Absolutely Small: How Quantum Theory Explains Our Everyday World

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Overview

What gives objects their color? Why does copper conduct electricity, but glass does not? Why is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas while oxygen and nitrogen are not? These are basic questions about how our world works that can’t be answered with the usual explanations.

Instead, we must turn to the fascinating field of quantum theory. Absolutely Small investigates the counterintuitive world of the tiniest particles on earth—photons, electrons, atoms, and molecules—that act nothing like objects in our human-sized world and actually upend conventional notions of physics.

Absolutely Small opens up this extraordinary field to ...

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More About This Book

Overview

What gives objects their color? Why does copper conduct electricity, but glass does not? Why is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas while oxygen and nitrogen are not? These are basic questions about how our world works that can’t be answered with the usual explanations.

Instead, we must turn to the fascinating field of quantum theory. Absolutely Small investigates the counterintuitive world of the tiniest particles on earth—photons, electrons, atoms, and molecules—that act nothing like objects in our human-sized world and actually upend conventional notions of physics.

Absolutely Small opens up this extraordinary field to nonscientists, as it presents complex ideas without the complex equations. You’ll finally “get it” about quantum physics and quantum chemistry, now made accessible and understandable like never before—the math-drenched bestsellers of Stephen Hawking don’t even come close!

Advance Praise for Absolutely Small

“There are a few books that I always keep near at hand, and constantly come back to. The Feynman Lectures on Physics and Dirac’s classic textbook on quantum mechanics are among them. Michael Fayer’s wonderful new book, Absolutely Small, is about to join them. Whether you are a scientist or just curious about how the world works, this is the book for you.” — Leonard Susskind, Professor of Physics, Stanford University; author of The Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics (Professor Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.)

“Absolutely Small by Professor Michael Fayer provides us with a clear way of visualizing the strange world of the quantum, and provides a deep understanding of many of its bizarre features; features that often on first encounter seem to defy our everyday experiences.”— Richard N. Zare, Professor in Natural Science at Stanford University; and Chairman, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University (Professor Zare is renowned for his research in the area of laser chemistry, resulting in a greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level. He has received numerous honors and awards.)

“Most lay readers think of the world of quantum mechanics as abstruse stuff accessible only to highly trained scientists. In this absolutely terrific book, Michael Fayer seemingly breaks one of the iron laws of science by making this material both lively and accessible.”— Richard A. Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
How a photon can be in two places at once is just one of the conundrums of quantum physics that Fayer (Elements of Quantum Mechanics) helps to unravel. The Stanford University Professor of Chemistry provides a roadmap for non-scientific readers who wish to understand the subject but lack advanced mathematical training. Fayer's belief that our everyday experiences "teach us to think in terms of classical physics" helps him easily breach the leap from playing ball to understanding how the earth orbits the sun. But because what we learn as children "prepares us to view nature in a manner that is fundamentally wrong," most people are at a loss when probing seemingly simple questions: "Why are cherries red and blueberries blue?" While the large objects treated in classical physics can be measured without appreciable disturbance, the same is not true at the quantum level. We may take the color and size of fruit for granted, but Fayer illustrates the ways in which "the natural world is driven by quantum phenomena" with a serious, accessible treatment of a complex and fascinating subject. (June)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780814414880
  • Publisher: AMACOM
  • Publication date: 6/16/2010
  • Pages: 400
  • Sales rank: 319,303
  • Product dimensions: 6.48 (w) x 9.96 (h) x 1.12 (d)

Meet the Author

MICHAEL D. FAYER, PH.D., (Stanford, CA) is the David Mulvane Ehrsam and Edward Curtis Franklin Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has won major prizes and honors in the fields of physics, chemistry, and molecular spectroscopy. He is the author of Elements of Quantum Mechanics.

Read an Excerpt

Preface

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, you probably fall into one of two broad

categories of people. You may be one of my colleagues who is

steeped in the mysteries of quantum theory and wants to see how

someone writes a serious book on quantum theory with no math.

Or, you may be one of the vast majority of people who look at the

world around them without a clear view of why many things in

everyday life are the way they are. These many things are not insignificant

aspects of our environment that might be overlooked.

