Books on time travel, calculus, science experiments for children and more, reviewed by Margaret Harris, Matin Durrani and Tushna Commissariat
Do-it-yourself time travel
Most of us have at some point wondered whether time travel is possible. In Build Your Own Time Machine, author Brian Clegg uses this widespread interest as an excuse to explore the many avenues of time travel – or, more specifically, human perceptions and the scientific concept of “time”. While readers sadly will not find a chapter containing blueprints for a working time machine, Clegg does explain complex fundamental ideas such as relativity, thermodynamics and quantum theory in a simple and clear style, interspersed with chapters that cover everything from Plato and Aristotle’s view of time to the evolution of the modern-day calendar, cryogenics and wormholes. The book is peppered with quirky facts such as “A frequent flyer ages around one-thousandth of a second less than a counterpart on the ground after 40 years of weekly Atlantic crossings,” and it also features short biographies of famous people involved in the study of time. One especially nice twist occurs when Clegg draws the reader’s attention to the fact that they are constantly moving through time, even as they read his book. So although you will not have built your time machine at the end of the book, you will certainly have done some time travelling.
- 2012/2011 Duckworth/St Martin’s Press £14.99/$25.99hb 300pp
Do try this at home…
Marvin the cat and Milo the dog love science. In fact, they love science so much that they have burst out of their usual home on the back page of the Institute of Physics’ Interactions newspaper and into a bright little book called Marvin and Milo: Adventures in Science. Like the original cartoon series, which has appeared regularly in Interactions since 2004, the book features a series of fun, simple experiments in which Marvin and Milo illustrate basic principles of physics using ordinary household items. The pair specialize in counterintuitive demonstrations, so the results of their experiments often seem magical. A good example is experiment 26, in which Marvin shows Milo how to make water run down a string as it is poured out of a jug. Of course, as Marvin explains, this is not really magic – instead, it is a fluid-physics phenomenon called the Coanda effect – and the text on the facing page notes that the same principle can make flowing water “stick” to the underside of a sloping gutter. Like Marvin and Milo themselves, artist Vic Le Billon and author Caitlin Watson (who is the Institute’s head of public engagement) form a great team, and their book would make an excellent gift for the under-11 crowd.
- 2011 Macmillan £9.99hb 96pp
…or perhaps not
With its lurid green, yellow and red colour scheme, exclamation marks and comic-book styling, the cover of The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science screams with excitement. “Smashing atoms! Making gunpowder!” it shouts. “Hey kids! Try these experiments at home!” Unfortunately, anyone who looks inside expecting to actually smash atoms or make gunpowder will be sorely disappointed; the book’s most dangerous experiment involves nothing more hazardous than boiling water in a paper cup. Author Sean Connolly’s explanations are clear and entertaining, and young scientists who manage to reset their expectations will certainly find some fun activities for a winter’s day. Still, the book’s most valuable lesson is that old cliché: you can’t judge a book by its cover.
- 2010 Workman Publishing $13.95hb 205pp
Life, maths and everything
In the spring of 1977 Steven Strogatz wrote a letter to his former high-school calculus teacher, Don Joffray, about a mathematical puzzle known as a “chase problem”. Suppose four dogs start from the corners of a square with sides of length a, Strogatz suggested. If each runs (at the same speed) directly towards the one counterclockwise from it, how far will each dog have travelled when the four meet in the centre? The answer (it is a, the length of the square’s sides – can you figure out why?) was not important, but the letter proved to be the start of an extraordinary mathematical correspondence, one that would ebb and flow for nearly three decades. During that time, Strogatz would graduate, earn a PhD and become a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. Meanwhile, “Joff” would remain in the classroom for another 22 years, admiring his former star pupil’s exploits from afar, before eventually retiring to spend more time canoeing on his beloved Long Island Sound. For most of this period, the two men’s correspondence was almost exclusively calculus-based. The only problems they talked about were the sort you could solve with clever substitutions and a few pages of algebra. Eventually, though, things began to change: first gradually, like the continuous functions of calculus, then in a series of abrupt shifts that echoed phenomena in Strogatz’ own research on chaos theory. Strogatz’ chronicle of the two men’s correspondence, The Calculus of Friendship, is simultaneously a fun collection of mathematical puzzles and a moving, bittersweet account of how his relationship with Joff evolved. The hardcover version was first published in the US in 2009, but it is now available in paperback – so there is no excuse not to send your favourite mathematician a copy.
