"A New York Times Bestseller" "One of Men's Journal's 40 Best Books of 2016" "One of Symmetry Magazine's Physics Books of 2016" "One of Ars Technica's 12 engrossing nonfiction books from 2016" "Honorable Mention for the 2017 PROSE Award in Cosmology and Astronomy, Association of American Publishers" "One of Forbes.com's 10 Best Popular Science Books of 2016: Maths, Physics, Chemistry" "Longlisted for the 2018 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prizes for Excellence...

Quantum mechanics gives us a picture of the world so radically counterintuitive that it has changed our perspective on reality itself. In Quantum Mechanics: The Physics of the Microscopic World, award-winning Professor Benjamin Schumacher gives you the logical tools to grasp the paradoxes and astonishing insights of this field.

Study heat engines and their design limits for converting heat into work. The maximum possible efficiency in a heat engine is defined by the Carnot engine, an unattainable ideal whose properties illustrate the second law of thermodynamics.

Under specific circumstances, it has been possible for a nuclear reactor to fail catastrophically. Revisit the serious nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the U.S., Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, and Fukushima in Japan, drawing lessons on the fallibility of safety features and human operators. Track the cascading sequence of failures in each accident.

Many quantum particles move through space and also have an intrinsic spin. Analyzing spin gives you a simple laboratory for exploring the basic ideas of quantum mechanics, and it is one of your key tools for understanding the quantum world.

Discover the fundamental particles that make protons and neutrons tick - namely, quarks and gluons. Learn why quarks are never seen in isolation and why the mass of ordinary valence quarks accounts for only a tiny fraction of their mass. The answer to both riddles lies in "sea quarks," the swarm of quark-antiquark pairs within protons and neutrons, which can be infinite in number.

Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the year that Galileo died. You'll learn how he built on the work of Galileo and Kepler, developing the three laws of motion and the concept of universal gravitation. You'll learn why Newton's laws suggest a universe that runs like a clock.

Follow Einstein's quest to overturn the standard view of quantum mechanics known as the Copenhagen interpretation. Focus on his famous EPR paper, written with two collaborators, which identified a paradoxical phenomenon later called entanglement. Study two proposals to supplant the Copenhagen view: the "hidden variable" and "many worlds" interpretations.

Review major concepts. Then look ahead at innovative technologies that may help solve the world's urgent energy and fresh water needs. These promising processes rely on the design of new materials, which can only be achieved through a deep understanding of thermodynamics.

Starting with the big bang, plot the history of our universe, focusing on events in the tiniest fraction of the first second, when phenomena such as supersymmetry, superstrings, and quantum loops may have come into play. Consider the explanatory power of the theory of cosmic inflation.