Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Kindle Edition

This is a great background reader for the general subject of physics. But lacks depth, so it fits into the introductory framework of material. I enjoy his spirited writing style and linkage to the greater realm of natural philosophy.

It’s Not What You ThinkBy Bob Gelms I have two science books that, over the years, have become my favorites, The Elegant Universe and The Field. I have just found a third, Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Keep reading, it’s not what you think.First of all I have to tell you that there isn’t any math in the book. There is one equation that Mr. Rovelli prints just to show you what it looks like. It’s not very famous unless you are already a physicist. In the preface he states, “These lessons were written for those who know little or nothing about modern science. Together they provide a rapid overview of the most fascinating aspects of the great revolution that has occurred in physics in the twentieth and twenty first century…” In the spirit of Mr. Rovelli’s book, physics is the concrete explanation of the magic of the universe. It is the search for the truth about how everything in the universe operates interdependently on a grand scale (galaxies) and on the minute scale (electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, gluons, etc.) This search, at times, has been fraught with the real danger of losing your life. Galileo was almost burned at the stake, commuted to life imprisoned under house arrest, for simply saying that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Scientists in the twentieth century are a little better off. The book is very short. If you have the print version, it’s 81 pages long, with only seven chapters called lessons. It starts at the beginning of the twentieth century with, next to Isaac Newton, the most important physicist in all of history, Albert Einstein. Einstein’s theories are simply and elegantly explained in plain non-scientific language. The culmination of his work is called A General Theory of Relativity, in addition to three or four other papers that were glossed over and initially laughed at.Once the scientific community caught up with Einstein’s brain they were struck dumb with the beauty and simplicity of his vision for the operation of the universe. It has always struck me curious that when he won the Nobel Prize it wasn’t for relativity (E=MC2). It was for one of those glossed over papers on the nature of light. He did all of his work on relativity and the photoelectric effect in 1905, when he was 26 years old. Over the years, he became a towering giant in the history of science while remaining a gentle and kind man. The second lesson covers the exact opposite of Einstein’s theories. Planck, Bohr, and Heisenberg all contributed in some degree to the theory of the littlest “things” in the universe, which came to be called quantum mechanics. It deals with atoms and the particles that make them up, showing how they interact with the ever-changing landscape around and in them. Then all hell broke loose.It seems that the rules and regs that describe perfectly Einstein’s big universe of galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets do not work if you apply those rules and regs to the little world of quantum mechanics. Conversely if you take the rules and regs of the little universe of quantum mechanics and apply them to Einstein’s big universe you will find that they don’t work. WELL. Both theories contradict one another and they shouldn’t because they both work perfectly in their own space and time. The big prize in physics these days is to find the link between the two because it is inherent in both theories that there be something that draws them together. Einstein called it the unified field theory and he tried to find it his whole life. He failed. Lessons One, Two and Seven are the far and away the most interesting and most important in the book. The other essays cover more popular topics like time, black holes, probability, particles, and a lesson called Grains of Space which is a brief explanation of a theory founded by Mr. Rovell, himself a theoretical physicist. In it, he attempts, I think, to reconcile the big with the small worlds of physics. It is called loop quantum gravity and it’s where general relativity meets quantum mechanics. In many ways the most interesting of all the essays is the last one. It’s simply called Ourselves. This is where Mr. Rovelli attempts to equate us, homo sapiens, to the interworking of the universe. We are all made of stardust put together using the immutable laws of nature. Our bodies conform to how the atoms we are made of obey quantum mechanics and the way in which we pass through time and space. It is utterly fascinating. I had an “oh wow” moment. I’d like to close with Mr. Rovelli’s words. “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking.”

As a physic novice but a life long reader it was definitely worth the read. As it says in the title it is brief, but Dr. Rovelli makes each lesson succinct enough to establish a foundation and a curiosity to prepare readers for more rigorous lessons should they chose to proceed down the physics rabbit hole. Although I finished the book in a weekend, I became a lifelong fan of his work! Highly recommend!

