Black Bodies and Quantum Cats

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Subtitled Tales from The Annals of Physics, Jennifer Ouellette’s book is derived from her first five years working as the associate editor of APS News, The American Physics Society’s monthly journal. In the journal, she writes a column called “This Month in Physics History”, in which she tells the story of a key breakthrough in physics in lay terms, using popular cultural reference points to explain the science.

Each of the 38 chapters reproduced here covers a different topic, and can generally be read individually although a few of the later chapters do build on knowledge built up from earlier ones. As a result of their source format, each chapter is very easy to digest, and as a result you can steam through the book very quickly. I read it in about 6 hours, split over 2 or 3 flights.

A scary thought that occurred to me as I bought the book was that it had been over 10 years since I had last read anything to do with physics at all, but it all (mostly) came flooding back as I read through. Ouellette’s background is as a writer, rather than a physicist, and she does a great job of explaining the science accurately (as far as I could tell, anyway). If you’re thinking that the pop culture references mean you actually need to know the Harry Potter or His Dark Materials novels back-to-front, then worry not: Ouellette provides enough context that even a pop culture ignoramus such as I can see the connections and the points being made.

As a Scot, however, I feel compelled to point out the glaring omission of John Logie Baird in chapter 19, which deals with electrons and television. Having read up on the topic some more, however, it appears that he didn’t work with electrons in any of his techniques, so the omission is understandable.

Overall, a great book which acts as a good refresher course for lapsed physicists like me, a good grounding for complete non-scientists and which I imagine could help many actual physicists explain what they do to other people. I also think that some of the chapters could work well with some children as is.

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