Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists

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Harper Collins, Oct 19, 2010 - Science - 306 pages
World renowned physicist Fred Alan Wolf explains the scientific concepts of quantum mechanics in accessible language for nonscientists.

Winner of the National Book Award

Taking the Quantum Leap entertainingly traces the history of physics from the observations of the early Greeks through the discoveries of Galileo and Newton to the dazzling theories of such scientists as Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Bohm. This humanized view of science opens up the mind-stretching visions of how quantum mechanics, God, human thought, and will are related, and provides profound implications for our understanding of the nature of reality and our relationship to the cosmos.

“The prose, indeed, is exhilarating, and exhibits a passion to explain—humorously . . . Wolf provides commendable explanations of visions and revisions of atomic models; he is fin, in particular, on the Uncertainty Principle . . . Enjoy the book for its bravura.” —Kirkus Reviews
 

Contents

Welcome to the Machine
Aristotles Attempt to Resolve Zenos Paradoxes
The First Active Observer
An Explanation of Light and Heat with Something Missing
The Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Throwing Stones in a Quantum Pond
Bohrs Quantum Atom
A Prince Imagines a Wave
The Case of the Missing Universe
Faster Than a Speeding Photon
Breaking the Unbroken Whole
Entangling Qwiffs
Separate Houses with a Common Basement
Consciousness and Parallel Universes
Human Will and Human Consciousness
Are Atoms Conscious?

No One Has Seen the Wind
Resistance to Uncertainty
Complements of the Cosmic House
The Magicians Choice
New Ideas in Quantum Physics
Wheelers Choice
Bibliography
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