se produit aussi bien dans les plantes que dans les animaux. Ils ne s'agit pas de savoir si les plantes souffrent "comme nous" mais si les plantes souffrent tout court
Revoit la définition de souffrance. La souffrance c'est beaucoup plus complexe que ça. Une réaction c'est absolument pas de la souffrance. Donc non il s'agit pas de savoir si les plantes "souffrent comme nous", vu qu'il s'agit de savoir si les plantes ont des réactions pouvant être assimilées à ce qu'on connait de la souffrance, de manière à savoir si on doit ou non les traiter comme tel : des êtres vivants qui souffrent. C'est avéré pour les animaux, pour les plantes on en est loin.
Sinon tu peux arrêter le GRAS, ça donne pas de POIDS à tes ARGUMENTS, de même que les MAJUSCULES.
> moving very slowly through time (i.e, the jiggling atoms are slower
Those are not the same thing. You're getting it backwards. Moving slowly through space doesn't mean you're moving slowly through time. It just means it takes longer to get to where you're going in space.
If you put a clock on an airplane, and you synchronize it with your watch, and then the airplane flies around the world, when it lands, your watch will have measured more elapsed time than the clock on the plane. (People have actually done this with atomic clocks, and it really happens.)
The movement of the airplane through space "uses up" some of its movement through time, so the airplane has moved through less time than you have while you were standing still. The clock (and everything else, like how hungry the passengers are) reflects this. Note that for an airplane, the difference is a tiny fraction of a second, but it's real and has to be compensated for in GPS satellites for example.
(Note that if neither of you speeds up or slows down, each of you is moving slower than the other, which is one of the weird things about relativity and why it's called "relativity".)
When you cool an object, the atoms move more slowly through space; that is correct. Their time doesn't slow down. Chemical reactions (like milk spoiling) progress more slowly, because it's less likely that when two molecules in the substance bump into them they're less likely to be going fast and hence bump together hard enough to react. Water evaporates more slowly when it's cold because any given water molecule getting to the surface is less likely to be going fast enough to pop free of the surface and into the air. But think about it like bumping two lumps of clay together: if you get the two lumps going faster, they're more likely to stick together.
If you make something very hot (like in a particle accelerator like the LHC) by making it move very fast, the time the particle experiences slows down, so a particle that would normally undergo radioactive decay in a billionth of a second sticks around long enough to see. The "cosmic rays" you sometimes hear about are particles coming in from space that only live a fraction of a second, but they're going so fast that their time is so slow (compared to ours) that they last long enough to get all the way from space down to the ground, several seconds.
Fun stuff.
If you want some basic normal every-day "here's how physics works" explained by the guy who won a Nobel prize for explaining to theoretical quantum mechanics theory guys how to understand quantum mechanics, try this: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Explained/dp/0465025277 No math involved.
If you want to learn why Einstein's relativity works the way it does, and you understand the Pythagorean Theorem about how long the sides of a right triangle are, try http://www.amazon.com/Six-Not-So-Easy-Pieces-Relativity-Space-Time/dp/B0009IINXE
Basically, if you understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxrlcLktcxU#t=32 you can understand why Relativity works the way it does. (Mind, you might not believe it... :-)
Forgive me if you already know this stuff and I'm just being confusing because I'm talking about it in a confusing way.
Richard Feynman's 6 Easy Pieces:
http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Explained/dp/0465025277
Thanks! Is this the one you mean? http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-ebook/dp/B004OVEYNU/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1343059628&sr=8-4&keywords=six+easy+pieces
It's so much fun to learn about this stuff. Here's one place to start:
http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Explained/dp/0465025277/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451954715&sr=1-4&keywords=feinman
When we are talking about something irrational, yes.
For good examples of rational things people believe that they cannot prove, see the book of the similar name.
I, for instance, believe that the nature of the universe is entirely understandable, and that the creatures that we become will eventually have the ability to answer any meaningful question.
>Where do I start?
Please read the FAQ.
**
>Where can I read why the big bang is the closest theory or idea of rightness. Where can I read about ideas of the particles that made up every atom or whatnot smaller spec to create the big bang?*
Start with:
And
No atheist bible exists. However many atheists arrive at their position from skepticism. A sort of mental filter used to make sure our beliefs align with reality and not some sort of snake-oil. The same filter you yourself use to avoid being scammed by "Nigerian Princes".
You can consult the classic book
Or if you want a fast version from youtube.
**
>Atheist, do you even acknowledge the idea of a God?
Of course the question remains, which god? It's too easy to have a vague god with no definable attributes.
I acknowledge the idea. But an idea can still be imaginary. If a friend told me dragons existed, and each time I said that was impossible, and then they changed the goalposts until "dragon" meant something entirely too vague to disprove, then we aren't getting anywhere in terms of actually proving my friend isn't mistaken, and just wants dragons to exist.
See more here: [The Dragon in my Garage*](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRy3Kl_z5E). (4 min on youtube)
Feynman's Six Easy Pieces is a great introduction to quantum mechanics. Gary Zukov's book The Dancing Wu Li Masters doesn't have a great reputation among physicists because it strays a bit into mysticism, but I think it's a pretty good read. Capra's Tao of Physics is in the same category. For an easy-to-understand discussion of the weirdness of quantum mechanics, Fred Kuttner and Bruce Rosenblum's Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness is excellent.
This is an Amazon list of books on the subject that I found helpful:
Robert Kroese, author of Schrödinger's Gat
I had a similar thought after reading What we believe but cannot prove.
When public speaking and someone laughs, how do you know they aren't laughing at you?
Personally, I think you would get great suggestions on /r/physics. But since you're here...
Since you seem like you're just dipping your toes in the water, you might want to start off with something basic like Hawking (A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell).
I highly recommend Feynman's QED, it's short but there's really no other book like it. Anything else by Feynman is great too. I found this on Amazon and though I haven't read it, I can tell you that he was the greatest at explaining complex topics to a mass audience.
You'll probably want to read about relativity too, although my knowledge of books here is limited. Someone else can chime in, maybe. When I was a kid I read Einstein for Beginners and loved it, but that's a comic book so it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
If you really want to understand quantum mechanics and don't mind a little calculus (OK, a lot), try the textbook Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Griffiths. Don't settle for hokey popular misconceptions of how QM works, this is the real thing and it will blow your mind.
Finally, the most recent popular physics book I read and really enjoyed was The Trouble with Physics by Smolin. It's ostensibly a book about how string theory is likely incorrect, but it also contains really great segments about the current state of particle physics and the standard model.
Did it have a noticeable taste?
I had a few cases of water that got sun affected and you could really taste the plastic. My cousin told me I was mad and gladly drank them all.
From my elementary knowledge of physics (Six Easy Pieces) it wouldn't be a great idea.
Rather good book I was given a few years back called Periodic Tales. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Periodic-Tales-Curious-Lives-Elements/dp/0141041455 Well worth a read if you have any interest in the elements, but in a less scientific way and more about the human side. Lots of interesting bits of information about some of the odd/crazy things people did on discovering something new (everything is a miracle cure!!)
Except it has been reproduced in numerous cases that are swept under the rug.
The book 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense covers the LENR controversy in some detail.