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Title: Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold by Tom Shachtman ISBN: 0-395-93888-0 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 December, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.82 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great Beach Reading
Comment: This is a good book to read to clear your head of non-science, particularly if you are not a scientist. It achieves the goal of the Sloan Foundation funding, which is to popularize science by disconnecting it from the diagrams and equations that some of the other reviewers here are lamenting the absence of. Well, that's what made it so readable for me. I like science but not math. At least not sciency-math. We learn from this book that it is the businessmen who have fueled applied cold research, and many people who also are ignorant of math have benefitted from the resulting frozen food industry and from air conditioning. All products of the very deliberate conquest of Thule, very engagingly explained by the author. This book reminds me of how appropriate the chief guy (what's his name, "Lee"? Anyway, the guy who won't let you chew gum in the airport there) in Singapore's comments were in the Wall Street Journal, when they asked a cross section of famous people what the greatest invention of the last millenium has been. His reply: "Air conditioning." It all makes sense when you read this on the beach, before heading to your air conditioned condo, or to your air conditioned car, to get your keys to go get pre-cooled cokes from the refrigerator unit at the air conditioned 7-11, right next to the Slurpee machine and the little display of fresh fruit. I agree with some of the reviews that the book is a little disjointed, but offer that this in turn illuminates some of the idiosyncracies of several key scientists who would, for example, devote 15 years to trying to boil helium. Whatever you do for a living, compared to that, seems like a breeze. A cool breeze. Which you can feel without quantifying via incomprehensible, gnostic and exlusivist equations whose chief function is to blur this science beyond comprehensibility for long-winded reviewers like me.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful
Comment: If you are interested in science, scientists and its history; If all you remember from your science classes are the names of scientists like Boyle, Van der waals and Joule; if you are ready to be taken on a fantastic ride into the realms of the cold and the story of its conquest.... This is the book for you.
I really enjoyed it very much. Not only did I get a better perspective of physics and chemistry but I was surprised at the amount of work that had gone into the construction of the common refrigerator or the air conditioner, to which we never pay any attention. And the personal touch the author added really helped me feel like I was with the scientists when each discovery was being made. Now, I feel like I know Dewar and Joule well enough to call them by their first names!
Rating: 1
Summary: Utterly annoying and scientifically misleading
Comment: I got the distinct impression that the author lost interest in his own work somewhere after the third chapter, but had already spent his advance and was forced to finish writing it. The science is misleading (I think he mentioned "vaccuming off lighter molecules" of the same gas in the Kammerleigh Onnes section, maybe forgetting that identical molecules all have the same molecular weight unless we are talking isotopes, but hey, who wants to bother getting the scientific fundamentals straight when we can gossip about Tydall and Dewar's little falling out...). This book is a exaggerated People magazine retelling of the search to attain Absolute Zero. The author would have been wise to try speaking to a few living scientists to get a feel for the real challenges, frustrations, and joys of doing research rather than investing so much energy in "he said, she said" stories. I think the telling of this story would best have been left to someone with a better understanding of physics and the art of doing scientific research. From my own experience, research is no more a "wild ride" than gardening, or a long hike. It's joys are subtle but persistent, not a point this author ever seems to have understood.
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Title: Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: A History of Heat (Modern Library (Paperback)) by Hans Christian Von Baeyer ISBN: 0375753729 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Taming the Atom: The Emergence of the Visible Microworld by Hans Christian Von Baeyer ISBN: 0486414477 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Second Law (Scientific American Library Paperback) by P. W. Atkins ISBN: 0716760061 Publisher: W.H. Freeman & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Information: The New Language of Science by Hans Christian Von Baeyer, Hans Christian Von Baeyer ISBN: 0674013875 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Isaac Newton by James Gleick ISBN: 0375422331 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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