Book Description
One of the clearest, most entertaining introductions to the subject ever written offers lucid explanations of not only the special and general theories of relativity, but also of the Michelson-Morley experiment, gravity, and spacetime, Mach's principle, the twin paradox, models of the universe and other topics. 100 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting and very philosophical.......2007-09-18
This is the 1997 Dover edition of Martin Gardner's 1976 "The Relativity Explosion", which was itself an update of the original 1962 book, published under the title "Relativity for the Million". This present edition contains a short chapter that attempts to update the 1976 version to 1997. Given that 10 years have passed since 1997 and that many new measurements of the cosmos have been made, some of the cosmology is a bit dated. This is not, however, a severe handicap as most of the book deals with Einstein's work dating back more than 80 years.
Gardner has avoided almost all mathematics, thereby producing a book that quite philosophical. It is therefore an adjunct to a physics text that contains much more of the mathematics of relativity. Given that this book aims to simply explain relativity theory, the most relevant question is how well does it do this? The answer of course depends upon the reader's background. I think that this book will be a hard slog for a person with no physics background, but if one is willing to abandon some things that they might feel are intuitively obvious then they should get quite a bit from the book. A person with some physics background should get more from the book; especially as the book clearly shows how the basic assumptions of Newtonian physics differ from those of Einstein. The discussion of Minkowski's four dimensional space-time approach is also very illuminating. (Since there is no math in the book, this and non-Euclidian geometry are only generally discussed. The implications of dealing with a four dimensional description of a universe that we can only perceive in three dimensions helped to clarify some misconceptions that I had concerning the various analogies used to explain general relativity.) The book will be an interesting adjunct for those with still more of a background, but they will probably find the lack of any math a great hindrance. They may also disagree with some of the assertions made in the book.
The last part of the book deals with the application of relativity theory to cosmology. The chapter on the "Twin Paradox" was particularly interesting as it points out that there is still quite a bit of controversy surrounding the implications of the theory of relativity.
Really simple!.......2007-06-27
I still struggle as a physics teacher to understand relativity. This book was recommended by a college professor who understood my struggle. I can't say I completely grasp everything relativity related, but my understanding of this concept has increased greatly as a result of reading this book (and Einstein's biography by Isaacson). I feel better prepared to answer questions from my students regarding this subject. I also think this would be an appropriate book to recommend to a high school student.
Excellent in some parts, but a bit confusing in others.......2006-02-06
This book explains some of the relativistic concepts so well that even a kid can understand. However it can also get a bit confusing sometimes, especially when the author just threw in some facts or axioms without providing further explanation. Since I have read some other books of Martin Gardner's before and I know how great he is in expounding such complicated subjects as Relativity, I would assume that whenever things go unexplained they are probably unexplainable without using the advanced mathematical approach. So my advice is just accept them as true and learn the underpinning principles or maths behind them from the other books later, if you are really interested. Lastly, my review won't be complete without mentioning the wonderful illustrations in this book. As the author said it himself, you probably won't find another book on Relativity that is so elaborately illustrated, and these illustrations do help to clear up some of the confusions in the text. Overall, this book is fun to read and is definitely a great start for lay people who are totally new to the subject. I will recommend it to people who are interested in Relativity and who do not fear to think.
A great book to start with........2003-11-19
If you are looking for a comprehensive book to understand the nuances of Relativity theory, this isn't for you. However, if you are not mathematically inclined, or don't wish to dive into the math or physics just yet, this is a excellent choice.
This was the first book that I read on the subject of Einstein's theory. I found it entertaining and actually fun to read. I have not read any of Gardner's other books, but his writing style in this one makes for an easy read. It does not feel like you are reading much of a physics books at all.
Furthermore, the illustrations not only are well done, but they make it easier to understand the principles being explained.
If you are looking to know the basics of this theory, this is best book to own. Simple to read, good explanations, uncomplicated. If you are looking for more depth, than you will certainly move on to another book after this, but this is an excellent one to start with.
Doesn't explain things!.......2001-10-22
Reading this book, you will often cry "But WHY? ...Why does that follow from the axioms?"
In short, this book explains WHAT relativity says, but it's very buggy in explaining the REASONING behind those statements.
Some statements simply aren't explained well.
I was disappointed.
Maybe I am too stupid though.
Book Description
Readable and informative, this collection of 22 essays employs a minimum of mathematics to explain how the fourth dimension may be studied, the relationship of non-Euclidean geometry to the fourth dimension, analogues to three-dimensional space, four-dimensional absurdities and curiosities, and the simpler properties of four-dimensional space. 1910 edition. 82 figures.
