Complete description

The Quantum Story begins in 1900, tracing a century of game-changing science. Popular science writer Jim Baggott first shows how, over the space of three decades, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and others formulated and refined the theory--and opened the floodgates. Indeed, since then, a torrent of ideas has flowed from the world's leading physicists, as they explore and apply the theory's bizarre implications. To take us from the story's beginning to the present day, Baggott organizes his story around forty turning-point moments of discovery. Many of these are inextricably bound up with the characters involved--their rivalries and their collaborations, their arguments and, not least, their excitement as they sense that they are redefining what reality means. Through the mix of story and science, we experience their breathtaking leaps of theory and experiment, as they uncover such undreamed of and mind-boggling phenomenon as black holes, multiple universes, quantum entanglement, the Higgs boson, and much more. brisk, clear, and compelling, The Quantum Story is science writing at its best. A compelling look at the one-hundred-year history of quantum theory, it illuminates the idea as it reveals how generations of physicists have grappled with this monster ever since. Top page

General info

Publisher & Imprint: Oxford University Press

City: Oxford

Pages: 496

More info: height 233 mm width 161 mm weight 762 gr thickness 37 mm

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Age recommended: General/trade

Subject Indexing & Classification Dewey:(DC23) 530.12 Library of Congress Subject: Quantum theory - History

Departments: Popular science; History of science;

Record updated at: 18 May, 2013 time: 00:52

Summary The Quantum Story PART I: QUANTUM IN ACTION ; 1. An Act of Desperation: Berlin 1900 ; 2. Independent Energy Quanta: Bern 1905 ; 3. Quantum Numbers and Quantum Jumps: Manchester 1913 ; 4. Wave-particle Duality: Paris 1923 ; 5. Strangely Beautiful Interior: Helgoland 1925 ; 6. A Late Erotic Outburst: Swiss Alps 1925 ; 7. The Self-rotating Electron: Leiden 1925 ; PART II: QUANTUM PROBABILITY AND QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY ; 8. Quantum Probability: Gottingen 1926 ; 9. The Whole Idea of Quantum Jumps Necessarily Leads to Nonsense: Copenhagen 1926 ; 10. Uncertainty Principle: Copenhagen 1927 ; 11. The Copenhagen Interpretation: Copenhagen 1927 ; 12. Complementarity: Lake Como 1927 ; PART III: QUANTUM INTERPRETATION ; 13. Gedankenexperiment: Brussels 1927 ; 14. An Absolute Wonder: Cambridge 1927 ; 15. A Certain Unreasonableness: Brussels 1930 ; 16. A Bolt from the Blue: Copenhagen 1935 ; 17. The Paradox of Schrodinger's Cat: Oxford 1935 ; PART IV: QUANTUM FIELDS ; 18. Crisis: Shelter Island 1947 ; 19. Quantum Electrodynamics: Oldstone 1949 ; 20. Gauge Symmetry and Gauge Theories: Princeton 1954 ; 21. Three Quarks for Muster Mark: Pasadena 1963 ; 22. The Higgs Mechanism: Edinburgh 1965 ; PART V: QUANTUM PARTICLES ; 23. Electro-weak Unification: Harvard 1967 ; 24. Deep Inelastic Scattering: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center 1967 ; 25. Asymptotic Freedom and Quantum Chromodynamics: Harvard 1973 ; 26. The November Revolution: Brookhaven and SLAC 1974 ; 27. The W and Z Bosons: CERN 1983 ; 28. Completing the Picture: Fermilab 1994 ; PART VI: QUANTUM REALITY ; 29. Hidden Variables: Princeton 1951 ; 30. Bell's Theorem: Geneva 1964 ; 31. The Aspect Experiments: Paris 1982 ; 32. Beating the Uncertainty Principle: Albuquerque 1991 ; 33. Three-photon GHZ States: Vienna 2000 ; 34. Reality, Whether Local or Not: Vienna 2007 ; PART VII: QUANTUM GRAVITY ; 35. That Damned Equation: Princeton 1967 ; 36. The First Superstring Revolution: Aspen 1984 ; 37. The Quantum Structure of Space: Santa Barbara 1986 ; 38. No Consistency Without Contingency: Durham 1995 ; 39. The Second Superstring Revolution: Los Angeles 1995 ; 40. Resolving the Impasse: CERN 2008 ; Epilogue ; Quantum Timeline ; Name Index ; Subject Index Top page

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