Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #164120 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 582 pages

Customer Reviews

So you think you know your physics?
Whether you're sitting your school exams, university physics degree or just have that niggling curiosity about why things are the way they are, you'll be scratching your head at this wonderful collection of 'gedanken physics' problems. You ceratinly won't be able to put it down. If you thought physics was about learning all the answers or the formulae to get them, this book will show you how even the science you think you know very well has hidden secrets. Amazingly, you find that these secrets can be unlocked by your own thinking as you come to realise that all those theories have a deep qualitative meaning far more important than every formula you ever learned. Try one of the problems on a group of friends and stand back while the arguments rage! I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

At last - a book that makes Physics interesting!
This book is a breath of fresh air after the usual uninspiring, get-em-through-the-exam-but-no-more books around. The format is a series of thought-experiments involving simple objects and situations ( deflating ballons, leaking barrels, moving objects, etc ). The reader is encouraged to really "get his head around" the subject and is rewarded with the "aha" of sudden comprehension and realisation.A basic knowledge around the level of Newton's laws is assumed. This should be required reading for all physics teachers and recommended to all physics students of the appropriate level.

Should be forced on every high school student
Every so often I pick up a book that I wish I read 10 years ago. Feynman's Lectures on Physics and Van Hess's Thermodynamics are among these, as well as Polya's How To Solve It for those more mathematically inclined. These would have certainly saved me from much confusion during my college engineering curriculum, for they focus on teaching the material to the reader, as opposed to masking it in the equations of a textbook. Some lucky folks have the ability to glance at equations and immediately grasp their meaning; for the other 99.99% of us, an intuitive explanation replete with real-world analogies helps to bring the meaning to life.

With a presentation both unique and entertaining, Lewis Carroll Epstein's Thinking Physics has certainly claimed a rightful seat at the roundtable of wonderful didactic books. Every page poses a question that challenges the reader on his view of the physical world, and nearly every answer tears down the fallacies of his intuition. Socrates would have been proud of the format, with each new question expanding on concepts developed in earlier answers. By the end of the book, the reader will not only improve his physics sense, but he will have a better idea of how to use thought experiments to explore the realms of any field.