Customer Reviews:
As easy as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.......2007-03-30
To understand the fourth dimension, we need to really understand the four that precede it.
The first dimension is 0. A square rendered 0 dimensionally would appear as follows: "." (a simple dot).
The second dimension (commonly called "the first dimension") extends the dot one direction as follows: "__" (a simple line).
The third dimension (commonly called "the second dimension") extends the line as follows: "[]" (a simple square...not connected here only because my keyboard can't technically create a completed square).
The fourth dimension (commonly called "the third dimension") extends the flat square to create a three dimensional cube...like a sugar cube.
Before taking the next step up dimensionally, it's probably best to understand the kind of thinking that's necessary by employing the square we previously discussed one dimension ago.
So if we were to create a plainiverse and give it two inhabitants being A Square and V Square in honor of the Abbott Abbott book Flatlands and the Stewart reprise Flatterlands they would appear as follows:
"[] / []"
In my example A and V would be unable to interact unless they removed the line between them. Though because we view their situation from a higher perspective and therefore know their relative whereabouts, A and V could only obtain this information by circumnativing the line in their planiverse (or by removing it).
In other words, to A and V "/" is the same kind of impediment that a wall we would be to any two people similarly separated here in our dimension.
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE FOURTH DIMENSION (as it is commonly called) WORKS, KINDLY ASSIST IN THIS EXPERIMENT.
Again, we create our planiverse, but this time, I would ask that you use a key, a toothpick or some other line like object to supply the "/" between A and V.
"[] []"
Now lift your line like object and you will observe that you eliminated the impediment between A and V. To their senses, the removal of the line would be nothing less than magic. To your sense, of course, no magic would be involved because all you did was to lift the line between A and V (albeit into the third dimension...an option ostensibly unavailable to them).
In this way, it can be observed that the step to the next dimension (commonly called "the fourth dimension") is accomplished by making use of an exotic avenue of motion...into what's called hyperspace. And not surprisngly a cube rendered four dimensionally would be called a hypercube.
As pointed out in this book, use of this motion in hyperspace would permit people to be able to walk through three dimensionally seeming solid walls and drink from three dimensionally seeming corked bottles.
As also pointed in this book, though the fourth dimension is commonly associated with time, there's no reason why this would have to necessarily be so. For example, even with the dot "." I previously created though it may exist 0 dimensionally on paper it continues to exist in time and therefore would not only appear as a mere point but a line if viewed durationally.
All the ideas described in this book gain additional currency because researchers just recently discovered an additional platonic solid found only four dimensionally...and consisting of 11 sides each of which faces a mate. If this idea strikes you as counter intuitive (even after having read the forgoing material) you are not alone because we are not evolutionarily designed to observe matters inconsistently with the traditional three dimensional points of physical reference with an additional dimension of sequential time.
In other words, by our very construction we might not be observing our universe the way it's really built and that's part of what makes the ideas behind this book and these investigations so thought provoking.
At the end of Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote: "Let the word go out to every Jon or Jonathan that there is more light to day than dawn. The sun is but a morningstar!"
How apparently right he was.
Average customer rating:
- Music of the Spheres is a companion for life.
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Music of the Spheres: The Material Universe From Atom to Quaser, Simply Explained (Volume II: The Microcosm: Matter, Atoms, Waves, Radiation, Relativity)
Guy Murchie
Manufacturer: Dover Publications, Inc
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Music of the Spheres: The Material Universe from Atom to Quasar, Simply Explained; VOLUME I, The Macrocosm: Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Cosmology
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The Seven Mysteries of Life
ASIN: 0486218104 |
Customer Reviews:
Music of the Spheres is a companion for life........1999-04-28
I first read Music of the Spheres over 30 years ago and that now ragged hardbound copy I read as a teenager is still, as ever since first reading it, the first book pulled from the shelf when I am curious about some natural phenomenon or need to explain in detail some theory of science e.g. Relativity and Quantum theory to one of my children. His poetic elucidations of the workings of the universe both teach the mind and touch the reader's heart. This book, along with his, The Seven Mysteries of Life, will provide both the student and lay teacher ample sources of reference for things scientific for a lifetime. Patrick Stonehouse
Book Description
While most historians, journalists, and filmmakers have focused on Los Angeles as a bastion of corporate greed, business boosterism, political corruption, cheap labor, exploited immigrants, and unregulated sprawl, The Next Los Angeles tells a different story: that of the reformers and radicals who have struggled for alternative visions of social and economic justice. In a new preface, the authors reflect on the gathering momentum of L.A.'s progressive movement, including the 2005 landslide victory of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor.
