Another post from the History Book Club.
(Why ‘atomic bomb’ rather than ‘nuclear bomb’? See this post.)
Category Archives: Physics
The Decision to Drop the Bomb
Filed under History Book Club, Physics, Reviews
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
For a few years, I belonged to a history book club. Unlike many book clubs, we didn’t all read the same book. Instead, we’d pick a topic for the next meeting, at which the participants would each give short presentations on books of their choosing.
Recently I ran across my write-ups. As the internet has yet to run out of space, I thought I’d post them. I begin with two on the atomic bomb.
(Why ‘atomic bomb’, rather than ‘nuclear bomb’? See this post.)
Filed under History Book Club, Physics, Reviews
Wallpaper Groups
Escher: Alhambra Sketch
I first learned as a kid that “there are only 17 basically different wallpapers” from W.W.Sawyer’s Prelude to Mathematics. (The quote appears on p.102. Aside: this remains an excellent gift for a youngster with a yen for math.) I remember my father pointing out the absurdity of this claim: are all mural wallpapers of van Gogh’s paintings basically the same?
Epstein Relativity Diagrams
[This post is available in pdf format, sized for small and medium screens.]
Lewis Carroll Epstein wrote a book Relativity Visualized. It’s been called “the gold nugget of relativity books”. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but Epstein has devised a completely new way to explain relativity. The key concept: the Epstein diagram. (I should mention that Relativity Visualized is a pop-sci treatment.)
Why “atomic bomb” instead of “nuclear”?
Why do we (mostly) say atomic bomb instead of nuclear bomb, which is technically more correct? This was asked on the History of Science and Math stackexchange. Here’s my answer.
Diagonal Argument 