Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality

Best book for people like me that need visual representations to learn easier....

Every so often I pick up a book that I wish I read 10 years ago. Feynman's Lectures on Physics and Van Hess's Thermodynamics are among these, as well as Polya's How To Solve It for those more mathematically inclined. These would have certainly saved me from much confusion during my college engineering curriculum, for they focus on teaching the material to the reader, as opposed to masking it in the equations of a textbook. Some lucky folks have the ability to glance at equations and immediately grasp their meaning; for the other 99.99% of us, an intuitive explanation replete with real-world analogies helps to bring the meaning to life.With a presentation both unique and entertaining, Lewis Carroll Epstein's Thinking Physics has certainly claimed a rightful seat at the roundtable of wonderful didactic books. Every page poses a question that challenges the reader on his view of the physical world, and nearly every answer tears down the fallacies of his intuition. Socrates would have been proud of the format, with each new question expanding on concepts developed in earlier answers. One of the 1-star reviews mentioned a lack of organization. This criticism completely misses the point. It is NOT a textbook, so "obviously" it will lack some of the rigorous development of concepts and precise organization that you would expect in a physics text. It IS a popular physics book with lots of cartoony pictures that a kid in elementary school could both enjoy and understand. At the same time, the insights will help build anyone's physics intuition, regardless of age. I read this book when I was 30. I have since started going through problems in Kleppner and Kolenkow and some other more advanced texts, and I really think this book helped.

I read part of this book in a bookstore and in the author's other book Relativity Visualized.There is a quiz about Magnet Car: in the picture, a guy dangles a fishing pole with fishing string tied to a big magnet, and he is standing inside an iron cart. the magnet is very close to outside body of the iron kart. The question is: will the cart move. (warning: answer is mentioned here next...)The answer on the book is: no it won't, because there is no work done from zero work input. And that there is no perpetual machine and Newton's Third Law says action equal reaction but in opposite direction, and they cancel out, etc.Now, I can tell you that is not the case, because it is a fishing pole and fishing string, the magnet will get attracted to the cart's body, get pulled over a bit, while the cart is also pulled over a bit (less than how much the magnet has moved if we assume the cart is heavier than the big magnet). Why? Because the magnet experiences a force pulling it towards the cart, and what is there to stop it from moving? The fishing string? Sorry, if it were a metal crane or something rigid, that is really the case: the magnet wants to move, but pushes the crane that is bolted to the cart, and the cart wants to move towards the magnet, but the crane is pushing it exactly the other way with the same force, just opposite direction, so the 2 forces cancel out and the magnet and the cart won't move. Note, however, that now it is not something rigid like a crane but is a fishing pole and fishing string. If the magnetic force is strong enough, the magnet will get attracted and sway towards the cart, and the cart will be moved a little bit too. But the overall center of mass of the whole system (what is called the physical body) remain unchanged. Also imagine if it is a crane, but it is a weak crane made of paper cones. If the magnetic force is strong enough, the paper crane will also bend and have a similar scenario as the fishing pole and string. I hope the description can be more accurate.

Really nice book

An excellent low-math book that covers many everyday concepts in physics, allows anyone to think through everyday problems and gain experience in thinking without doing calculations or sitting through endless ball-rolling-down-ramp labs. It shows ways that physicists and scientifically literate people think about physics problems in general terms. I've seen it on many shelves- grad students, postdocs and professors, teaching or not, since my undergrad days 25 years ago , alongside Art of Electronics, Jackson, Halliday/Resnik , and a book of integrals. Fine for junior- and high school students, and even younger with parental guidance. Many kids have sensible questions about why e.g. a bike stays up or who you really wouldn't want to run into on a football field, and the answers to them, and nice sketches too.

This book by Epstein is one of my better investments for secondary school (or undergraduate/graduate) physics books. Although I do not use it as a text, I have taken advantage of the problems posed within as warm-up questions to engage the students on the topics at hand(in addition to the hands-on demonstrations.) My students can really get fired up by some of the classical problems and the illustrations that accompany every questions within. The answer keys are highly intelligible as well as entertaining.However, do not underestimate the questions as merely for the beginning students of physics: they are far from that realm. Some of the questions are challenging enough even for the professional physicists, and in fact even for Newton himself.If you are intrigue, go buy it.