Book Description
Existing patterns of urbanization are unsustainable in the long run. Current development practices consume enormous amounts of land and resources, damage local ecosystems, produce pollutants, create huge inequalities between groups of people, and undermine local community and quality of life. Unfortunately planning has itself led to many unsustainable development practices.
Planning for Sustainability presents a straightforward, systematic analysis of how more sustainable cities and towns can be brought about. It does so in a highly readable manner that considers in turn each scale of planning: international, national, regional, municipal, neighborhood, site, and building. In the process it illustrates how sustainability initiatives at these different scales interrelate and how an overall framework can be developed for more liveable communities.
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Livable Streets, Protected Neighborhoods
Donald Appleyard
Manufacturer: Univ of California Pr
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ASIN: 0520036891 |
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The Architecture of Empowerment: People, Shelter and Livable Cities
Manufacturer: Academy Press
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ASIN: 1854904930 |
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The Architecture of Empowerment People, Shelter and Livable Cities Edited by Ismaïil Serageldin Foreword by Muhammad Yunus The architecture of empowerment is about challenging architects to do more than build for the poor . It invites them to rethink the premises of the process of design as much as the process of building. It challenges them to shed their assumed omnipotence and to become enablers for the poor. (Muhammad Yunus) In the wake of the second Habitat Conference, and with the urban population of the developing world set to treble in the next generation, Ismaïl Serageldin argues that architecture must both widen its scope and reassess its processes in order to address the needs of the poor. He emphasises that the provision of shelter and infrastructure is most effective when undertaken in close collaboration with the community - from concept design through to construction - and as part of a broader socio-economic strategy. Essays by Charles Correa, Michael Cohen and Suha Ã-zkan evaluate the need for this new approach, setting it in the context of current global forces - such as convergence and marginalisation - and preceding architectural solutions. Case studies from across the world demonstrate that the architecture of empowerment has already proved a successful and versatile solution to revitalising historic cities, upgrading slums and creating new settlements. A special section on micro-finance shows how the very poor can effectively improve their economic conditions. What is needed now, writes Ismaïl Serageldin, 'is the will to implement what we know and the determination to succeed'. Contributors include: Charles Correa, Mike Cohen, Suha Ã-zkan, Mohammad al-Asad, Selma al-Radi, Lailun Ekram, Rawia Fadel, Arif Hasan, Mona Serageldin, James Steele, Boguslaw Trondowski, Sameh Wahba, Muhammad Yunus. Other relevant titles published by Academy Include: Architecture Beyond Architecture, Cynthia C Davidson with Ismaïl Serageldin (eds); Building for Tomorrow, Azim Nanji (ed); Architecture for a Changing World, James Steele (ed); Architecture for Islamic Societies Today, James Steele (ed); Hassan Fathy, James Steele; Architecture of the Contemporary Mosque, Ismaïl Serageldin with James Steele (eds).
Book Description
An up-to-the-minute action guide, The Livable City: Revitalizing Urban Communities provides examples and strategies for improving the quality of life in urban, suburban, and exurban communities. Partners for Livable Communities, an organization noted for pushing the envelope of ideas on livability, has assembled the top names in urban planning and design to explore the New Urbanism's key issues, with over 50 best practices case studies, including international examples. A compelling chapter introduces you to the challenges facing cities in the next decade, with provocative ideas for meeting them. You'll discover new solutions to the thorny problems of achieving regional cooperation...keeping downtowns alive 24 hours a day...finding resources for improving the outcomes of at-risk youth...global competition and jobs for the next century...and housing and communities. A chapter on paying for the workable ideas rounds out a game plan for the livable city.
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Livable Cities?: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change (Urban and Industrial Environments)
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Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
ASIN: 0520230256 |
Book Description
The sprawling cities of the developing world are vibrant hubs of economic growth, but they are also increasingly ecologically unsustainable and, for ordinary citizens, increasingly unlivable. Pollution is rising, affordable housing is decreasing, and green space is shrinking. Since three-quarters of those joining the world's population during the next century will live in Third World cities, making these urban areas more livable is one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century. This book explores the linked issues of livelihood and ecological sustainability in major cities of the developing and transitional world. Livable Cities? identifies important strategies for collective solutions by showing how political alliances among local communities, nongovernmental organizations, and public agencies can help ordinary citizens live better lives.
