How Thing Work: The Physics of Everyday Life, 2nd Edition - Couverture souple

Bloomfield, Louis-A

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0471381519 ISBN 13 : 9780471381518

Editeur : John Wiley and Sons (WIE), 2001

Synopsis

HOW THINGS WORK is about ordinary objects and the physics concepts that make them possible. Its cover illustrates how often waves appears in our world. While ocean surf is clearly an example of waves (p. 250), so is the light from the lighthouse, the rippling motion of the guitar strings, and the sound emerging from the CD in its player. When you pluck a guitar string, you fill it with waves. The strength of these waves and the timbre of the resulting sound depend upon where and how you plucked the string and on the structure of the guitar itself. You can distinguish a guitar from a piano or harp by listening for the unique mixture of waves on its strings (p. 242). A lighthouse uses an enormous lens to bend light waves from its lamp into a narrow beam that sailors can see for a hundred kilometers. A large-diameter lens is needed because waves leaving a small-diameter lens spread outward like ripples on a pond and can't stay together as a bright, narrow beam (p. 427). A CD encodes the air pressure fluctuations in sound waves as a pattern of tiny pits on its shiny surface. The CD player reads these pits with a laser to reproduce the recorded sound. Arcs of audio and error-recovery information are arranged in a spiral around the disk's center so that a scratch outward from the middle of the disk is unlikely to cause any noticeable loss of music (p. 424).

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture

Though his moves appear magical, this skateboarder is performing his stunts entirely within the laws of physics. More importantly, he is making those laws real and relevant. This book is all about putting the laws of physics in context. By finding physics in the objects of everyday experience, How Things Work transforms the field from a remote and abstract academic discipline into the essential basis for understanding our world and everything in it.

Our skateboarder illustrates the same physics we′ll explore in the first two chapters of this book. Like someone who is skating (Section 1.1), he spends much of his time coasting forward because of his own inertia. But his recent trip up a ramp (Section 1.3) has lifted him high above the ground so that he is subject only to his weight–the downward pull of gravity–and travels in the arc of a falling ball (Section 1.2).

Of course, since both he and the board rotate like seesaws (Section 2.1) as they fall, landing safely is more than half the challenge. His concentration is a sure sign that he intends to ride the skateboard back down the slope on its friction–reducing wheels (Section 2.2) in another second or two. However, if he makes a mistake and collides with something, as he would in a bumper car(Section 2.3), it′s Reassuring to note that he′s warning a helmet.

If this all sounds rather ordinary, it′s because physics is ordinary. It′s everywhere you look. But understanding physics well will require some guidance and thought, so it′s time to venture inside this book.

Quatrième de couverture

How Things Work is written for anyone who has ever wondered how a microwave oven cooks food, who has tried to fix a leaking water faucet, or who has hesitated to pay more for a halogen lamp. As it examines familiar objects – bathroom scales, televisions, photocopiers, airplane engines, and ocean waves – How Things Work presents the basic principles of physics in contexts that make them understandable and relevant. In doing so, it demonstrates the power of physics to explain and predict a multitude of phenomena with just a few basic principles and shows how these beautiful principles are woven through the fabric of everyday life. A skillful pitcher uses the air to make a baseball curve in flight on its way to the batter. The way in which the ball curves depends its spin. The word flight is especially appropriate here because a spinning ball interacts with the air in much the same way that an airplane does (Section 4.3). The violin’s bridge does more than simply support its string. It also rocks back and forth as the strings vibrate, conveying their motions to the violin’s sound board. Most of the sound we hear as a violinist draws a bow across the strings is produced by the moving sound board (Section 9.2). For an object that touches the ground at only two points, a moving bicycle is remarkably stable. It remains upright because its front wheel automatically steers it under the rider’s weight as the two travel forward. This stabilizing effect even makes it possible to ride a bicycle without hands (Section 5.2).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: John Wiley and Sons (WIE)
• Date d'édition: 2001
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0471381519
• ISBN 13: 9780471381518
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 536
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible