Physics Over Easy: Breakfasts With Beth and Physics

Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 12
Physicists, and Other People......Page 14
How It All Began — with Rolling Balls......Page 18
What Keeps the Ball Rolling?......Page 28
Why Does an Apple Fall From a Tree?......Page 34
But It Takes Energy to Keep Moving......Page 43
How Hot is It?......Page 48
Putting Heat to Work......Page 50
First Law: You Can’t Win......Page 57
Second Law: Nor Can You Break Even......Page 59
Go Fly a Kite!......Page 65
Storing Electricity......Page 70
Electricity in Matter......Page 77
a.c./d.c.......Page 84
Magnetic Forces......Page 90
Magnetic Fields......Page 94
What Maxwell Wrought......Page 100
Making Waves......Page 106
What Waves Can Do......Page 110
What is Light?......Page 119
How and What We See......Page 122
It’s a Colorful World!......Page 129
What’s the Speed of Light?......Page 134
Is it Really Relative?......Page 136
The Paradoxes of Relativity and Black Holes......Page 139
Does Anyone Believe in Quanta?......Page 145
What About Atoms?......Page 149
What’s a Wave Function?......Page 158
Born and Heisenberg Have the Answer......Page 163
Atoms Can Be Fun......Page 168
What Attracts Atoms to Each Other?......Page 177
Surrounded by Fluids......Page 183
We Depend on Solids......Page 186
Who’s Afraid of Radioactivity?......Page 191
What’s Inside the Nucleus?......Page 195
For Better or For Worse — Nuclear Energy......Page 198
Our Nuclear Legacy......Page 209
A Mess of Particles......Page 213
What, More Conservation Laws?......Page 218
Quarks and More Quarks......Page 223
The GUTS of Physics......Page 229
Einstein Centennial......Page 233
A Promising Nanotechnology......Page 236
Quantum Entanglement......Page 239
Quantum Computers......Page 242
Bose-Einstein Condensates......Page 245
Our Energy Problems......Page 251
Energy Wastes......Page 252
The Good News about Nukes......Page 254
How It All Began......Page 257
Cosmic Microwave Background......Page 258
Big Bang......Page 259
Inflationary Universe......Page 262
Probing the Cosmic Microwave Background......Page 264
The Stars in Heaven......Page 267
Red Giants and White Dwarfs......Page 269
Supernovae and Neutron Stars......Page 273
Black Holes......Page 276
Supernovae as Standard Candles......Page 278
Glossary of Physics Terms......Page 281
Acknowledgments......Page 292
Index......Page 294