Book Review: The New Physics

The New Physics For the Twenty-First Century
Gordon Fraser, Editor (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Gordon Watts had a post a few days ago on undergraduate physics curricula, noting that:

The biggest complaint I hear over and over is that we aren’t teaching enough modern physics to our students. By modern I don’t mean quantum mechanics (which is typically called modern physics), but, rather, I mean recent discoveries. Dark matter/energy. Applications in condensed matter. Materials. Basically, the stuff we do for research, or did perhaps 20 years ago (and so is well established at this point). I think everyone agrees with this basic idea.

Here at Penn, we have a new class that is offered every two years that attempts to fill this need that goes under the rather dull name of “Intro to Research” (I took it as a sophomore). The idea is simple: professors from the department give two or three 1.5 hour lectures on their research, going into a significant amount of depth along the way. The goal is to expose undergraduates to what ‘real’ physics is - an idea I consider not only good, but essential, if only because some students need to be shown that ‘real’ physics research isn’t all just dry, pointless derivations or stuffy textbooks. Real physics is exciting, and that point often gets lost amidst weekly problem sets. Grading is done using homework assignments based on the lectures, and a presentation/paper that students have to prepare on another topic of their choosing that researchers are working on.

I came across The New Physics For the Twenty-First Century about a year ago, and it struck me how appropriate it is for ‘Survey of Real Physics’ courses of this sort. For starters, the list of topics is incredibly diverse, and I can’t think of anything of current interest that isn’t covered in some amount of detail. Here’s the table of contents (the authors of each individual article are listed in parentheses):

Part I. Matter and the Universe
1. Cosmology (Wendy Freedman and Edward Kolb)
2. Gravity (Ronald Adler)
3. The new astronomy (Arnon Dar)
4. Particles and the Standard Model (Chris Quigg)
5. Superstring Theory (Michael Green)

Part II. Quantum matter
6. Manipulating atoms with photons (Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Jean Dalibard)
7. The quantum world of ultra-cold atoms (William Phillips and Christopher Foot)
8. Superfluids (Henry Hall)
9. Quantum phase transitions (Subir Sachdev)

Part III. Quanta in action
10. Essential quantum entanglement (Anton Zeilinger)
11. Quanta, ciphers, and computers (Artur Ekert)
12. Small-scale structures and ‘nanoscience’ (Yoseph Imry)

Part IV. Calculation and Computation
13. Physics of chaotic systems (Henry Abarbanel)
14. Complex systems (Antonio Politi)
15. Collaborative physics, e-Science, and the Grid - realizing Licklider’s dream (Tony Hey and Anne Trefethen)

Part V. Science in action
16. Biophysics and biomolecular materials (Cyrus Safinya)
17. Medical physics (Nikolaj Pavel)
18. Physics of materials (Robert Cahn)
19. Physics and society (Ugo Amaldi)

Second, even a cursory glance shows that the people writing the articles are leaders in their fields. Who better to learn from? Third, not only are the authors big, but they’re good - the writing is incredibly concise, yet lucid, and any of the chapters are accessible to most 2nd or 3rd year physics undergraduates, or anyone else who’s been exposed to a decent amount of physics. (I’ve only read the chapters of great interest to me - that is, 6-9, 10, 12-14, 16, and 18, so my sample size is a little over a half.) Fourth, the book is great as a textbook or just for some interesting reading, and is listed on Amazon as going for a little under $35 - quite reasonable, considering the richness of information. (In addition, Amazon lets you read/search inside the book online, if you want to preview it first.)

I do want to point out, however, that this book isn’t intended to be a textbook - it’s meant to be a survey of what physics is today. This means that the chapters don’t come with problems, and there is no instructer’s manual that I know of. This doesn’t mean the book can’t be used in ‘Survey of Real Physics’ courses like the one I described above - I think one of the biggest problems with that course when I took it was that while the professors were excellent at describing what they did, it was often hard for undergrads to place the work in a broader context. Assigning a relevant chapter from this book as required reading before someone’s lecture would do wonders, I think - for example, if students had to read the chapter on nanoscience by Imry before a series of lectures on graphene electronics, followed by a problem set testing material covered in the lectures or broader notions relating to nanoscience - I think that would be an excellent way to present real physics to undergraduates. All in all, I highly recommend this book.