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The Story of...
La historia de la física
Anne Rooney przedstawia historie fizyki od starozytnych odkryc do dzisiejszych wynalazkow Ujawnia tajemnice rzadzace wszechswiatem i zabiera czytelnika w podroz od narodzin fizyki i astronomii do najnowszych osiagniec techniki Ksiazka nie jest leksykonem a jedynie wybiorcza i ciekawa opowiescia o wybranych elementach historii fizyki
222 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2012
30 people are currently reading
260 people want to read
About the author
Anne Rooney
454 books49 followersAnne Rooney gained a degree and then a PhD in medieval literature from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a period of teaching medieval English and French literature at the universities of Cambridge and York, she left to pursue a career as a freelance writer. She has written many books for adults and children on a variety of subjects, including literature and history. She lives in Cambridge and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Essex.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 24, 2025
Good intro book to Physics. Nothing that will blow your socks off however.
“Physics is the fundamental science that underpins all others, the tools with which we explore reality; it aims to explain how the universe works, from galaxies to subatomic particles.”
“Many of our forbears concluded that the Earth is at the center of the universe, and everything revolves around it. The few who thought differently must come up with good arguments to refute the commonsense solution, and for 2,000 years they were outnumbered and sometimes ridiculed.”
“The first person we can call by name a physicist is Anaxagoras who flourished inn the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras has a model in which matter could not be created or destroyed, but in which the mutability of the world around us is explained by changing the position of matter over time”
“Newton successfully split white light into its constituent spectrum and then recombined the coloured rays into white light, so demonstrating conclusively that white light is a mixture of colours.”
“When Albert Einstein was awarded the Noble Peace price for Physics in 1921, it was not for his most famous ideas – the theories of relativity – but for his work on the photoelectric effect. He explained how a photon (though not called that at the time) could sometimes knock an electron out of its orbit in an atom, generating tiny burst of energy. This is how photoelectric solar power panels generate electricity from sunlight.”
“The speed of light is represented by the letter ‘c’ (as in E=mc2), standing for the Latin celeritous meaning swiftness of speed.”
“Newton stated in the Principia that light takes seven or eight minutes to reach Earth from the sun, which is quite close to the actual figure of 8 min 20 secs, on average.”
“Einstein based his theories of relativity on the observation that the speed f light is constant throughout the universe.”
“Galileo was for many years guarded in expressing or publishing this view as it ran counter to the doctrine of the Catholic Church and in 1616 he was forbidden to promote or teach the heliocentric model. In 1623 he was given permission to publish a balanced discussion of the subject called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, but it was so clearly biased against geocentrism that Galileo was convicted of heresy in 1634 and spend the rest of his life under house arrest.”
“Newton’s Principia was perhaps the most influential science book ever published.”
“The form of classical mechanics that dominated physics for more than 200 years is sometimes called Newtonian mechanics after the three laws of motion formulated by Isac Newton in the 1660s.”
“While Newtonian mechanics seemed to work for the larger objects in the universe, it began to fall when applied to the very tiniest. As physics became aware of atomic and subatomic particles, they discovered that the laws of physics, which considered to be fixed and immutable for all things, did not seem to apply any more. The smallest particles could do odd things. “
“Classical mechanics reaches its limits at the atomic scale, at velocities near the speed of light, and in intense gravitational fields.”
“Joule calculated the amount of work needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit was 838 foot-pound force.”
“Kelvin found a value for absolute zero that is still accepted, -273.15 degrees Celsius – very close to the value derived from the air thermometer and Gay-Lussac’s theory.”
“Even outer space is not at absolute zero. The ambient temperature in outer space is 2.7 Kelvin as cosmic microwave background radiation – heat left over from the Big Bang – is present throughout space.”
“The American scientist Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), who went on to help draft the American Declaration of Independence, first demonstrated the electrical nature of lightning in 1752. In a famous experiment, he tested his theory by attaching a metal rod to a kite and tying a key to the other end of the string.”
“Electromagnetism is not recognized as one of the four fundamental forces that keep the universe in order – the others being gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces that operate within and between atoms. On the smallest scale, electromagnetic forces bind ions together into molecules and provide the attraction between the electrons and nucleus off an atom.”
“Einstein's equation is saying that energy is the same as mater but in a different form. Matter can be converted into a very large quantity of energy. This lies at the heart of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, both of which trade in the energy that can be released by messing with the nuclei of atoms.”
“Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, stated in 1927, asserts that we cannot know everything about a particle. He waw that one consequence of quantum mechanics is that it is impossible to measure all aspects of a particle at the same time.”
“Indeed, since the start of the 20th century, the use of mathematical models had been steadily taking over from experimental physics that could be tested in the laboratory. The thought experiment, supported by mathematical calculations, had become the mainstay of new, largely theoretical physics.”
