Reviews for Popular Scientific Lectures

The average rating for Popular Scientific Lectures based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-02-22 00:00:00 Surinder Rakhra It was a good book with many helpful diagrams. I learned a lot about things I didn't know and even more about things I already knew well. My only issue with this book is that the author has a tendency to go overboard with explaining even simple concepts. Do we really need to know what happens at the microscopic level when you move a box? Or how many electrons there are in an atom that's in a material that is used in a shoe? There was a lot of over the top explanations for things that didn't really need it. I feel this book could have been divided into two separate but complimentary books: one book for actually explaining how things work and the other a combined chemistry/physics textbook. Although for certain ideas this was essential to understand the background physics, the rest could have just gone with basic explanations and more diagrams. It took me a couple of years to finish everything in this book because it's not light reading especially if you really want to picture in your head all the explanations. Nonetheless I enjoyed this book and learned a great deal from it. If there was a second book to follow it, I would certainly buy it.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-10-22 00:00:00 Cathy Harris This book was some heavy going, but it was worth the effort. It's a physics textbook with much of the math stripped out (a relief for me). Physical principles are presented by illustrating their applications in everyday objects. The writing style is pretty casual, which is another welcome change. It's rare for me to read a book that I want to re-read after finishing a couple of chapters. This book is so dense with useful knowledge that I know much of it has already leaked out of my ears. Over the course of the year or so that it's taken me to read this tome, I've incorporated my learning into a dozen or more lunch conversations. Time has dimmed much of what I learned, so I want to read it again. My book queue has accumulated a fair amount of (literal) dust, though, so it may be a while before I get back to it. In the meantime, I'm sure that I will be encouraging friends and family to borrow it and to read it cover-to-cover. It is a fantastic survey of the modern marvels that we take for granted in our everyday lives.