The Atom and the Apple

The Atom and the Apple

“I’d like to describe some of the fascinating things that scientists have recently been inspired to find out about the world around us.” With these modest words, Sébastien Balibar opens The Atom and the Apple, a charming and often personal journey along the frontiers of experimental physics. Chaos theory, cosmology, fluid mechanics and climatology are just a few of the topics we encounter with Balibar as a guide.

How did we discover the age of the Earth? How do we know the expansion of the Universe is accelerating? How does the collective behavior of atoms lead to such wonders as lasers and superconductors? These are the sorts of mysteries we explore. In one of the book’s 12 “tales,” Balibar explores the role of symmetry in physics; as we discover, the so-called weak interaction—which comes into play during some nuclear disintegration processes—does not occur the same way in our world as it would in a world where things are mirror-reversed.

Another tale describes the conception and creation of an Einstein-Bose condensate, a strange form of matter in which, below a certain critical temperature, the constituent atoms have fallen into their lowest-energy state and act as one giant atom—their identities as separate particles disappears. (The author also explains why a row of soldiers marching in lockstep is not a good model for this phenomenon.) Balibar takes us into his own specialty, solid-state physics, to explore a question that took him 10 years to answer: Why do crystals have facets? Further along, he shows how a study of musical acoustics can help us get a grip on the physical phenomenon of chaos, and explains why the spiral patterns of pinecones and sunflowers are related to the Golden Ratio in mathematics.

The Atom and the Apple eloquently conveys the rewards of the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Hardcover: 200 pages

Publisher: Princeton University Press ( December 01, 2008 )

Item #: 65-7332

ISBN: 9780691131085

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 0.0 inches

Product Weight: 14.0 ounces