- 2011 Princeton University Press £10.95/$14.95pb 184pp
Cosmic soundbites
It sounds a neat idea: a book that answers 140 different questions about the solar system, our galaxy and the wider cosmos in segments of no more than 140 characters each (the standard length of Twitter messages). Tweeting the Universe: Tiny Explanations of Very Big Ideas by science writers Marcus Chown and Govert Schilling does pretty much what it promises to do, with bite-sized sentences about, for example, whether there is water on Mars (yes, but it is frozen), what happened before the Big Bang (not sure) and whether it is dangerous to fly through the asteroid belt (not really). While the restriction in character numbers was no doubt a diverting and useful constraint for the authors – brevity is the soul of wit and all that – the resulting Tweets are far from poetic, with definite articles and conjunctions often lopped off to save space. Moreover, each question is answered in the form of a dozen or so Tweets, making the explanations more like 1700 characters long and spread over two printed pages. So why not, if there are two pages, use them all up with old-fashioned prose? In fact, the introduction, which is conventionally written, is probably the best part of the book. Still, if this book’s ploy, which emerged from a column Schilling writes for the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, encourages an interest in physics among the Twitter generation, it
will have served a useful purpose.
- Faber and Faber £12.99/$18.56hb 311pp
Adventures in the outside
In the year 2110 the world’s population is divided. After decades of fruitless activism, a separatist “Ecommunity” has cut itself off from the technologically advanced “Outside” world, seeking refuge from climate change and the degenerate values of modern society. Ecommunity members are free to grow their own food, worship nature and study ancient cultures – but their vaguely sinister hierarchy prohibits them from inquiring about science, because “prying leads to meddling leads to destruction”. As the premise of a science-fiction novel, this is promising stuff, but Zvi Schreiber’s Fizz quickly takes an unexpected turn. It turns out that the book’s eponymous heroine wants a bit more out of life than eco-hymns and harvest festivals; in particular, young Fizz is passionately curious about physics and astronomy. So when a loophole in the Ecommunity’s rules allows her to visit the Outside on her 18th birthday, she seizes the opportunity to learn more. What follows is a time-travelling adventure that takes Fizz from ancient Greece to 21st-century England as she seeks to understand how the physical world works. Along the way, she is aided by many of history’s most famous scientists, as well as a few well-chosen plot devices (for example, her time machine is thoughtfully equipped with a 3D printer that produces era-appropriate clothing). This mixture of popular physics and young-adult fiction is unusual, to say the least, but it works surprisingly well and readers will quickly find themselves caring about Schreiber’s characters and Fizz’s personal dilemmas.
- 2011 Zedess Publishing $11.95pb 516pp
Just add cartoons
“Physics with a chuckle is physics more easily remembered.” So says Richard Muller in his introduction to The Instant Physicist, which puts this principle to the test by pairing short discussions of non-intuitive physics with a series of cartoons. The book – which seems tailor-made for the stocking-filler season – concentrates on topics related to hot-button issues, including energy, climate science and (especially) radioactivity. Joey Manfre’s sketches add a nice touch, but cartoons aside, The Instant Physicist is essentially a slimmed-down version of Muller’s previous book Physics For Future Presidents (2008 W W Norton). Readers who crave a bit more substance from their festive reading should probably look there instead.
- 2011 W W Norton £12.99/$16.95hb 144pp
