Sit! Roll over! Quantum tunnel!

Chad Orzel talks to his dog about quantum physics. It is not clear what the dog gets out of this arrangement, but the rest of us ought to be grateful for it, because Orzel’s book about their “conversations” is sure to become a classic. Unlike many accounts of quantum mechanics aimed at the general public, How To Teach Quantum Mechanics to Your Dog avoids giving the impression that all the really interesting stuff happened before 1960. Even in the first few chapters, which discuss familiar topics such as wave–particle duality and the thorny question of wavefunction collapse, Orzel makes it clear that quantum physics is still an active area of research. This is certainly true on the experimental side, where lasers have made it possible to perform some Einstein-era “thought experiments” for real. As an atomic physicist at New York’s Union College and author of the Uncertain Principles blog, Orzel is well qualified to explain both old and new findings to a diverse audience. However, he is not the only reason for the book’s success. The other is Emmy, his lively and inquisitive German Shepherd mix. For the purposes of the book, Emmy functions as a doggy Greek chorus: popping up to ask naive-but-illuminating questions. Orzel often plays these interruptions for laughs, and his weary patience with Emmy’s persistent squirrel/food/ tummy-rubbing obsessions will set many dog owners chuckling. However, her crazy suggestions (like the one about getting through the neighbour’s fence using quantum tunnelling) also allow Orzel to counter some common misconceptions about quantum mechanics, and to expand on his explanations without appearing to talk down to the reader. As a quantum physicist, Emmy still has a lot to learn – but as a plot device, she’s fantastic.

• 2010 Oneworld Publications £7.99 pb 224pp

d(y)/d(braaains)

A paper was published last year with the intriguing title “When zombies attack!: mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection”. Its authors modelled the spread of flesh-eating zombies using coupled differential equations, and concluded that “the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often”. Such is the, erm, cerebral flavour of Jennifer Ouellette’s The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. An English graduate, science writer Ouellette has only recently embraced calculus, and can therefore reveal its simplicity without making any assumptions about what the reader should know. Her examples are blended with witty narrative, including Ouellette’s adventures with her husband, the California Institute of Technology physicist Sean Carroll. Reading the book is a bit like watching a stand-up comedian: you are never quite sure if the reminiscences are real, but you are willing to suspend disbelief as they are actually quite funny. One example features what is possibly the most underrated theme park ride: the tea cups. Using simple force vectors, Ouellette explains why riding them means hanging on for dear life and trying not to throw up one minute, but feeling perfectly fine as you frantically spin the wheel to reach the same giddy gyration the next. As for the log-flume ride, Ouellette offers useful tips on how to stay as dry as possible. Unfortunately, she and Carroll fail to follow their own advice, and are left sitting in wet clothes, lamenting the exponential decay of water evaporation and asking “Will we forever be slightly damp?”.

• 2010 Penguin £9.46/$15.00 pb 336pp

Who’d be an astronaut?

The hours are long. The work environment is cramped and smelly. You don’t see your family much, and your bosses at Mission Control schedule your daily chores and even your bathroom breaks almost down to the minute. So why do so many people want to become astronauts? Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars does not really explain this, but it does explore almost every other aspect of astronaut life – particularly the icky ones. No question is too embarrassing or scatological for the intrepid Roach, who asks a Russian cosmonaut about blow-up dolls (vetoed by ground control, he says, because “we would need to put it in your schedule for the day”) and cheerfully quizzes astronaut Jim Lovell on what his Gemini VII capsule smelt like when it splashed down after a two week, bath-free mission (“Different than the fresh ocean breezes outside,” Lovell replies politely). That Roach gets away with such queries is probably down to the astronauts themselves. With missions on the International Space Station lasting months rather than the days or weeks of the Apollo era, an even temperament and a sense of humour have long since become integral parts of an astronaut’s “right stuff”. A Mars mission will test those qualities to breaking point, Roach notes, since astronauts bound for the red planet will face all the challenges that their predecessors did (loneliness, space sickness, toilet malfunctions) and more. The underlying seriousness of putting people into space is usually well hidden in this book. However, on the one occasion when it breaks through, the result is deeply moving: as Roach listens to NASA flight surgeon Jon Clark describe what happened to the astronauts on the Space Shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated during re-entry in 2003, she suddenly realizes that Clark’s wife Laurel was on board. And for once, this witty and insightful writer is lost for words.

• 2010 Oneworld Publications/W W Norton £12.99 hb/$25.95 312pp

Top 20 cosmic conundrums

Why has this book got an elasticated cord on the back cover? Sadly, that is not one of the 20 “biggest cosmic mysteries” tackled in The Big Questions: The Universe by UK author and astronomer Stuart Clark. What we get instead is a trawl through some well-trodden territory in cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics, including the age and size of the universe, the origin of the Earth, and the nature of dark matter, dark energy and black holes. Each chapter wisely gives plenty of historical background and the explanations are clear and concise, even if the writing itself is a tad functional. This is a book to be dipped in and out of, which explains that elasticated cord – it is a stretchable book mark to stop you losing your place.

• 2010 Quercus £12.99 pb 208pp

A tale of three neutrinos

Obituaries are all about endings, but the one that the Oxford physicist (and prolific popular-science author) Frank Close penned for Nobel laureate Ray Davis in 2006 became a beginning as well. In the 1960s Davis began looking for neutrinos produced in solar fusion, but however hard he tried, the number he detected was never more than half the value that theory predicted. It took decades for physicists to determine that the so-called solar-neutrino problem stemmed from an inadequate understanding of neutrino physics; it took even longer for the Nobel committee to reward Davis’ efforts. After sketching this story in the obituary, Close decided that Davis’ life was worth a whole book. While researching it, however, he found himself increasingly interested in Davis’ longtime collaborator John Bahcall, and the Italian–Soviet physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, who suggested that neutrinos could oscillate between three different flavours. The resulting three-part story in Neutrino is fascinating, although occasionally less clear than it could be. The distinction between neutrinos and antineutrinos, for example, is almost as muddled here as it was for the scientists who stumbled upon it in the 1950s. It is perhaps just as well that Close avoids discussing the even more confusing possibility that the neutrino could be its own antiparticle – although it seems a pity that the book leaves out Ettore Majorana, who suggested it. Then again, since Majorana disappeared without trace in 1938, there is no convenient obituary upon which to base his story.

• 2010 Oxford University Press £9.99/$18.95 hb 176pp

Space-telescope extravaganza

If Physics World’s September feature “Hubble’s greatest hits” left you hungry for more images obtained by the 20-year-old space telescope, then you are in luck. Two recent books – Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time and Hubble: Window on the Universe – offer a veritable feast of Hubble photographs, plus a bit of text to explain what you are looking at. In addition to photographs of cosmic wonders, both books contain a fair amount of information on the shuttle missions that serviced the telescope over its lifetime. This is a welcome inclusion, since the first repair mission, in particular, transformed the scope from an orbiting flop to a NASA success story. Journey Through Space and Time is written by NASA astrophysicist Edward Weiler and is slightly more technical than UK science writer Giles Sparrow’s Window on the Universe. Both are aimed at the coffee-table-book market, but Window is practically a table in its own right, measuring a whopping 30 × 36.5 cm, compared with the relatively puny 25 × 31 cm of Journey. Either one, though, would make a beautiful addition to the pile of presents under the tree.

• 2010 Abrams £19.99/$29.95 hb 144pp; 2010 Quercus £20.00 hb 224pp