Review by Choice Review
According to physicist Bernstein (emer., Stevens Institute of Technology), this very small book "is attuned to a general reader with an interest in science." In spite of its compactness, the author attempts to cover all of elementary particle physics and a fair amount of cosmology. In addition to sketching the stories of the bosons, leptons, and fermions making up the standard model, he introduces the ideas of Feynman diagrams and renormalization. This mostly well-written and interesting small volume contains a surprisingly large amount of scientific information as well as personal anecdotes. However, although the author has a well-deserved reputation for clearly writing on numerous science-related topics accessible to laypersons (e.g., Quantum Leaps, CH, Jul'10, 47-6311), this book will fly over the heads of much of his intended audience. Although he intends a chronological presentation, much of it skips back and forth, which lessens the ease of understanding the content presented. Overall, it is a pleasant, short read, and a reminder of the past century-and-a-half crusade at the forefront of modern physics. Summing Up: Recommended. Students of all levels, researchers/faculty, and informed general readers. A. M. Saperstein emeritus, Wayne State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Whenever physicist Ernst Mach's early-twentieth-century colleagues began theorizing about atoms, the skeptical Austrian asked, Have you seen one? A century later, through visionary powers conferred by recent science, Bernstein sees not just atoms but their constituent parts! And here he shares his intellectual eyesight with his readers. Beginning with five basic particles (protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos, and photons) representing what he calls the primary colors of the subatomic realm, Bernstein moves on to the dozens of lesser-known particles (including muons, mesons, and quarks) in the wonderland of secondary colors manifest in cosmic rays and high-energy atom-smashers. Finally, readers enter a region in which theorists posit particles, such as the Higgs boson and the tachyon, in a world of pastels, where the hues are so muted that they challenge the limits of human observation. As a cutting-edge physicist, Bernstein understands the mathematical complexities of his subject. Mercifully, however, he pares away most of those complexities, thereby allowing general readers to share in the excitement of epoch-making science without shouldering the burden of rigorous analysis. Not merely lucid, Bernstein's exposition is refreshingly human, sprinkled with anecdotes revealing the piquant personalities of pioneering scientists including Einstein, Pauli, and Gell-Mann. A must-read for armchair physicists.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Casting subatomic particles across a metaphorical painter's palette, Bernstein (Quantum Leaps) blends science, history, and anecdote (including his own work on staff at Harvard University and Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study) to reveal the lively, often bewildering world of particle physics. The primary colors of Bernstein's palette are the electron, photon, neutron, proton, and neutrino, "the set that was in play until the 1930s." Questions about what held the nucleus together (which Edward Teller described in a poem as the "nuclear glue") and what constituted elementary particles lead to Bernstein's "secondary colors," including Hideki Yukawa's mesons and Murray Gell-Mann's whimsically named up, down, and strange quarks. At the palette's outer reaches lie the mysterious "pastels" and the forces that shape our universe. These include the elusive Higgs boson, quantum gravity's graviton, and the tachyons physicists posit move faster than the speed of light. Bernstein is an unabashed romantic, fondly recalling the tabletop experiments of the mid-20th century (he's worked in the field for more than 50 years). Later discoveries, especially the Higgs-coaxed to visibility with powerful accelerators and computer analysis-remain, in the author's estimation, coldly "abstract." For Bernstein and for readers, the true wonder lies in how each discovery reveals yet another mystery. 11 halftones, 11 line drawings, 3 tables. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Physicist and prolific author Bernstein (Quantum Leaps, 2009, etc.) applies his fine talents to this short but not simplified overview of subatomic particles. Using an artist's palette as an analogy, the author explains that the visible universe is made up of primary colors: familiar, long-lived particles detectable with simple instruments. J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1896 with a magnet and a cathode ray tube. Between 1911 and 1917, Ernest Rutherford's men discovered the proton by aiming radium emissions at various targets. Other primaries include the neutron, the photon and the not-so-easily detectable neutrino. That was how matters stood in the 1930s when technical advances turned up a torrent of odd colors: unstable, short-lived particles. In the 1950s, physicists grumbled at a seemingly endless series of pions, mesons, sigmas and lambdas, but matters improved in 1964 when Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig theorized that these plus the proton and neutron consisted of fundamental elements called quarks. In the 1970s, experiments confirmed this, resulting in the "standard model," a fairly good explanation of subatomic particles and their interactions. Everyone cheered the 2012 discovery of the Higgs particle, the last undiscovered element in standard model theory, but everyone agreed that the model needs work. It doesn't incorporate gravity into particle interactions and says nothing about dark matter or the accelerating expansion of the universe revealed by dark energy. Bernstein delves into some areas that will flummox beginners, but few will resist his accounts of the history, flamboyant geniuses (many of whom he knew personally), and basics of protons, neutrons and electrons that make up the familiar world.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
