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The Amazing Story Of Quantum Mechanics
James Kakalios
A Math-Free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World
Gotham
October 2010
On Sale: October 14, 2010
336 pages ISBN: 1592404790 EAN: 9781592404797 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
James Kakalios, the author of The Physics of Superheroes
returns with an accessible and math-free primer on quantum
mechanics. Most of us are unaware of how much we depend on
quantum mechanics on a day-to-day basis. Using examples from
science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, The Amazing
Story of Quantum Mechanics explains the fundamental
principles of quantum mechanics that underlie the world we
live in. In the pulp magazines and comics of the 1950s, it was
predicted that the future would be one of gleaming utopias,
with flying cars, jetpacks, and robotic personal assistants.
Obviously, things didn’t turn out that way. But the world we
do have is actually more fantastic than the most outlandish
predictions of the science fiction of the mid-twentieth
century. The World Wide Web, pocket-sized computers, mobile
phones, and MRI machines have changed the world in
unimagined ways. The book begins with an overview of speculative science
fiction, beginning with Jules Verne and progressing through
the space adventure comic books of the 1950s. Using the
example of Dr. Manhattan from the graphic novel and film
Watchmen, Kakalios explains the fundamentals of quantum
mechanics and describes nuclear energy via the hilarious
portrayals of radioactivity and its effects in the movies
and comic books of the 1950s.
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