Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction

Particle Physics

Paperback - UK - 1st Edition.

Author Frank Close Published 2004-05-13 Type Non-fiction Genre Educational Themes Physics, Science Age Group Adult

Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction is a book about particle physics written by Frank Close and published on 2004-05-13 and is one of the many books in the Very Short Introductions series.

The book covers the history of the science of particle physics, what new stuff particle physicists were working on in the early 2000s, and what theories the field was predicting in the near future.

Personal

Own?	No.
Read?	Audiobook read by Dennis Holland.
Finished	2023-04-17

I frequently try to broaden my understanding of the sciences, especially physics, which led me to read this book.

Review

Overall:

Good

• The book gives all the basic information about particle physics including the history of the field and its scientists, what is currently known, and what scientists were working on in 2004. The book was written while the Large Hadron Collider which was still being built, so there is a fair amount of focus on it.

Bad

• Like pretty much every popular book I've read about physics, it's more of a review than an introduction. It covers all the major aspects of particle physics, but doesn't spend much time on the fundamentals, assuming the reader already knows most of them. Because of this, I was frequently in over my head and understood little of what was being presented.
• The book is quite dry and is more like a listing of facts than a narrative. There are multiple instances of the author using narration to make it a more interesting, but this is primarily used when describing the history of the science, not the state of the art.
• The author anthropomorphizes more than I would like. Nature doesn't "prefer" positive matter over antimatter just as rocks don't "prefer" to lie on the ground rather than fly about.
• The cover, as with all books in the series, is terrible.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Videos

Promotional video.

Links

 

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Short_Introductions - Wikipedia - Series.