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kiersomething 's review for:
Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
by Carlo Rovelli
As someone who hasn't taken any college physics classes, and sat through most of her high school physics class thinking, "oh I finally understand this" and then got back her tests with "you forgot about this tiny thing that still throws off all of your equations by a huge amount", I was expecting to read a chapter of this book, realize I was out of my depth, and give up.
But this is a really approachable overview of physics from Leucippus (who I'd never heard of) through Heisenberg (through a different lens than I read of his work through in chemistry) and Einstein (obviously) and many more.
This book breaks things down into very understandable chunks, with helpful diagrams showing the evolution of the field's perception of reality throughout. Coming from a technical writing perspective, the different chunks and the transitions through chapters also seemed really well thought out and helpful to me.
There are definitely pieces I'm going to have to go back to and re-read, and since it's physics it did still make me squint my brain at the world and tilt to try to wrap my head around certain things (especially quantum gravity and chapter 7 - "Time Does Not Exist")--but it was all very well explained. If you're a physics major, you'll probably feel a little over-explained at times, but I honestly think it could still be helpful if your teachers always took an equation-only approach to physics. It's easy to get wrapped up in the equations and miss the evolution of ideas in a field, and I think the emphasis on the evolution of the way physicists dissect reality was one of the driving factors for my appreciation of this book.
But this is a really approachable overview of physics from Leucippus (who I'd never heard of) through Heisenberg (through a different lens than I read of his work through in chemistry) and Einstein (obviously) and many more.
This book breaks things down into very understandable chunks, with helpful diagrams showing the evolution of the field's perception of reality throughout. Coming from a technical writing perspective, the different chunks and the transitions through chapters also seemed really well thought out and helpful to me.
There are definitely pieces I'm going to have to go back to and re-read, and since it's physics it did still make me squint my brain at the world and tilt to try to wrap my head around certain things (especially quantum gravity and chapter 7 - "Time Does Not Exist")--but it was all very well explained. If you're a physics major, you'll probably feel a little over-explained at times, but I honestly think it could still be helpful if your teachers always took an equation-only approach to physics. It's easy to get wrapped up in the equations and miss the evolution of ideas in a field, and I think the emphasis on the evolution of the way physicists dissect reality was one of the driving factors for my appreciation of this book.