More Surprises in Theoretical Physics

Like its predecessor, this book by the renowned physicist Sir Rudolf Peierls draws from many diverse fields of theoretical physics to present problems in which the answer differs from what our intuition had led us to expect. In some cases an apparently convincing approximation turns out to be misleading; in others a seemingly unmanageable problem turns out to have a simple answer. Peierls's intention, however, is not to treat theoretical physics as an unpredictable game in which such surpri...