The most interesting physics book

[kurious]

What is the most informative and interesting physics book you have ever read? I'd like something to read that's worth the money!It can be about any subject.Technical or non-technical.

 

[rick1138]

I could list hundreds...

 

[Janitor]

Inward Bound by Abraham Pais is a neat mix of chatty history and nitty-gritty details, if I remember correctly a decade after reading it.

 

[Njorl]

Well, I'd say Goldstein's Classical mechanics, but I wouldn't recommend just reading it.

Njorl

 

[The_Professional]

Do you want a physics book that will help you solve practical physics problems? or do you want a book that will make you understand and appreciate the beauty of physics?

 

[killerinstinct]

The Character of Physical Law is one of my favorites. Written by Richard Feynman. Very interesting person he is indeed.

 

[Gokul43201]

Look for "The Second Creation" by Robert P Crease and Charles C Mann. This is one book you will NEVER regret buying. I've seen it on Amazon.

 

[Gokul43201]

Well, I'd say Goldstein's Classical mechanics, but I wouldn't recommend just reading it.

Njorl

Heavens, have we bred beings on this planet that are capable of such feelings towards Goldstein ?

 

[Janitor]

What action is Gokul43201 imagining here?

 

[franznietzsche]

Chaos by James Gleick

He goes through the history of the development of Chaos as a science and mathematical field. It is absolutely fascinating to read, by far one of the best "pop-sci" books I've ever read, and it is not technical at all, very easy to understand.

 

[cosmicstring]

Feynman Lectures on Physics (Feynman et al), The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene)

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Chaos by James Gleick

He goes through the history of the development of Chaos as a science and mathematical field. It is absolutely fascinating to read, by far one of the best "pop-sci" books I've ever read, and it is not technical at all, very easy to understand.

i read the book but i can't say it's only a physics book it's an all around science book: biology,chemistry, physics and maths.
each oh these subjects have a connection to chaos theory and this book can be a great teaser to read some other more technical stuff in chaos theory.

 

[mikesvenson]

i read hawking's "brief history of time" while in high school, this book really got the ball rolling for me...

 

[Gokul43201]

I've read Gleick too. Was not bad.

The pictures are fun though.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Gleik has a biography of Feynman which is pretty good too. It gets into Feynman's own methods of thinking physics, which evolved over his lifetime, and it gives a better picture of the man than the deliberate caricature in the "Surely You're Joking" books.

No equations though.

 

[baffledMatt]

I found Stuart kauffman's "At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity" a very interesting read. He tries to tell us that natural selection's hash-mash of accidents is not the only force at work during evolution.

It influenced me almost as much as Gleick's book on chaos.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that my favorite physics book is "The self-made tapestry" by Philip Ball. Definitely worth reading!

Matt

 

[kurious]

"Six not so easy pieces" by Richard Feynman really gives the reader a clear picture of what special and general relativity are about.

 

[Gokul43201]

"Six not so easy pieces" by Richard Feynman really gives the reader a clear picture of what special and general relativity are about.

Also about how nice it is to have symmetry.

 

[Gokul43201]

Gleik has a biography of Feynman which is pretty good too. It gets into Feynman's own methods of thinking physics, which evolved over his lifetime, and it gives a better picture of the man than the deliberate caricature in the "Surely You're Joking" books.

No equations though.

And there's another by John & Mary Gribbin

 

[laserblue]

At the moment, I think SIMILARITIES IN PHYSICS by John N. Shive and Robert L. Weber is the most interesting and informative physics book I've read although I really like Poincare's writing in his THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE volumes and Mach's THE SCIENCE OF MECHANICS. What I find interesting in these books is the way these men are thinking. I like Einstein's writings for similar reasons but an anthology of essays may not qualify as a book perhaps. If it did I would add papers by Edwin Jaynes and David Hestenes. I'm still searching for more.

 

[jvicens]

Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne

This book not only talks about what a BH is, how it is formed and its physics. By the end you finish reading it you will have a good idea of what BH are and some of the current theories explaining it. In this book you will see how Kip puts his personal experience of nearly three decades and the human struggle for over 100 years of history to elucidate the mysteries of this universe. You will see how people half of our age (I'm 34) made valuable contributions that still stands these days, like Chandrasekhar who calculated what the mass of a start should be for it to collapse in a white dwarf. You will also see that a scientific breakthrough is not only the result of just one guy working in his desk but most of the times the result of many interested people all over the world who want to get to the bottom of the subject, where also a lot of good luck is also needed. It also shows you that there are much more people involved in these big discoveries that we do not know about because they are not Newton, Einstein or Hawking but just mathematicians or engineers working in some universities. They deserve credit too.

The whole book clearly proofs the natural curiosity human beings have towards the misteries of this universe.

 

[laserblue]

Einstein's Clock's Poncare's Maps is good if you want to get a full context big picture of where Einstein's Paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" fits into the world scene of the early 1900's. A.I. Miller did something similar in his writings but not on such a personal level. There are lots of interesting things in this book. It's easy to sterotype a man like Poincare from his writings on science and mathematics until you learn he was not an ivory tower bookworm but a man with very practical experience in several different fields. And then there is the behind the scenes clandestrine GPS kind of stuff going on at the time. Where in the world of is CHILE?