Rather, they are important features of the world that are never explicated

because they are seemingly beyond comprehension. What

gives materials color, why does copper wire conduct electricity but

glass doesn’t, what is a trans fat anyway, and why is carbon dioxide

a greenhouse gas while oxygen and nitrogen aren’t? This lack of a

picture of how things work arises from a seemingly insurmountable

barrier to understanding. Usually that barrier is mathematics. To

answer the questions posed above—and many more—requires an

understanding of quantum theory, but it actually doesn’t require

mathematics.

This book will develop your quantum mechanics intuition,

which will fundamentally change the way you view the world. You

have an intuition for mechanics, but the mechanics you know is

what we refer to as classical mechanics. When someone hits a long

drive baseball, you know it goes up for a while, then the path turns

over and the ball falls back to Earth. You know if the ball is hit

harder, it takes off faster and will go farther before it hits the

ground. Why does the ball behave this way? Because gravity is pulling

it back to Earth. When you see the moon, you know it is orbiting

the Earth. Why? Because gravity attracts the moon to the Earth. You

don’t sit down and start solving Newton’s equations to calculate

what is going on. You know from everyday experience that apples

fall down not up and that if your car is going faster it will take

longer to stop. However, you don’t know from everyday experience

why cherries are red and blueberries are blue. Color is intrinsically

dependent on the quantum mechanical description of molecules.

Everyday experience does not prepare you to understand the nature

of things around you that depend on quantum phenomena. As

mentioned here and detailed in the book, understanding features of

everyday life, such as color or electricity, requires a quantum theory

view of nature

Why no math? Imagine if this book contained discussions of a

topic that started in English, jumped into Latin, then turned back to

English. Then imagine that this jumping happened every time the

details of an explanation were introduced. The language jumping is

what occurs in books on quantum theory, except that instead of

jumping from English to Latin, it jumps from English to math. In

a hard core quantum mechanics book (for example, my own text,

Elements of Quantum Mechanics [Oxford University Press, 2001]),

you will find things like, ‘‘the interactions are described by the following

set of coupled differential equations.’’ After the equations,

the text reads, ‘‘the solutions are,’’ and more equations appear. In

contrast, the presentation in this book is descriptive. Diagrams replace

the many equations, with the exception of some small algebraic

equations—and these simple equations are explained in detail.

Even without the usual overflow of math, the fundamental philosophical

and conceptual basis for and applications of quantum theory

are thoroughly developed. Therefore, anyone can come away

with an understanding of quantum theory and a deeper understanding

of the world around us. If you know a good deal of math, this

book is still appropriate. You will acquire the conceptual understanding

necessary to move on to a mathematical presentation of

quantum theory. If you are willing to do some mental gymnastics,

but no math, this book will provide you with the fundamentals of

quantum theory, with applications to atomic and molecular matter.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Chapter 1 Schrödinger's Cat 1

Chapter 2 Size Is Absolute 8

Chapter 3 Some Things About Waves 22

Chapter 4 The Photoelectric Effect and Einstein's Explanation 36

Chapter 5 Light: Waves or Particles? 46

Chapter 6 How Big Is a Photon and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 57

Chapter 7 Photons, Electrons, and Baseballs 80

Chapter 8 Quantum Racquetball and the Color of Fruit 96

Chapter 9 The Hydrogen Atom: The History 118

Chapter 10 The Hydrogen Atom: Quantum Theory 130

Chapter 11 Many Electron Atoms and the Periodic Table of Elements 151

Chapter 12 The Hydrogen Molecule and the Covalent Bond 178

Chapter 13 What Holds Atoms Together: Diatomic Molecules 196

Chapter 14 Bigger Molecules: The Shapes of Polyatomic Molecules 221

Chapter 15 Beer and Soap 250

Chapter 16 Fat, It's All About the Double Bonds 272

Chapter 17 Greenhouse Gases 295

Chapter 18 Aromatic Molecules 314

Chapter 19 Metals, Insulators, and Semiconductors 329

Chapter 20 Think Quantum 349

Glossary 363

Index 375

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  • Posted December 16, 2011

    What a piece of trash.

    Don't bother with this book. If the author knows anything about the subject he keeps it to himself.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted July 15, 2010

    Now that BN took care of the issue

    I'm redacting my review and giving it 4 stars based on my initial impression.

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    Posted January 26, 2011

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