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A review by calarco
The Physics of Christmas: From the Aerodynamics of Reindeer to the Thermodynamics of Turkey by Roger Highfield
2.0
Sadly, this was not the Christmas treat I was hoping for; I got this book over a decade ago thinking it would be a fun exploration of a holiday from a scientific perspective. After finally reading it I found it to be a boring hodgepodge of mostly nonsense.
For something that is called The Physics of Christmas, physics is not really discussed in great depth until chapter 11, "Santa's Science." Instead it contains snippets of anthropology, sociology, chemistry, religious studies, history, psychology, and astrology to explain different arbitrary xmas-y themes.
This may just be a pet peeve of mine, but I felt that many of these concepts were poorly developed given their shallow setups, and worse they were poorly cited. If you do not cite your sources, or at least provide the proper context for them, it is really hard for the work to come off as anything more than glittery bullshit.
I also found it to be quite boring, but that is a matter of personal preference. A good litmus test - if you find the following quote fun and whimsical, ignore my critiques. If you find this quote to be dry and tedious, then you probably also won't like this book, "Ritual alcoholic abuse of the body has gone on for thousands of years, thanks to one of the most ancient techniques of biotechnology--the fermentation of fruit and grain by activity of fungi called yeasts" (188). There you go.
I'll admit I've probably been spoiled by too much greatly produced PBS content, so maybe I'm nitpicky. I know Highfield wanted to negate the notion that quantifying something magical would detract the experience, but sadly I don't think he succeeded. I was demystified. Anyways, this book is on my naughty list, but feel free to decide for yourself.
For something that is called The Physics of Christmas, physics is not really discussed in great depth until chapter 11, "Santa's Science." Instead it contains snippets of anthropology, sociology, chemistry, religious studies, history, psychology, and astrology to explain different arbitrary xmas-y themes.
This may just be a pet peeve of mine, but I felt that many of these concepts were poorly developed given their shallow setups, and worse they were poorly cited. If you do not cite your sources, or at least provide the proper context for them, it is really hard for the work to come off as anything more than glittery bullshit.
I also found it to be quite boring, but that is a matter of personal preference. A good litmus test - if you find the following quote fun and whimsical, ignore my critiques. If you find this quote to be dry and tedious, then you probably also won't like this book, "Ritual alcoholic abuse of the body has gone on for thousands of years, thanks to one of the most ancient techniques of biotechnology--the fermentation of fruit and grain by activity of fungi called yeasts" (188). There you go.
I'll admit I've probably been spoiled by too much greatly produced PBS content, so maybe I'm nitpicky. I know Highfield wanted to negate the notion that quantifying something magical would detract the experience, but sadly I don't think he succeeded. I was demystified. Anyways, this book is on my naughty list, but feel free to decide for yourself.