UNIVERSE ON A T-SHIRT

Reviewed 6/17/2004

Universe on a T-Shirt, by Dan Falk

I added the orange border

Access to this book courtesy of the
Santa Clara, CA City Public Library
UNIVERSE ON A T-SHIRT
The Quest for the Theory of Everything
Dan Falk
New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002

Rating:

5.0

High

ISBN 1-55970-707-0 246p. HC/BWI $24.95

Errata

Page 76: "Another Italian, the physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), took the next step. In 1800, he produced the "voltaic pile"—a stack of alternating layers of silver, zinc and cardboard which, when placed in an electrical circuit, produced a continuous stream of electricity."
  There's one ingredient missing: the electrolyte, which I believe was lemon juice.
Page 86: "These waves had always existed, of course, but they lay hidden until a series of inspired thinkers, from Oersted to Maxwell, brought them to light."
  The author acknowledges the previous pun (page 83) — why not this one?
Page 103: Einstein quote: "I cannot find time to write because I am occupied with truly great things. Day and night I rack my brain in an effort to penetrate more deeply into ... the fundamental problems of physics."
  S/B "wrack".
Page 108: "Bad weather hampered an attempt to study an eclipse in South America in 1912; the First World War prevented an expedition to the Black Sea for the eclipse of 1914."
  It was hoped that these eclipses would provide proof of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity — as the one on 29 May 1919 did. What concerns me is that, on page 105, the author states that Einstein did not complete GR until the fall of 1915.
Page 115: "So far, the nature of this force is unknown, though one possibility is that Einstein's 'fudge' was in fact correct..."
  S/B "fudge factor".
Page 119: "Atoms really do exist, it turned out—but the tools needed to probe them directly didn't arrive until the Scientific Revolution was well underway."
  S/B "under way".
Page 122: "According to the old theory, as an object is heated, the most intense radiation should come at shorter and shorter wavelengths. When you switched on a stove, you should be blinded by a burst of ultraviolet radiation and X-rays. Obviously, this does not happen."
  Obviously, indeed. There's no way an ordinary kitchen stove can produce such high temperatures — even if it runs full-blast constantly.
Page 170: "A number of experiments designed to test the behavior of gravity at millimeter and sub-millimeter scale are now underway in U.S. and European labs."
  S/B "under way".
Page 192: In order to see an object, light must reflect off the object and enter our eyes. To see an object in detail, the size (wavelength) of the light waves must be smaller than the object being studied."
  Dangling participles.
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