Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.
The dreams our stuff is made of : how science fiction conquered the world Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Includes bibliographical references p. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, as well as an introduction by today's most celebrated scientist, Stephen Hawking.
Women's writing in Italy from Unification to the present day, examining the lives and works of women writers within the context of Italian history, culture and politics.
The changing face of Italian social and political life since Unification has greatly affected the position of women in Italy. This work explores the relation between the changing role of women over this period, then struggle for social and political emancipation and equality, and the search by women writers to a personal and authentic literary voice. First Published in Traces the development of science fiction from the literary tales of H.
Wells and Jules Verne into a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry, and explores its impact on American culture. Skip to content. Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On. Stuff as Dreams. Stuff as Dreams Book Review:. Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on. Author : Helen M. Such stuff as dreams are made on. Author : Karen L. Such stuff as dreams are made on Book Review:. Such Stuff as Dreams. Dec 23, Ronald Lett rated it liked it Recommends it for: Advanced undergraduates.
Shelves: quantum-mechanics. Having all of these groundbreaking papers put in order is very illuminating, especially in seeing how the ideas that are now quite strictly defined developed over time and experimentation. One oddity is that Einstein's first paper is inexplicably full of typos, including the equations!
However, the rest of the papers are relatively typo-free. Especially interesting were the "hidden variables" and controversy papers and the final introductory university lectures by Born, Gamow and Dirac, which no Having all of these groundbreaking papers put in order is very illuminating, especially in seeing how the ideas that are now quite strictly defined developed over time and experimentation.
Especially interesting were the "hidden variables" and controversy papers and the final introductory university lectures by Born, Gamow and Dirac, which not only quickly and concisely introduce the full theory but then attempt to apply it to curved spacetime. It would be excellent for any advanced undergraduate to read.
Sep 04, Dan Graser rated it it was amazing. This wonderful anthology from Stephen Hawking is something I have used as a reference text for almost a year now and greatly enjoyed. As many have noted, this is not for the layman as it contains genuine papers from important periods in the development of the study of quantum physics written for physicists and physics students. If you don't know that language then this will seem to be an alien language. I can see this being used effectively for an undergraduate course on the history of physics i This wonderful anthology from Stephen Hawking is something I have used as a reference text for almost a year now and greatly enjoyed.
I can see this being used effectively for an undergraduate course on the history of physics in the 20th century or some related topic. Rarely do you have such an anthology presented by a complete all-star in the field such as Stephen Hawking and his choice of material presents a potent narrative of increasing clarity and understanding though obviously incomplete of the quantum world.
Jan 21, Rod rated it liked it Recommends it for: physicists. Shelves: science. A collection of scientific papers on the development of quantum mechanics. Not sure how interesting this stuff is to normal folk, but to the physics community it's pure gold. I'll put it on my bookshelf between my autographed copy of Principles of Quantum Mechanics Dirac and the Centennial Edition of the Astrophysical Journal , a similar volume published by the American Astronomical Society in View 2 comments.
Aug 31, John Gribbin rated it liked it. Quantum physics has never been more topical. Schrodinger's "dead and alive" cat has become part of popular folklore, parallel universes have emerged from science fiction to become part of serious scientific speculation, and quantum computers offer the prospect of a leap forward from the classical computer as great as the leap from the abacus to the classical computer itself.
Quantum physicists have even achieved teleportation -- although as yet, only of photons, not people. So the time is very m Quantum physics has never been more topical. So the time is very much ripe for a collection such as this, pulling together many of the great scientific papers of the twentieth century that together comprised the quantum revolution. That prospective audience should be warned, though, that the papers collected here are not for the faint hearted. They are the real nitty gritty, written by such luminaries as Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger, more or less as published in the scientific journals of the time.
There has been some judicious editing and some I regard as injuducious , but there is very little here that would be an easy read for anyone with less than a degree in physics. That said, if you have either the stamina to plough through the whole story, or the inclination to dip in for favourite nuggets, this is the place to find the truth behind many of the stories making headlines today. The discovery of wave-particle duality de Broglie and quantum uncertainty Heisenberg made quantum physics as much a branch of philosophy as science, stirring arguments that continue to the present day about how to interpret what the equations are telling us.
Or are there many, perhaps infinitely many, different realities, in which all possible outcomes of quantum choices are carried out? Against this philosophical debating, hard core physicists such as Richard Feynman, who is included here, ignored the philosophy and got on with solving the equations after they had found the right ones to solve!
There are two serious omissions from the book, which shows signs of having been put together hastily, and one bizarre inclusion. Louis de Broglie's paper introducing the idea that electrons could be treated as waves which impressed Einstein and led Schrodinger to his Nobel-prize winning breakthrough is conspicuous by its absence, as is the paper by Hugh Everett which made the "many worlds" idea, which remains the best resolution of the Schrodinger's cat puzzle, part of mainstream science.
Of course, something has to give even in a volume this size, but space for these ideas could have been found by leaving out the extract from a popular book by George Gamow, which no more deserves a place here than an extract from, say, A Brief History of Time.
It is also inexcusable in as book of this kind to have no index, and no guide to further reading. And I may be a pedant but if you are going to use a Shakespeare quotation in the title of a book, you should get it right! That said, on balance The Dreams that Stuff is Made Of is a welcome addition to the quantum library, and pulls together in one place a lot of material that it would otherwise take a while to track down.
This review first appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, — Sep 28, Ayayrahn rated it it was amazing. This is an excellent survey of foundations of quantum physics, and directly helped me in some graduate work. Feb 27, Nicholas Teague rated it really liked it. Lots of reviews point out the errors in equations. Almost too glaring of an oversight that the first equation of the first paper by Einstein no less had glaring errors that would be obvious even to a lay person, left me wondering if that error in particular could even be an intentional signal by the authors not to take for granted the entirety of the content.
0コメント