Joanne O’Meara reviews Ten Days in Physics that Shook the World: How Physicists Transformed Everyday Life by Brian Clegg
They say in real estate there are only three things that really matter: location, location, location. People who think seriously about science communication have a similar mantra about what to focus on: audience, audience, audience. Everything is dictated by who you intend to communicate with, from the analogies you choose to the zigs and zags of your storyline twists.
With Ten Days in Physics that Shook the World: How Physicists Transformed Everyday Life, popular-science writer Brian Clegg sets out to engage a general audience with a dive into 10 key breakthroughs that have transformed our lives. The book has an overarching philosophy of connecting these pivotal events to their subsequent impacts, to provide relevance to the non-physicist reader.
Clegg starts with Newton’s publication of the Principia in 1687 and ends with the establishment of the first link of the Internet in 1969, by computer scientists Steve Crocker and Vint Cerf. Each short chapter sets the scene with respect to what was known or believed scientifically at the time. There is also a little biographical sketch of each main character, at least for the first seven topics, and a scattering of fun asides that dig a little deeper into related tangents. For example, the chapter on Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction briefly discusses the (possibly apocryphal) story of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in a thunderstorm to study electricity.
For a reader with little to no background in physics, Clegg gives bite-sized overviews of the major concepts, from Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics to electromagnetism and radioactivity. Each chapter ends with a list of life-changing applications that have evolved from breakthroughs in our understanding of these phenomena. There are passages that clearly indicate a background in physics is not assumed:
“modern physicists, since Maxwell, try to get a better understanding of the world around them by building systems of mathematics that produce numbers that correspond to what happens in the natural world”
Other sections, however, seem likely to be significantly more opaque for a non-technical reader, such as this one on experiments that appear to cool matter below absolute zero:
“The circumstances in which such an effect occurs are having a gas in which most of the particles have very high energy (though not kinetic energy). The combination of high energy and low number of ways to organize the constituent parts means that the usual distribution of energies in a gas is inverted; this has been, somewhat artificially, represented as having a negative absolute temperature, despite the contents not being cooled below absolute zero.”
Non-physicists can likely skip over some of these more detailed passages without losing the main thread of the chapter, but it did strike me that there were several instances where an editor could (should) have asked: is this level of detail or this tangent necessary? For example, most of a page is devoted to the question of whether or not Newton was born on 25 December in the year in which Galileo died.
As a physicist, and perhaps not the primary target audience, I found the greatest value came from the historical context. For example, I learned that the word “transistor” was chosen by polling employees at the lab where the first such device was successfully made; that an early example of network theory was a problem called the Seven Bridges of Königsberg, solved by Euler in 1736; and that both the Romans and Greeks believed you could stop a magnet from working by rubbing it with garlic and then restore its power by dipping it in goat’s blood.
This could make for a fun diversion in the undergraduate electricity and magnetism course I teach. These and other examples scattered throughout the book inject some colour into the storytelling, making it both more entertaining and more memorable.
The biggest absence in this book, in my opinion, is that the subsections describing the human side of the featured scientists only appear in the chapters about breakthroughs 1 to 7. Clegg explains his departure from the general structure as being due to the changing nature of research, away from individual study and towards teamwork, “where there is less benefit to understanding the development in exploring individual lives in any detail”. But why is this the only reason to explore the lives of the scientists associated with these breakthroughs? Colour, character, conflict and context are all important elements in storytelling.
How the technology we create changes us
I would love to know more about John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, pioneers of the transistor; James Biard and Gary Pittman, who first patented the light-emitting diode; and Internet developers Crocker and Cerf, than just their dates/places of birth and the educational institutes they attended. The trope of the physicist as a single-minded, socially awkward loner could have been explored critically here. Instead, in five of the seven profiles we encounter descriptions such as: “one of the more isolated workers in the field” (Newton); “generally avoided socializing” (Faraday); “a determined worker, still said to have been continuing his academic work on his deathbed” (Clausius); “initially socially awkward” (Maxwell); “considered paternalistic and overbearing” (Kamerlingh Onnes).
By not including a three-dimensional sketch of the personalities associated with the more recent advances, Clegg misses a golden opportunity to highlight the diverse and complex nature of today’s scientists
The nature of research has irrefutably moved away from the individual natural philosopher experimenting as a hobby. But by not including a three-dimensional sketch of the personalities associated with the more recent advances, Clegg misses a golden opportunity to highlight the diverse and complex nature of today’s scientists, sadly leaving the stereotype to prevail unchallenged.
Nevertheless, if you have a friend or family member who wants to learn more about the big concepts in physics, this is an interesting approach written in a style that is largely accessible for a general audience. Stitching together 10 major breakthroughs with an emphasis on their impact on our everyday lives provides an engaging structure, with enough elements of narrative to hold the reader’s attention.
- 2021 Icon Books £12.99hb 240pp
