Black Bodies and Quantum Cats - Tales of Pure Genius and Mad Science. product reviews

First impressions: I had to laugh... not only was the cat's expression highly amusing, but the cover shows a quote by David Bodanis: "I found Ouelette's book great fun... and learned a great deal from it too." What made this (strangely) funny for me was that David is the award-winning author of "Electric Universe" which is another book in this style of "high-sci for the average guy" writing, but focuses more closely on the electromagnetic nature of the universe around us. It is also one I have read, and found amazing in it's ability to tell the big stories in little words, such that even the most average Joe Public can feel in touch with what's going on around the cutting edge of science as it stands, as well as having a better grasp of what has gone before, the stuff that makes up the bedrock upon which our technological advancement is built.

In this book, Jennifer Ouellette explores all of the major stepping stones that have given us our current lifestyle, from the discovery of the various bits of the overall electromagnetic spectrum, quantum and chaos theory, why light has a split-personality and acts differently depending on how you look at it, and how we took those principles and built then outwards and upwards and created everything from portable radios to microcircuitry. But this book is more than a story of science, it's the tales of those who made the science and founded the schools of thought that underpin everything in our daily lives. From the ever-famous, such as Einstein and Heisenberg, to those who made critical discoveries but got lost in the dusty shelves of history, such as Edward Lorenz or Charles Townes. Aptly highlighted and exemplified by modern, topical references that show us the principals or parallel ideas in action, often with a wonderful tongue-in-cheek sense of humour that appeals to my intellectual side, without ignoring my "Joe Blog" persona either.

Overall, if you have ever had a desire to understand more about our world and the science that keeps it running, but are put off by all the maths and strange diagrams, this is an excellent book. Not only will you get a reasonably good grasp of the concepts, you might even get a surprise or two at the history of some commonplace objects, and the story of their evolution from "Madness, MADNESS I TELL YOU! Satan's hand is in this!" through to "Oh yeah, it just... does that thing... you know..." This would also be an especially good book to have if you have kids who are weak on science, or lack the passion to explore the sciences.