Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality

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. One of the 1-star reviews mentioned a lack of organization. This criticism completely misses the point. It is NOT a textbook, so "obviously" it will lack some of the rigorous development of concepts and precise organization that you would expect in a physics text. It IS a popular physics book with lots of cartoony pictures that a kid in elementary school could both enjoy and understand. At the same time, the insights will help build anyone's physics intuition, regardless of age. I read this book when I was 30. I have since started going through problems in Kleppner and Kolenkow and some other more advanced texts, and I really think this book helped.

I used to use this as a supplementary text book when I taught high school science - now using to supplement home schooling for 4th and 6th graders. Questions are thought provoking, lead to great concepts teaching. Unbelievable how this book can be used from 4th grade to high school/college and be appropriate for all. If you really want a fundamental understanding of how things actually work with clever intriguing problems that will hook you in - this book can not be beat.

An excellent low-math book that covers many everyday concepts in physics, allows anyone to think through everyday problems and gain experience in thinking without doing calculations or sitting through endless ball-rolling-down-ramp labs. It shows ways that physicists and scientifically literate people think about physics problems in general terms. I've seen it on many shelves- grad students, postdocs and professors, teaching or not, since my undergrad days 25 years ago , alongside Art of Electronics, Jackson, Halliday/Resnik , and a book of integrals. Fine for junior- and high school students, and even younger with parental guidance. Many kids have sensible questions about why e.g. a bike stays up or who you really wouldn't want to run into on a football field, and the answers to them, and nice sketches too.

I read part of this book in a bookstore and in the author's other book Relativity Visualized. There is a quiz about Magnet Car: in the picture, a guy dangles a fishing pole with fishing string tied to a big magnet, and he is standing inside an iron cart. the magnet is very close to outside body of the iron kart. The question is: will the cart move. (warning: answer is mentioned here next...) The answer on the book is: no it won't, because there is no work done from zero work input. And that there is no perpetual machine and Newton's Third Law says action equal reaction but in opposite direction, and they cancel out, etc. Now, I can tell you that is not the case, because it is a fishing pole and fishing string, the magnet will get attracted to the cart's body, get pulled over a bit, while the cart is also pulled over a bit (less than how much the magnet has moved if we assume the cart is heavier than the big magnet). Why? Because the magnet experiences a force pulling it towards the cart, and what is there to stop it from moving? The fishing string? Sorry, if it were a metal crane or something rigid, that is really the case: the magnet wants to move, but pushes the crane that is bolted to the cart, and the cart wants to move towards the magnet, but the crane is pushing it exactly the other way with the same force, just opposite direction, so the 2 forces cancel out and the magnet and the cart won't move. Note, however, that now it is not something rigid like a crane but is a fishing pole and fishing string. If the magnetic force is strong enough, the magnet will get attracted and sway towards the cart, and the cart will be moved a little bit too. But the overall center of mass of the whole system (what is called the physical body) remain unchanged. Also imagine if it is a crane, but it is a weak crane made of paper cones. If the magnetic force is strong enough, the paper crane will also bend and have a similar scenario as the fishing pole and string. I hope the description can be more accurate.

Best book for people like me that need visual representations to learn easier....

Just a wonderful book for engineers and English majors alike. This is one of those texts that teaches you how to think; in this case like a physicist. We see that what so often seems simple and obvious is not. It looks at problems conceptually and makes us reduce a problem to the bare bones. Very little math required. the concepts of work, force, energy, velocity, acceleration, weight, mass, inertia, impulse, momentum and time are explored in a lucid and playful manner using ordinary language. My girlfriend and I discussed a problem for five hours as we drove to San Francisco. The time flew. I can't recommend it enough. Truly profound.

This is a great book for Physics concepts. I want to address the rant included at the end. Mr. Epstein is brilliant, but somewhere along the line he decided his pursuits outweigh everyone else's and rails against everyone, but most of all the government stealing all of our hard earned money and it being wasted. Yet he paradoxically includes a couple of letters to the very same beurocrats he rails against hoping for some assistance in receiving compensation for intellectual property stolen from him. Curiously enough, he did not illustrate the book himself and doesn't actually credit the illustrator either. It seems as though he has become part of the problem he is complaining about. That aside, the physics part of the book is fantastic and is beautifully reasoned and specifically designed to make complicated concepts easy to understand.

I intend to use this in my classes for the upcoming year both with my 8th graders as well as senior students many of the questions not only make students think but can also be used to identify misconceptions. The font is nice and big and the drawings are a plus I try to get my students to sketch their questions before they attempt them so this is lovely. I will just say it would have nice if all the scenarios were in S.I units but as I recognise this is written for an american audience it's not a big deal it will just give my students a chance to practice unit conversions!