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This gripping book brings back to life the events surrounding the
internment of ten German Nuclear Scientists immediately after World
War II. It is also an "eye-witness" account of the dawning of the
nuclear age, with the dialogue and narrative spanning the period
before, during and after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan at the
end of the war. This pivotal historical episode is conveyed, along
with the emotions as well as the facts, through drama, historical
narrative, and photographs of the captive German nuclear scientists
- who included Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, and Max von Laue. The
unique story that unfolds in the play is based on secretly recorded
transcripts of the scientists' actual conversations at Farm Hall,
together with related documents and photographs.
A thorough grounding in contemporary physics while placing the
subject into its social and historical context. Based largely on
the highly respected Project Physics Course developed by two of the
authors, it also integrates the results of recent pedagogical
research. The text thus teaches the basic phenomena in the physical
world and the concepts developed to explain them; shows that
science is a rational human endeavour with a long and continuing
tradition, involving many different cultures and people; develops
facility in critical thinking, reasoned argumentation, evaluation
of evidence, mathematical modelling, and ethical values. The
treatment emphasises not only what we know but also how we know it,
why we believe it, and what effects this knowledge has.
Was Einstein's first wife his uncredited coauthor, unpaid
assistant, or his unacknowledged helpmeet? The real "Mileva Story."
Albert Einstein's first wife, Mileva Einstein-Maric, was forgotten
for decades. When a trove of correspondence between them beginning
in their student days was discovered in 1986, her story began to be
told. Some of the tellers of the "Mileva Story" made startling
claims: that she was a brilliant mathematician who surpassed her
husband, and that she made uncredited contributions to his most
celebrated papers in 1905, including his paper on special
relativity. This book, based on extensive historical research,
uncovers the real "Mileva Story." Mileva was one of the few women
of her era to pursue higher education in science; she and Einstein
were students together at the Zurich Polytechnic. Mileva's
ambitions for a science career, however, suffered a series of
setbacks-failed diploma examinations, a disagreement with her
doctoral dissertation adviser, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy by
Einstein. She and Einstein married in 1903 and had two sons, but
the marriage failed. Was Mileva her husband's uncredited coauthor,
unpaid assistant, or his essential helpmeet? It's tempting to
believe that she was her husband's secret collaborator, but the
authors of Einstein's Wife look at the actual evidence, and a
chapter by Ruth Lewin Sime offers important historical context. The
story they tell is that of a brave and determined young woman who
struggled against a variety of obstacles at a time when science was
not very welcoming to women.
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The Healer (Paperback)
David C. Cassidy, Dana Griffin
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R408
Discovery Miles 4 080
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Dead Man Lying (Paperback)
Roxanne Bury; Illustrated by David C. Cassidy; Scott Bury
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R365
Discovery Miles 3 650
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Volume 1 presents important new material on the young Einstein.
Over half the documents made available here were discovered by the
editors, including a significant group of over fifty letters that
Einstein exchanged with Mileva Maric, his fellow student and future
wife. These letters, together with other previously unpublished
documents, provide an entirely new view of Einstein's youth. The
documents in the volume also foreshadow the emergence of his
extraordinary creative power. In them is manifested his intense
commitment to scientific work and his interest in certain themes
that proved to be central to his thinking during the next decade.
We can follow, for example, the beginnings of his preoccupation
with the electrodynamics of moving bodies that was to lead to the
development of this special theory of relativity. For the first
time it can be seen how closely he followed such contemporary
developments in physics as Planck's work on radiation theory and
Drude's work on the electron theory of metals. In addition to all
of Einstein's known correspondence and other writings from this
period, the volume includes the relevant portions of all
third-party letters and other contemporary documents that provide
additional information about his secondary schooling at the Aargau
Cantonal School; his four years at the Swiss Federal Plytechnical
School, or the ETH; and his search for a job after graduation.