Carl Sagan once said something like, “When you’re in love you want to tell the whole world about it.” This is true enough and comes across as an obvious fact in this short work by Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS is brief but full of colorful insight into the world of the physicist.Most reviews of a book cover the entire volume but I will not be doing that. Instead, I want to briefly write about the final chapter which Rovelli entitled “Ourselves.” After going through general relativity, quantum mechanics, time, black holes, and much more, Rovelli ties it all together to give us perspective on our place in the universe and it is beautiful. He writes,“When we talk about the big bang or the fabric of space, what we are doing is not a continuation of the free and fantastic stories that humans have told nightly around campfires for hundreds of thousands of years. It is the continuation of something else: of the gaze of those same men in the first light of day looking at tracks left by antelope in the dust of the savannah – scrutinizing and deducting from the details of reality in order to pursue something that we can’t see directly but can follow the traces of. In the awareness that we can always be wrong, and therefore ready at any moment to change direction if a new track appears; but knowing also that if we are good enough we will get it right and will find what we are seeking. This is the nature of science.” (69)You and I both are part of a long lineage of humans that successfully survived the world by “scrutinizing and deducting from the details of reality.” We honor their lives by continuing that pursuit in the name of knowledge, in the name of science.But what are we? For thousands of years religious beliefs have made humans something seemingly wholly apart from the rest of the natural world. For the Abrahamic religions, we are made in the image of the divine and are the planet’s domineering taskmasters. But science has shown us that we aren’t different from nature. Rovelli writes, “We are an integral part of nature; we ARE nature, in one of its innumerable and infinitely variable expressions. This is what we have learned from our ever-increasing knowledge of the things of this world.” (76) Many of the very same molecules that make up the rest of the cosmos are within us. We are, in a sense, the universe.This universe that we embody is seeking to understand itself. The great success of men like Albert Einstein with his theory of general relativity, Neils Bohr with his work in quantum mechanics, and so many more are manifestations of an inquisitive universe. Rovelli’s book seeks to highlight this and celebrate humanity, even if he feels we won’t be long on this planet. (77-78)Pick this book up on a quiet, rainy day and you will find you have completed it in a very brief period. You will be a better human for it.

The amazing talent to take the reader through the double slit experiment, the though experiments and all the development of improvements in experimental technique made me think that this very short work would be equally spellbinding, full of information told in a new way, but after reading it once and browsing through it on a second reading, I came up short in being able to even summarize why the book was written.I'll give it another read in a few months, but this almost seems to have been written by an entirely different author altogether. Oh well, the lending library will get it after I'm done. This isn't of enough value to occupy a spot on my shelf.

I'm very old, and pretty well-educated, but skipped physics when I was in school and haven't paid much attention to what's been discovered since then. Carlo Rovelli's book is very well written and makes difficult concepts understandable, without ever talking down to the reader. The book is fascinating! Suspenseful even!

We are used to the billions and trillions narrative of today's physics PR and the eternal promise that just a few more Billion dollars, accelerators and Noble prizes and the atheists will celebrate the God particle or the reverse string loop de loop theory whatever lastest nonsense!The truth is science is busy deconstructing 'knowledge' it describes to a few with esoteric mathematics and calls it an explanation!The real wonder is consciousness, the 'I' the you, the everything made from soil from the stars! Our science is a monkey pointing at the moon!

A very brief book packed with a punch. I recently hear Carlo on BBC Radio 2, he gave such a freat interview that I felt I MUST buy this book. As fellow reviewers have noted Seven Brief lessons is, given the subject matter, very easy to follow and grasp - it does stimulate you to read further and I've already watched other on-line tutorials depicting and explaining topics such as Gravity wells .Reading this book has opened so many other doors to this amazing universe.

This is a short, pocket-sized overview of seven physics theories, ranging from Albie Einstein and his relativities to the rather more barking mad world of quantum theory. You'd think that a book that has less than 100 pages wouldn't have much depth to it and would be fairly easy to understand,(fun to read, even) but Ravelli has managed to make the subject as dull as dishwater, and just as clear. And he also gets very preachy and melodramatic towards the end when talking about climate change.I enjoyed his recent "Helgoland", a work which is ironically denser in parts, so thought I'd give this a whirl due to the plaudits it has received. Sadly, unlike Benedict Cumberbatch, I won't be dipping into this volume again.

Not a lot here for the kindle price of £5 i felt. The last and longest chapter is barely about physics at all from what i remember of it. The first few chapters are ok but then the 5th / 6th are a long the lines of "its still so complicated not even we know" so how enlightening its going to be for a layman who knows. 1st to 4th are ok but just touch the surface.

Put simply, this is a brilliant book and I would urge anyone with even a passing curiosity about the world/space in which we live to read it. It only takes an hour or so, so there’s really no excuse.As I’m sure is true with most people, the science behind the origins of the universe, quantum mechanics etc are largely beyond me. However, Rovelli does a great job of breaking ludicrously complicated subjects into manageable, bite-sized chapters, each of which makes you think a little bit harder about what you thought you knew.