午夜福利1000集合

PARTICLE physics is often presented as a kind of catalogue: here鈥檚 a set of quarks and other particles feeling a few different forces that are transmitted by another array of particles. The cataloguer approaches fundamental principles tentatively if at all. In Deep Down Things, Bruce Schumm takes a much more ambitious approach, aiming to give an insight into the gloriously profound ideas at the root of modern physics.

鈥淭he going may not be easy, but persistence will be rewarded,鈥� Schumm says in the preface. Certainly, success will be rewarded. Although physicists often say that their discipline does not do 鈥渨hy鈥�, and can only say how something happens, I think that most questioners have a level on which the 鈥渉ow鈥� becomes so profound that it qualifies as why. And unless you are extremely demanding questioner, Deep Down Things is going to reach your why level.

At the heart of the book, you can learn how a little philosophical discomfort plus some pure maths implies the existence of the fundamental forces of nature.

Electromagnetism and nuclear forces are no accident; some more profound logic requires them to exist. But there is a price to pay. Schumm speeds us through ordinary quantum mechanics and relativity by page 49, so that he can get on with the difficult stuff 鈥� quantum field theory, group theory, Lie algebras, internal symmetry spaces and gauge theory. He does a remarkably good job of explaining all this, with a style that is mercifully plain, but this is such demanding territory that even his fine efforts as a guide are likely to leave the general reader gasping.

I expect that any physics undergraduate, bewildered by textbooks and lectures, would find this a delight. As for the legendary intelligent general reader, well, it鈥檚 not impossible, but you had better be persistent.