Included in the volume are those sections of an unpublished
biography by Einstein's sister, Maja Winteler-Einstein, which deal
with his early years; his extensive notes on a physics course he
took at the ETH; and previously unpublished photographs of the
young Einstein and his teachers and friends.
Documents in Volume 1 portray Einstein's experiences during the
two stressful years after his graduation from the ETH in Zurich.
Denied a position as an Assistant at the ETH, he lived a
hand-to-mouth existence while he looked for a post at other
universities; then he attempted to find a secondary-school post,
and finally sought a nonacademic job. Tension with his parents over
his plans to marry Mileva Maric is evident throughout this period.
With the help of a friend, he finally found work at the Swiss
Patent Office, the haven where he would spend the next seven years.
Freed from his financial worries, he entered on one of the most
productive periods of his life, as the next volume, Writings
(1901-1910), will document.
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Calamity (Paperback)
David C. Cassidy; Dana Griffin
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R405
Discovery Miles 4 050
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Omega Airlines Boeing 737 blows a tire on takeoff from New York's
LaGuardia Airport and crashes into Flushing Bay. The Captain and
ten people are killed; the First Officer and fifty-eight injured.
His divorce imminent, Omega Airlines Pilot Instructor Kyle Masters
is brought in to assist the NTSB's accident investigation. He and
NTSB Investigator Lori Almond discover someone had played a role in
the accident. Determined to absolve the crew and the airline of
full responsibility for the disaster, Kyle uses his operational
knowledge - and healthy dose of humor. With Lori's expertise in
accident investigations, the duo close in on their target, putting
their lives, and Kyle's family's, in danger.
As the twentieth century drew to a close, computers, the Internet,
and nanotechnology were central to modern American life. Yet the
advances in physics underlying these applications are poorly
understood and widely underappreciated by U.S. citizens today. In
this concise overview, David C. Cassidy sharpens our perspective on
modern physics by viewing this foundational science through the
lens of America's engagement with the political events of a
tumultuous century. American physics first stirred in the
1890s-around the time x-rays and radioactivity were discovered in
Germany-with the founding of graduate schools on the German model.
Yet American research lagged behind the great European laboratories
until highly effective domestic policies, together with the exodus
of physicists from fascist countries, brought the nation into the
first ranks of world research in the 1930s. The creation of the
atomic bomb and radar during World War II ensured lavish government
support for particle physics, along with computation, solid-state
physics, and military communication. These advances facilitated
space exploration and led to the global expansion of the Internet.
Well into the 1960s, physicists bolstered the United States'
international status, and the nation repaid the favor through
massive outlays of federal, military, and philanthropic funding.
But gradually America relinquished its postwar commitment to
scientific leadership, and the nation found itself struggling to
maintain a competitive edge in science education and research.
Today, American physicists, relying primarily on industrial
funding, must compete with smaller, scrappier nations intent on
writing their own brief history of physics in the twenty-first
century.
This volume of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein contains
the scientific work Einstein published during the first decade of
his career, and includes some of the most significant achievements
of twentieth-century physics. The first paper was written in 1900
by the twenty-one-year-old Einstein, newly graduated from the Swiss
Federal Polytechnical School, or ETH, in Zurich and still searching
in vain for a job. The last paper in this volume is the text of an
invited lecture given in 1909 to a major scientific meeting by
Einstein after he was appointed to his first academic post at the
University of Zurich. He had already been recognized as an
important theoretical physicist on the basis of the work reprinted
here, particularly the three masterpieces that appeared in quick
succession during 1905, Einstein's year of miracles. In one of
these papers Einstein showed how one could finally confirm the
ancient view that matter is composed of discrete atoms, and even
measure the numbers and masses of these atoms. In a second paper,
which even he referred to as "very revolutionary," he argued that
the observed properties of thermal radiation suggest that it
consists not of waves, but rather of localized particles of energy
which he called energy quanta. The third and most famous paper set
forth the special theory of relativity, solving some long-standing
difficulties, but requiring a significant change in our
understanding of those basic concepts, space and time.
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