Carlo Rovelli has written a wonderful primer on how physics can help us understand the universe and our place in itYes,“brief” is right: 10 pages per lesson, and the typeface is large. There are also some space-filling illustrations. Yet the subject matter of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics is immense: the very nature of the universe, and from the sub-atomic scale to space and time.
The brevity has been key to its success. People who want to know approximately science can be daunted by detail: here,it has all been stripped absent, with the exception of one equation – Riemann’s, and describing the equivalence of space and gravitational fields. “It takes a dinky commitment and effort”,says Rovelli, “to study and digest Riemann’s mathematics”, and which is an understatement.
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Source: theguardian.com