3 Reasons Why You should read ‘For the Love of Physics’
I can’t stop myself from recommending this book to everyone.
It was almost a year ago when the book found me, or rather I was introduced to the book, by the internet. I bought the book right away, after having watched the amazing lectures by Walter Lewin. One just cannot disagree with the fact that, Walter Lewin puts up the best shows on Physics inside a classroom. He has proved how interesting learning physics can be. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can watch his lectures here.
Now, ‘For the Love of Physics’ is a book that was written to surprise you in all aspects. If you were among those high school kids who thought physics was a boring subject with uninteresting mathematical equations, then this book will change everything that you’ve thought about physics so far and the physical world around you; as such. There are many reasons as to why you should read this book. I’m stating three most important ones.
1. It’s simple.
It’s very difficult to put the most complex of the scientific ideas in the simplest words and make one understand about it.
But, ‘For the Love of Physics’ does just that. Introducing you to the most baffling things in our physical world in every single chapter. The book is an autobiographical journey of Walter Lewin through his early life and the days he spent teaching at MIT. With examples from daily life and analogies that everyone can relate to, the physics turns very interesting.
2. You will see the world very differently after reading this book.
“You have changed my Life” is a common refrain in the emails Walter Lewin receives daily from fans who have been enthralled by his world-famous video lectures about the wonders of physics. And this book is no less in changing one’s perspective on the physical world. You’re going to discover that you can see rainbows not just after storms, but every single place where light can be refracted to disperse seven colors. In the sprinklers of your garden, in your vehicle lamps, in the drizzling rain and places where you thought the rainbow was impossible to see. You’ll be introduced to astounding concepts such as Stellar Parallax, which will make any simple phenomena around you, more important.
3. Physics, and science as such will turn interesting to you.
As you read through this book, the fine line between the daily life and the school subject called “Physics” will start to fade and eventually disappear. In fact, it will change all your daily perspective of life. Walter Lewin describes about the coolest things in physics, which every layman can comprehend.
In the first 2/3 of the book he explains how we’re surrounded by phenomena that never fail to astonish us with examples from daily life and experiments in his classroom, and make us understand how important they can be. The last few chapters of the book is, Walter Lewin describing his career in x-ray astronomy, which is in fact very interesting. All in all, this is a book you simply cannot miss to read. It has all the things you want, to make you read a book on physics. Google books offers some preview on a few chapters of the book. Click here if you want to check it out.
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