“Protons and neutrons are jammed tightly together in the nucleus, which occupies only a tiny proportion of the whole atom – around one hundred thousandth of it. If the atom were the diameter of a football stadium, the nucleus would be the size of a grain of sand.”
“Neutrinos have negligible mass and no charge and so they pass through everything they meet without hindrance. Indeed, if a beam of neutrinos were fired at a wall if lead 3,000 light years thick, half would get through without being stopped. There are neutrinos left over from the big bang, neutrinos emitted by the sun, and streaming from exploding stars. Indeed, around 1000 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second.”
“Sometimes called the ‘God Particle’, the Higgs boson in the last particle in the so-called Standard Model of the physical world that has yet to be found.”
“The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt are more precisely aligned. Completed around 2680BC, all four sides of the three pyramids are astronomically orientated north-south and eat-west to within a small fraction of a degree.”
“Parallax is a method of calculating the distance to an object by observing the object from two different positions. In the case of a star, the sky is photographed twice, six months apart. By measuring how far the star seems to have moved in relation to the background stars, astronomers can use triangulation to work out the distance from earth to the start.”
“All movement is relative to the position or movement of the observer. So you may walk across the room, and someone standing still in the room will judge your speed to be around 5km per hour. Both you and the observer are actually on a spinning globe whirling through space at nearly 30 km per second, but only your movement across the room is noticeable. So, the speed at which and object moves depends on the frame of reference; movement can only be measured relative to other objects or observers. Einstein found exception to this basic rule; Light, he said, always travels at the same speed – regardless of the speed at which an observer is moving.”
“The light from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, takes four years and three months to reach us.”
“The most accurate figure for the age of the universe is currently thought to be 13.7 billion years. It is thought that the observable universe is around 93 billion light years across.”
“Our own sun is around halfway thorough its likely life. It can be expected to last a few billion years yet before it follows the pattern observed elsewhere in the universe of expanding into a red giant, then collapsing into a white dwarf and finally growing cold.”
“In String Theory, all subatomic particles are time fragments of ‘string’, either open-ended or looped, that vibrate in many dimensions. The difference between particles comes not from their composition, which is all the same, but from the harmonics of their vibrations. And these vibrations take place not just in the three dimensions of space and one of time with which we are familiar, but in ten dimensions.”
“Physics is the fundamental science that underpins all others, the tools with which we explore reality; it aims to explain how the universe works, from galaxies to subatomic particles.”
“Many of our forbears concluded that the Earth is at the center of the universe, and everything revolves around it. The few who thought differently must come up with good arguments to refute the commonsense solution, and for 2,000 years they were outnumbered and sometimes ridiculed.”
“The first person we can call by name a physicist is Anaxagoras who flourished inn the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras has a model in which matter could not be created or destroyed, but in which the mutability of the world around us is explained by changing the position of matter over time”
“Newton successfully split white light into its constituent spectrum and then recombined the coloured rays into white light, so demonstrating conclusively that white light is a mixture of colours.”
“When Albert Einstein was awarded the Noble Peace price for Physics in 1921, it was not for his most famous ideas – the theories of relativity – but for his work on the photoelectric effect. He explained how a photon (though not called that at the time) could sometimes knock an electron out of its orbit in an atom, generating tiny burst of energy. This is how photoelectric solar power panels generate electricity from sunlight.”
“The speed of light is represented by the letter ‘c’ (as in E=mc2), standing for the Latin celeritous meaning swiftness of speed.”
“Newton stated in the Principia that light takes seven or eight minutes to reach Earth from the sun, which is quite close to the actual figure of 8 min 20 secs, on average.”
“Einstein based his theories of relativity on the observation that the speed f light is constant throughout the universe.”
“Galileo was for many years guarded in expressing or publishing this view as it ran counter to the doctrine of the Catholic Church and in 1616 he was forbidden to promote or teach the heliocentric model. In 1623 he was given permission to publish a balanced discussion of the subject called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, but it was so clearly biased against geocentrism that Galileo was convicted of heresy in 1634 and spend the rest of his life under house arrest.”
“Newton’s Principia was perhaps the most influential science book ever published.”
“The form of classical mechanics that dominated physics for more than 200 years is sometimes called Newtonian mechanics after the three laws of motion formulated by Isac Newton in the 1660s.”
“While Newtonian mechanics seemed to work for the larger objects in the universe, it began to fall when applied to the very tiniest. As physics became aware of atomic and subatomic particles, they discovered that the laws of physics, which considered to be fixed and immutable for all things, did not seem to apply any more. The smallest particles could do odd things. “
“Classical mechanics reaches its limits at the atomic scale, at velocities near the speed of light, and in intense gravitational fields.”
