The Story of Science: Einstein Adds a New Dimension
Smithsonian Books, (November 2007)Abstract
Sometimes it can seem like science just comes fully formed--a textbook can
tell us the Milky Way is a galaxy, the Sun is 93 million miles away, or
gravity bends light. But such a book often leaves out some of the most
interesting stuff about that hard-won knowledge: how anyone ever figured it
out, and even why anyone was wondering about it to begin with.
It turns out that those stories--the stories of the how and the why--are some
of the most interesting in all of history. Those stories are full of adventure
and bravery, boldness and luck, and the discoverers are often those willing to
stand up and call false what everyone else believes to be true. At the end of
the nineteenth century, for example, Lord Kelvin, one of the time's preeminent
physicists--and the sort of guy who everyone else listens to, just because--
declared that all that was left to do in physics was to make more and more
precise measurements of the world. Within a couple decades of Kelvin's
pronouncement, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and others would show
just how wrong he was.
Joy Hakim's \_The Story of Science: Einstein Adds a New Dimension\_ culminates
with their discoveries: the quantum world, the theory of relativity, and
nuclear physics. These discoveries created our modern world, from solar-
powered calculators to cell phones to global positioning systems and the
atomic bomb, and opened our eyes to the expanding Universe, the Big Bang, and
much more.
A science book unlike any other, \_Einstein Adds a New Dimension\_ pairs a
gripping narrative style with informative sidebars; hundreds of charts, maps,
and diagrams; suggestions for further reading; and excerpts from the writings
of great scientists.
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