Matter: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #599

by Geoff Cottrell

What is matter? Matter is the stuff from which we and all the things in the world are made. Everything around us -- from desks, to books, to our own bodies -- are made of atoms, which are small enough that a million of them can fit across the breadth of a human hair. Inside every atom is a tiny nucleus and orbiting the nucleus is a cloud of electrons. The nucleus is made out of protons and neutrons, and by zooming in further, you would find that inside each there are even smaller quarks. Together with electrons, the quarks are the smallest particles that have been seen, and are the indivisible fundamental particles of nature that have existed since the Big Bang, almost 14 billion years ago. The 92 different chemical elements that all normal matter is made from were forged billions of years ago in the Big Bang, inside stars, and in violent stellar explosions.

This Very Short Introduction takes us on a journey from the human scale of matter in the familiar everyday forms of solids, liquids, and gases to plasmas, exotic forms of quantum matter, and antimatter. On the largest scales matter is sculpted by gravity into planets, stars, galaxies, and vast clusters of galaxies. All the matter that that we normally encounter however constitutes only 5% of the matter that exists. The remaining 95% comes in two mysterious dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is necessary to stop the galaxies from flying apart, and dark energy is needed to explain the observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Geoff Cottrell explores the latest research into matter, and shows that there is still a lot we don't know about the stuff our universe is made of.

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction, Chemistry

176 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2019

Reviews

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good still don’t understand physics tho

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars; 4 for educational value, 2 for style; solid, thorough discussion of the subject matter (couldn't resist...); and for a very short introduction you will have to compress and condense things to bite sized chunks, but the style was very one-thing-after-another-thing which made the listen on audible a bit of a drag.

[Bob Small · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad view of what constitutes "matter". I was expecting more about how atoms arranged themselves into structures such as crystals and how these crystals formed rocks metals etc. There was less of that than I wished. However there was a good overview of the constituents of atoms, superfluids and the fundamental particles (quarks & leptons) that make up atoms and the other particles in the universe. There was even a pretty good description of the standard model, stellar nuclear synthesis, dark matter and dark energy. Not quite what I was after, but a good summary. A good introduction into a wide range of topics that come under the umbrella of matter

[Rosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feitje: 5% van alle materie bestaat uit de voor ons bekende atomen/quarks. De rest bestaat uit dark matter en dark energy waarvan we niet weten wat het is. WOAH.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of these books. Much more readable than Wikipedia! Yet still ~concise. I really did not like reading that bananas on the earth weigh in at 1 kg, are only 1/6 kg on the moon. Sorry. Kilograms measure mass, and MASS DOES NOT CHANGE. Extremely poor example early in the book. I can ~accept this example, as most of Earth 'weighs' bananas in kg at the supermarket (Only USA, Burma and Liberia use pounds). But this example should have either been scraped, or else talk RIGHT NOW about gravitational mass and inertial mass. Hey- the book is called "Matter", so I would fully expect a discussion about mass vs weight. But I stopped reading the book as soon as I hit this example. I am a HS Physics teacher for enough years that this mass vs. weight needs to be well clarified early, and I did not find this. I was psyched to read the other advanced topics later in the book, but I just could not restart reading it after this 'weight in kg' error.