Mastering quantum mechanics

Leonard Susskind’s book The Theoretical Minimum was a surprise bestseller in 2013, defying conventional wisdom about the perils of mixing equations and popular science. Its sequel, Quantum Mechanics: the Theoretical Minimum, is similar in many ways. Both books are based on Susskind’s popular continuing-education course at Stanford University. Both were co-written with one of his students in that course, although this time around, Art Friedman, a data consultant and former software engineer, has taken over the co-author role from science educator George Hrabovsky. And of course, the new book is just as mathematical as its predecessor. But there are also some differences. As Susskind and Friedman point out, quantum mechanics is “technically much easier” than its classical predecessor, but it is famously hard to get one’s head around. Their book also takes a different approach from that of many undergraduate quantum-mechanics courses, covering entanglement, quantum information and even tensor products before encountering that old standby, the simple harmonic oscillator, in the 10th and final lecture. Readers who have seen such material before, even if in the distant past, will probably get more out of Quantum Mechanics than complete newcomers will. Indeed, Friedman himself qualifies as a lapsed quantum mechanic, having earned an undergraduate degree in physics before switching to computer science. As he puts it, “the world seems filled with people who are genuinely, deeply, interested in physics but whose lives have taken them in different directions. This book is for all of us”.

• 2014 Allen Lane/Basic Books £20.00/$26.99hb 384pp

Now try writing about it

Tendencies towards over-formality and obfuscation in written communications by scientific practitioners have been shown to inhibit reader comprehension. Fortunately, as Anne Greene demonstrates in her book Writing Science in Plain English, such problems are not inevitable. Greene teaches scientific writing at the University of Montana, and her book offers solutions to many common faults, including wordy phrases, passive voice and poor sentence structure. She also digs into topics such as the “register”, or tone, of a piece of writing. In casual conversations, most people employ an informal register (“How the heck do porcupines manage to mate with all those spines everywhere?”), but authors of journal articles tend to use the abstract register (“The assessment of strong direction tendencies of the North American porcupine was made…”). In Greene’s view, neither register is appropriate for scientific writing. Instead, she recommends the “conventional register”, where the author tells a story with identifiable characters in a formal and emotionally neutral way (“Male porcupines are polygamous and defend several females, and I hypothesized that competitively dominant males would have larger home ranges”). The book’s numerous exercises give readers the chance to practise their writing and editing skills, while excerpts from well-written papers in a variety of disciplines (including astronomy and genetics as well as wildlife biology) offer inspiration. Slim enough to read on a short-haul flight and small enough to tuck into a laptop case, this book makes a good travelling companion for physicists who want to improve their professional communication skills. After all, education doesn’t stop when you graduate.

• 2013 University of Chicago Press £9.00/$13.00pb 136pp

Fun and educational

When the list of children waiting to join Caroline Alliston’s UK-based science club grew longer than the club’s actual membership roll, she knew that she was doing something right. However, the engineer and mother of two also knew that she couldn’t be in three places at once. Her solution was to collect some of her club’s most successful experiments and publish them for others to use. Alliston’s latest collection, Physics for Fun, follows two that were nominally devoted to technology and features 30 all-new projects. The book gives roughly equal space to mechanical projects (such as a miniature trebuchet) and electrical ones (including a hydrogen generator and a model house with working doorbell, lights and fan). Most experiments require only common household items, and tweens and young teens should be able to build them without much adult guidance. However, the physics behind some is rather complex, and Alliston’s short, child-friendly scientific explanations do not always do it justice. The second project in the book, for example, is a spectroscope made from an old compact disc. Although the spectroscope is fairly easy to construct, a proper explanation of how it actually works would challenge A-level students, never mind the book’s target audience of children aged 7–14 years. Long on fun but perhaps a little short on physics, Physics for Fun nevertheless makes a good source of ideas for parents, teachers and would-be science-club founders.

• 2013 Alliston Publishing £5.00pb 60pp