Shape Makes the Man? Book

Not exactly sure why I bought this, as I know (or knew) most of the material. I still found it useful and (a little bit) funny. Whether it will help people with a math or science phobia, I can't say. But it is well organized and presented. Some equations, but mostly visual explanations.

The sections on Newton's laws had nothing new for me. Though the way that a spinning wheel will precess due to gravity still feels weird to me no matter how many times I see it or work through the equations. He mentioned that the English measuring system uses a unit called a "slug" to represent mass. That isn't the way I learned it. (* footnote)

The sections on electromagnetism were the most useful for me. Again, I've been exposed to all of this before, but haven't thought about most of it in years. This sort of high-level overview is great for anyone thinking of diving in a greater depth later.

The authors chose to present Einstein's Special Relativity without any reference to the speed of light. (They don't discuss light at all until two chapters later where they show how it emerges from Maxwell's laws.) Instead they contrast the effects of a magnet moving through a stationary loop of wire. The electric and magnetic fields look very different depending on whether you are stationary with respect to the magnet, or with respect to the wire. This is a very unusual way to describe relativity, but it is a valid way and builds on the earlier chapters in a logical way.

* Footnote: (In engineering classes we used English units, but spoke of "pound mass" and "pound weight" when we needed to distinguish mass from weight. The "slug" is a different way of dealing with that, but not an approach I've ever used. Looking into that led me to a Wikipedia rabbit hole about the craziness of unit systems. A gallon is different sizes for liquids or solids. A pint bottle of beer is smaller in Canada than in USA, though in cans they match. An ounce is different in Avoirdupois system from the Troy system used for gold and silver. Etc.)