A Brief History of Time

[meglet]

I'm watching the Stephen Hawking program right now. I have read the book (about 9 years ago) and remember it being hard going, even though it was billed as quantum physics for the masses. I only remember a couple of theories in it. Who's read? And who's understood any of it?!

[jake-the-peg]

Well I read it over a couple of days and understood it all but then I did a degree in Physics and Astronomy and was a professional physicist for a few years.

My son is 15 and read it recently - I guess we're probably not a normal family.

I guess the problem is that there's a lot of background that you kind of need to make reading a book like this easy. It has the information in it so you can read it without the background but if you're already familiar with many of the concepts it's much much easier.

Possibly a bit like reading Shakespeare, the first time you encounter the language it can be rather daunting but becomes easier the more you do it.

[jake-the-peg]

Actually one of the problems I find in science books is that there is a real lack of what you might call mid range books.

There are millions of pop science books like this and they all seem to go - relativity science of the very big, quantum mechanics, science of the very small. Theory of everything required to unite them and the 4 fundamental forces.. yah de yah.

After you've read about 10 of 20 of them and seen similar on TV you want to start throwing things because they all stop at the same place.

There's a real lack of books aimed at say science graduates from other fields who can handle a bit of maths to understand a bit deeper about these things but can't wade through the mountain of research papers.

I can think of a few like Roger Penrose's "Road to reality " but they're really thin on the ground.

Just not a big enough market I guess

[musicman1956]

"A brief history of time" is one of the best and most widely used book in our house. It stops the table rocking where a foot fell of and got lost. It was hopeless as a reading or reference book because the guy was too clever to make any sense to mere mortals. But power to his elbow etc for having a go.