“Joule calculated the amount of work needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit was 838 foot-pound force.”
“Kelvin found a value for absolute zero that is still accepted, -273.15 degrees Celsius – very close to the value derived from the air thermometer and Gay-Lussac’s theory.”
“Even outer space is not at absolute zero. The ambient temperature in outer space is 2.7 Kelvin as cosmic microwave background radiation – heat left over from the Big Bang – is present throughout space.”
“The American scientist Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), who went on to help draft the American Declaration of Independence, first demonstrated the electrical nature of lightning in 1752. In a famous experiment, he tested his theory by attaching a metal rod to a kite and tying a key to the other end of the string.”
“Electromagnetism is not recognized as one of the four fundamental forces that keep the universe in order – the others being gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces that operate within and between atoms. On the smallest scale, electromagnetic forces bind ions together into molecules and provide the attraction between the electrons and nucleus off an atom.”
“Einstein's equation is saying that energy is the same as mater but in a different form. Matter can be converted into a very large quantity of energy. This lies at the heart of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, both of which trade in the energy that can be released by messing with the nuclei of atoms.”
“Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, stated in 1927, asserts that we cannot know everything about a particle. He waw that one consequence of quantum mechanics is that it is impossible to measure all aspects of a particle at the same time.”
“Indeed, since the start of the 20th century, the use of mathematical models had been steadily taking over from experimental physics that could be tested in the laboratory. The thought experiment, supported by mathematical calculations, had become the mainstay of new, largely theoretical physics.”
“Protons and neutrons are jammed tightly together in the nucleus, which occupies only a tiny proportion of the whole atom – around one hundred thousandth of it. If the atom were the diameter of a football stadium, the nucleus would be the size of a grain of sand.”
“Neutrinos have negligible mass and no charge and so they pass through everything they meet without hindrance. Indeed, if a beam of neutrinos were fired at a wall if lead 3,000 light years thick, half would get through without being stopped. There are neutrinos left over from the big bang, neutrinos emitted by the sun, and streaming from exploding stars. Indeed, around 1000 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second.”
“Sometimes called the ‘God Particle’, the Higgs boson in the last particle in the so-called Standard Model of the physical world that has yet to be found.”
“The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt are more precisely aligned. Completed around 2680BC, all four sides of the three pyramids are astronomically orientated north-south and eat-west to within a small fraction of a degree.”
“Parallax is a method of calculating the distance to an object by observing the object from two different positions. In the case of a star, the sky is photographed twice, six months apart. By measuring how far the star seems to have moved in relation to the background stars, astronomers can use triangulation to work out the distance from earth to the start.”
“All movement is relative to the position or movement of the observer. So you may walk across the room, and someone standing still in the room will judge your speed to be around 5km per hour. Both you and the observer are actually on a spinning globe whirling through space at nearly 30 km per second, but only your movement across the room is noticeable. So, the speed at which and object moves depends on the frame of reference; movement can only be measured relative to other objects or observers. Einstein found exception to this basic rule; Light, he said, always travels at the same speed – regardless of the speed at which an observer is moving.”
“The light from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, takes four years and three months to reach us.”
“The most accurate figure for the age of the universe is currently thought to be 13.7 billion years. It is thought that the observable universe is around 93 billion light years across.”
“Our own sun is around halfway thorough its likely life. It can be expected to last a few billion years yet before it follows the pattern observed elsewhere in the universe of expanding into a red giant, then collapsing into a white dwarf and finally growing cold.”
“In String Theory, all subatomic particles are time fragments of ‘string’, either open-ended or looped, that vibrate in many dimensions. The difference between particles comes not from their composition, which is all the same, but from the harmonics of their vibrations. And these vibrations take place not just in the three dimensions of space and one of time with which we are familiar, but in ten dimensions.”
May 6, 2017
Accessible and entertaining introduction to the history of physics
Anyone interested in finding out how sciences have developed throughout the ages will find this book from Anne Rooney to be a good choice. I read this together with her History of Mathematics and both books left me enriched and entertained in equal circumstances . Illustrations are mostly in colour so better appreciated on a reading app than on my actual Kindle.
Anyone interested in finding out how sciences have developed throughout the ages will find this book from Anne Rooney to be a good choice. I read this together with her History of Mathematics and both books left me enriched and entertained in equal circumstances . Illustrations are mostly in colour so better appreciated on a reading app than on my actual Kindle.
June 7, 2016
Uma história concisa e cativante dessa ciência que "constitui a base para todas as outras". A organização por temas, além de tornar a leitura mais fluida, ajuda a compreender alguns dos conceitos importantes dessa ciência. Uma ótima leitura para constituir uma base para a melhor compreensão dos desenvolvimentos atuais da Física, assim como a imensidão do que ainda falta conhecer.
