| Five Equations that Changed the World
The Power and Poetry of Mathematics
Michael Guillen, Ph.D.
Hyperion, NY, 1995
ISBN 0-7868-6103-7
277 pages, including index.
FPT $22.95, Canada $31.00
Summary: not recommended, at multiple levels.
In spite of the title, this is not a book about mathematics.
The five "equations" are the universal law of gravitation, the law of
hydradynamic pressure, the law of electromagnetic induction, the
second law of thermodynamics, and the equivalence of mass and energy.
My local library properly placed it with the physics books.
The mathematics is at the elementary level. Equations have multiplication
signs between the factors and explicit division signs. The conversion
from a/2 = b to a = 2b is explained.
It is not much about physics either, but rather about the discoverers
of the relations, Newton, Bernoulli, Faraday, Clausius, and Einstein.
There is no distinction between fields, vectors, and scalars.
Light travels at 300 million miles per second. (He got it right in another
place.) The del cross in del cross E is to be read "the quantity of".
Water expands when cooled, without mentioning the limited range where
that is true. There are some interesting tidbits, but I'm not confident
I can believe them. The centigrade scale was originally proposed with 0
for boiling water and 100 for freezing.
The biographical portion is incomplete, but intentionally so.
Each chapter has five parts, a dramatic incident in the person's life,
how the scientist came to the subject, why the subject was such a
mystery at the time, how the scientist solved the mystery, and how
the discovery has changed our lives. The author must be a very
skillful biographer; he tells us what the subjects thought while
walking home from school or while waiting for the doctor, for example.
There is no hesitation, no "perhaps", no "must have"; Guillen knows.
Over and over and over, he knows.
Dr. Guillen is the science editor for ABC-TV, and an instructor at
Harvard. This book might be useful for those who think daytime TV
is about as good as it could be. It might whet someone's appetite
for more knowledge about physics or mathematics, or scientists.
If you are trying to stimulate someone's interest, this is not the
best way. I hope Guillen does a better job at Harvard.
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