Book Description
Inspiring and accessible, Toward the Livable City combines firsthand accounts of the attractions –– and distractions –– of urban life to show how to create successful cities. For city dwellers and commuters, urban planners and architects, neighborhood groups and activists, this book outlines specific strategies for change. Fifteen leading thinkers including James Howard Kunstler, Jane Holtz Kay, Tony Hiss, Bill McKibben, and Jay Walljasper explore smart growth, riverfront redevelopment, urban farming, pedestrian rights, traffic, opportunity-based housing, and suburban vs. city living. They tell how the mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, built dedicated busways and closed downtown streets to cars; how urban agriculture in vacant lots and backyards in Boston produces 10,000 pounds of vegetables each season; and how Minneapolis successfully redeveloped its riverfront, among other shining examples. Photographs are featured.
Customer Reviews:
A better place to live.......2004-05-02
My home town is developing an Arkansas River Master Plan in an effort to merge the river and city into some type of livable arrangement that will be both sensitive to the environment and the needs of residents along the river as well as through out the community. Thus, I was most interested in the theme of this book; that being urban planning.
The book is a series of seventeen essays by a panel of respected contributors that discusses innovative proposals and doable strategies for dealing with such intense urban issues as sustainable growth, traffic management, safe neighborhoods and riverfront redevelopment in a non-technical manner that tends to fill in the gaps between those that study such matters and those that actually live them. For example, in "City Places, Sacred Places," Terrell Dixon urges the reader to consider the notion that an urban nature walk is not an oxymoron and indeed is vital to American cities. The essay titled "The Region, the True City," by Myron Orfield argues the city and suburbs are intertwined and the old fashioned idea of working together is, after all, the best policy. Two essays, "Reinventing A Vibrant Riverfront," by Judith A.Martin and "The Empty Harbor and the Dilemma of Waterfront Development," by Phillip Lopate deal with water development issues in Minneapolis and New York respectively and will be of particular interest to all those remotely interested in planning for any type of River development.
In addition to the thought provoking essays there is a helpful reading list, a listing of Public Interest Organizations complete with websites and a comprehensive index.
This is a must have book for anyone interested in the concept of a truly livable city regardless of their level of expertise or involvement. The contributors manage to seriously discuss the possibilities of a livable city without succumbing to the usual tendency of discussing eye-glazing issues like tax policy, arcane zoning matters and other issues traditionally favored by city builders, planners and other professionals. The book will appeal both to the professional and layman alike and will help bring the readr up to speed on the latest proposals, ideas and suggestions to make our cities and yes, even our rivers, a better place to live.
Book Description
The smart growth movement aims to combat urban and suburban sprawl by promoting livable communities based on pedestrian scale, diverse populations, and mixed land use. But, as this book documents, smart growth has largely failed to address issues of social equity and environmental justice. Smart growth sometimes results in gentrification and displacement of low- and moderate-income families in existing neighborhoods, or transportation policies that isolate low-income populations. Growing Smarter is one of the few books to view smart growth from an environmental justice perspective, examining the effect of the built environment on access to economic opportunity and quality of life in American cities and metropolitan regions.
The contributors to Growing Smarter--urban planners, sociologists, economists, educators, lawyers, health professionals, and environmentalists--all place equity at the center of their analyses of "place, space, and race." They consider such topics as the social and environmental effects of sprawl, the relationship between sprawl and concentrated poverty, and community-based regionalism that can link cities and suburbs. They examine specific cases that illustrate opportunities for integrating environmental justice concerns into smart growth efforts, including the dynamics of sprawl in a South Carolina county, the debate over the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and transportation-related pollution in Northern Manhattan. Growing Smarter illuminates the growing racial and class divisions in metropolitan areas today--and suggests workable strategies to address them.
Contributors:
Carl Anthony, Robert D. Bullard, Don Chen, Daniel J. Hutch, Glenn S. Johnson, William A. Johnson, Kimberly Morland, Myron Orfield, David A. Padgett, Manuel Pastor, Jr., john a. powell, Swati Prakash, Thomas W. Sanchez, Angel O. Torres, Maya Wiley, Steve Wing, James F. Wolf, and Beverly Wright
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- Single Variable Calculus: Concepts and Contexts (with Tools for Enriching Calculus, Interactive Video Skillbuilder CD-ROM, and iLrn Homework/Personal Tutor with SMARTHINKING)
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