September 3, 2018
The Story of Physics by Anne Rooney is in a similar vein to The Story of Psychology. It is split up into chapters, as most books are. It starts with Atomic Theory with how the world and everything in it is formed of Atoms. The second chapter goes through Optics and covers the ideas of what light is composed of. The third chapter covers Mechanics. The fourth chapter is focused on Energy and so on.
As with the other Anne Rooney book I read, the book contains tons of images and quotes by luminaries in the field. So it starts out with such people as Thales of Miletus and Democritus going on to Isaac Newton and Galileo and finally ending with people like Enrico Fermi and Steven Hawking.
The images provided are really well-done, but I would be surprised if they weren’t.
As with the other Anne Rooney book I read, the book contains tons of images and quotes by luminaries in the field. So it starts out with such people as Thales of Miletus and Democritus going on to Isaac Newton and Galileo and finally ending with people like Enrico Fermi and Steven Hawking.
The images provided are really well-done, but I would be surprised if they weren’t.
February 24, 2017
Un vistazo a la historia de la maravillosa física. Desde los griegos y el inicio del pensamiento científico hasta la física cuántica. El libro incluiye la teoría suficiente para entender los fabulosos fenómenos y descubrimientos en el campo en cuestión dejando de lado las matemáticas engorrosas que alejan a los numerofóbicos. Un libro obligado para amantes de la historia de la cultura y de la física.
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December 28, 2023I have looked at a lot of physics history books, and this one is my favorite. No math, lots of pictures, and funny stories about scientists. There are a few editing errors (like name spellings) but it's a great overview of the way we got to our modern understanding of a variety of topics.
September 5, 2017
Informative.
July 18, 2020
The book was worth reading just for the new understanding of inflation in the universe I walked away with.
July 4, 2022
This book, while interesting in its own right, left a bit to be desired for me because its title is quite misleading. I picked it up looking more for a guide in physics — having all of the major physics theories explained to me in layman’s terms. And the title “how the world works” makes one think this is what the book would contain. Rather it’s more a history of physics, the ideas that existed and then were developed upon, and it contains more information about the scientists and their lives than the actual physics itself. It does get into some of the physics and it did explain quite a few interesting things but I genuinely found this book title misleading. In its own right it’s interesting and important but should probably be called something different.
June 28, 2020
It is really good delivering on its promised content. It goes through a summary of all physics through history, gets into enough details for you to search more if interested but not too deep so as to become too domain specific. It also provides interesting tidbits of information about the people and events surrounding the topics at hand.
One thing to note is that it is not an introduction, but an overview. All topics are given assuming you understand the basics of them, so this is a book to help you go back to basics, find the topics that rekindle your interest about physics and get up to date with discoveries made from when these were taught to you in school.
One thing to note is that it is not an introduction, but an overview. All topics are given assuming you understand the basics of them, so this is a book to help you go back to basics, find the topics that rekindle your interest about physics and get up to date with discoveries made from when these were taught to you in school.
July 14, 2015
This was a great book, don't ask me why I finally started to connect the dots with respect to philosophy and math, but a light turned on. It was also good because I have to go back to grad school and deal with math and statistics once again. Suddenly I understand math. I'm way older too!
April 14, 2016
For those of us "non-science" folks, who want to understand what our brainy science friends are talking about, you'll get the history of physics along with all the major players and philosophies. Still can't argue with them, but it makes a trip to the Griffith Observatory so much more meaningful.
May 17, 2022
I only give it 4 stars because it’s a little hard to decipher the current information from what others thought was the case. Other than that, I think anyone interested in physics or the universe should read this as it’s an easy read and has a lot of fun facts in it.
October 16, 2015
A very brief historical overview of physics.
July 25, 2016
Good book to start learning physics. This book is mostly based on history rather than physics.
March 27, 2017
Any physics book that mentions Terry Pratchett has got to be great!
(WHAT? the spellchecker on this website has just failed to recognize the great name Pratchett! BAD! BAD!)
I also had to resist adding fangs to the pic of Nikola Tesla....
Seriously this is an excellent book for anyone interested in physics but who normally can't get their head around it - I wish I'd had this book at school. Definitely would've kept it if it hadn't been a library book.
(WHAT? the spellchecker on this website has just failed to recognize the great name Pratchett! BAD! BAD!)
I also had to resist adding fangs to the pic of Nikola Tesla....
Seriously this is an excellent book for anyone interested in physics but who normally can't get their head around it - I wish I'd had this book at school. Definitely would've kept it if it hadn't been a library book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews