After a tiring spring that followed the publication of the book, I’ve taken a little break. But starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting on the blog again, focusing again on the important differences between the conventional notion of “particle” and the concept of “wavicle”. I prefer the latter to the former when referring to electrons, quarks and other elementary objects.
Today, though, some book-related news.
First, a book review of sorts — or at least, a brief but strong informal endorsement — appeared in the New York Times, courtesy of the linguist, author and columnist John McWhorter. Since McWhorter is not a scientist himself, I’m especially delighted that he liked the book and found it largely comprehensible! The review was in a paragraph-long addendum to a longer column about language; here’s an excerpt:
I have come across another book that teaches us new ways of looking at things. It taught me that matter consists of the accumulation not of bits of stuff but of standing vibrations. . . Matt Strassler’s marvelous new “Waves in an Impossible Sea.” . . . makes it possible to understand such things without expertise in physics or math.
Another positive review recently appeared in Nautilus magazine, written by Ash Jogalekar, a scientist himself — but a chemist rather than a physicist. The full review is available here.
Lastly, the audiobook is in preparation, though I still don’t know the time frame yet.
4 Responses
Dear Dr Matt. I realized that you are better dedicated to answers to professionals and not the laity. In fact there are no 100% lay people who come here or those who buy your book, but of people who have some knowledge, even physical but not with high technical capacity to PhD, but come here no masons or cleaners, but university training people and with high intellect. It turns out that with all your wisdom, a renowned physicist, where you are highly praised in the humility of having a high physics blog and for the public. But at the same time, it is seen that 99% of the questions are high graduation physical and your answers that for same level, less than 1% of lay people. You should know that your book is done, I think for a general public, because PhD are looking for sites like “Phisics review, P.letter,” etc and mainly ArxV in the face of high technical information. I consider myself a layman, because even I am a PhD in engineering in the areas of the Hooke Law, deformations, elasticity and buckling, I am yes lay in this physics of high energies. And ask you questions of layman. But I’ve seen you get annoyed with simple lay and respectful questions and I think he was banned because he never came back here. If you only admit good questions and high technical relevance, I believe you should separate and filter participants with high -training accredits and the level of PhD in high energies and block lay people, even for simple reading, a closed blog. But I do not believe to be your claim but to be a much more writer for lay people, even in the numerous publications in popular magazines like this “Quanta Magazine”, so a beautiful text. So you ask here a little more patience, as you demanded to write the mass created by the field of Higgs and not by the Higgs Bosson. Remember that there are many Phds laughing at that and they forget here to be a popular blog. By the way, you should not even comment with PhD, they are very in arrogance by doing technical comments, just to do, without bringing any news, but never asking, only proving to be a superior being, where your blog can become a “arrogance parades” ( Joke, forgive me). Greetings dear and great doc.
dear Matt,
reflecting on your use of analogies and ‘minor fibs’, I wondered if tape-measure-physics would be a useful analogy for the coupling of two fields.
A thin steel ribbon can carry a wave in the long direction, but a tape measure has a bend across the short direction. This stiffens it in the long direction. A long bend causes a flattening out of the curvature in the across direction. That takes a minimum of energy and results in a kind of “quantised kink” (with an audible click). Just a loose idea, but I kind of like it.
Do theoretical physicists use tape measures too, or is that reserved for experimentalists? (grin)
Prof Strassler,
I find your inclusion of reviews of your book to be helpful. The reviews touch on key concepts you have presented but in slightly different words, which helps me to review and reflect upon them. Even somewhat critical comments, such as regarding the coverage of symmetry, help to point me to areas I might further explore.
🙂 The amusing thing about Jagolekar’s complaint that I didn’t talk about symmetry is that my decision not to talk about it involved a very conscious choice on my part. It turns out that all that discussion over decades about how the Higgs field is all about breaking symmetries is actually not correct — at least, not as it stands. That’s exactly why it doesn’t appear in the book. This is an issue I plan to write about later this summer… but it has some tricky elements, so I’m not rushing into it.