Weekly Book Post - QED
Apr 9th, 2008 by learningumbrella
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter sets out to be a book for the intelligent outsider to understand quantam electrodynamics. To a certain extent, it’s very successful in that endeavor. Feynman’s tone comes across as a humorous geek, and I could follow most of his explanations. However, this is a very complicated theory and it sort of boggles my mind to think about light not going in straight lines and sometimes bouncing all over the place and finding all of these amplitudes for where it could go and adding or multiplying the angle and length of all these arrows to determine the probability of each possible event. At this level, Nature is a twisted creation. But if you want to read about the part of quantam theory that actually works and is not speculation, this is a good book to start with.
Children’s Books:
Charlotte’s Web is a classic for a reason. There is a loving realism to this magical tale that I adore. The smell of manure, the chatter of geese, the breeze - these are the things that are celebrated about life in this book. And, of course, friendship. But what I really like is that the story stays grounded in the fact that life doesn’t go on forever, even though it’s about saving Wilbur’s life. That’s why Charlotte has to die - because otherwise it’s too much of a fairy tale. Real life always has death at the end.
I Face the Wind is an excellent science book for young children, written to encourage hands on exploration as you read. Even if you don’t gather the supplies and do the hands on part, the book is very effective as a way to ask the children to make predictions and think about air and wind.
