Skip to main content
Particle and nuclear

Particle and nuclear

Particle physics made easy

02 Jun 1998

Q is for Quantum: The A-Z of Particle Physics
John Gribbin
1998 Weidenfeld and Nicolson 545pp £20.00hb

Is it possible to really understand asymptotic freedom, superstrings and other jargon from particle physics without knowing any relevant mathematics whatsoever? John Gribbin certainly thinks so. In a series of books that began with In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, Gribbin has tried to explain the mysteries of the sub-atomic world to non-experts.

Now he has compiled this dictionary of particle physics, which should be useful for students who need to bluff their way through tutorials, science journalists who want snappy definitions of tricky concepts, and ordinary physicists who feel guilty at not knowing what quantum chromodynamics, parity non-conservation and spontaneous symmetry breaking are really about.

Without resorting to maths or equations, the book combines short entries on familiar terms, such as baryons, bosons and beta decay, with longer, feature-length items on major subjects from particle physics – including almost eight pages on string theory alone. But to alleviate what might otherwise be an unduly heavy diet, Gribbin includes potted biographies of eminent physicists, such as Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Oppenheimer and Abdus Salam. Excursions into related fields such as quantum cryptography, black holes and time travel are also provided.

Related events

Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors