How to Speak Science: Gravity, Relativity, and Other Ideas That Were Crazy Until Proven Brilliant

338 Pages·2017·1.76 MB·English

by  Bruce Benamran

Gravity, Relativity, and Other Ideas
That Were Crazy Until Proven Brilliant
Translated by Stephanie Delozier Strobel
NEW YORK
How to Speak Science: Gravity, Relativity, and Other Ideas That Were Crazy Until Proven Brilliant
Copyright © 2016 by Hachette Livre (Marabout)
Translation copyright © 2018 by The Experiment, LLC
Originally published in France as Prenez le temps d’e-penser by Hachette Livre in 2016.
First published in North America by The Experiment, LLC in 2018.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information stor-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benamran, Bruce, 1977-
Title: How to speak science : gravity, relativity, and other ideas that were
crazy until proven brilliant / Bruce Benamran ; translated by Stephanie
Delozier Strobel.
Other titles: Prenez le temps d’e-penser. English
Description: New York : The Experiment, 2018. | Originally published in
France: Prenez le temps d’e-penser (Paris : Editions Marabout, 2015). |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018275 (print) | LCCN 2018018872 (ebook) | ISBN
9781615194209 (ebook) | ISBN 9781615194032 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Science—Popular works.
Classification: LCC Q162 (ebook) | LCC Q162 .B4613 (print) | DDC 500—dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018275
ISBN 978-1-61519-403-2
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-420-9
Cover design by Sarah Smith
Text design by Sophie Appel
Translated by Stephanie Delozier Strobel
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing September 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Jarod and Camille

Contents
Foreword ix
introduction 1
0. Correlation and Causality 1
1. Models and Reality 4
Matter 7
2. Atoms 9
3. Good Old Science Dude: Dmitri Mendeleev 14
4. The Electron 22
5. The Nucleus of the Atom 25
Light 35
6. Is Light Made of Particles or Waves? 39
7. The Discovery of the Photoelectric Effect 45
8. First Detour: Heat 46
9. Second Detour: Black Bodies 49
10. Einstein in 1905: The First Article 51
11. Why Do They Turn Off Airplane Cabin
Lights for Night Landings? 53
12. Why Is the Sky Blue and the Sun Yellow? 58
13. What Is a Rainbow? 61
14. How Many Senses Do Humans Have? 63
15. You Have Never Touched Anything in Your Life 71
Electromagnetism 73
16. Magnetism 73
17. Permanent Magnets 75
18. Electricity?! What Does That Have to Do with Anything? 77
19. Static Electricity 80
20. Electric Fields 82
21. Ampère, Gauss, Faraday, and Others . . . Right up to Maxwell 84
22. Maxwell’s Four Equations 89
The Solar System 94
23. The Sun 94
24. Stellar Nucleosynthesis 96
25. Formation of the Solar System 100
26. Mercury 102
27. Good Old Science Dude: Guillaume Le Gentil—Gentle Willy 105
28. Earth, the Goldilocks of the Solar System 112
29. The Earth Is Round 114
30. Good Old Science Dude: Eratosthenes 115
31. How Old Is the Earth? 119
32. Mars 124
33. The Missing Planet 127
34. Pallas, Juno, Vesta, and Everyone Else and Their Mother 129
35. Jupiter 132
36. The Jovian System 134
37. Saturn 137
38. Mimas, Enceladus, and Titan 138
39. Uranus and Neptune 140
40. Pluto, the Fallen Planet 144
41. Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud 147
42. The Dimensions of the Solar System 149
Classical Mechanics 152
43. The Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything 152
44. Aristotle and Impetus 153
45. Archimedes and the First Mechanics 155
46. Eureka, or the Golden Crown of Hiero II, Tyrant of Syracuse 157
47. Good Old Science Dude: Galileo, Part 1 158
48. Giordano Bruno, Punk Genius and Father of Relativity 166
49. Good Old Science Dude: Galileo, Part 2 170
50. Good Old Science Dude: Isaac Newton 179
51. Force, Couple, Torque, and Work 186
52. Momentum and Collisions 190
53. Angular Momentum 194
Life 198
54. You Are Alive 199
55. The Incredible Highways and Byways of the Body 202
56. In a Cell 209
57. The Incredible Things Your Brain Does All by Itself 212
58. Why Is Yawning Contagious? 238
59. Left-Handers 246
60. A Conclusion About Life? 254
Thermodynamics 255
61. So, What Is It? Do Tell. 255
62. Is the Cake Pan Hotter Than the Cake? 256
63. The First Steam Engine 257
64. Good Old Science Dude: Francis Bacon 258
65. Sadi Carnot, Father of Thermodynamics 263
66. The Three Laws of Thermodynamics 267
67. And Boltzmann? 270
68. Einstein in 1905: The Second Article 273
Special Relativity 275
69. To Move or Not to Move? That Is the Question 275
70. The Problem with Light 278
71. The Ether 279
72. Michelson’s Interferometer 280
73. The Electrostatic Problem 282
74. Lorentz and Poincaré 284
75. Einstein in 1905: The Third Article 285
76. A Problem with Clocks 286
77.The Problem with Two Lights 288
78.The Special Theory of Relativity 291
General Relativity 301
79.Newtonian Gravity 301
80.If a Roofer Fell Off a Roof 303
81.Equivalence Principle 304
82.Geometrization of Gravity 305
83.Non-Euclidean Space-Time 308
84.Better Together in 1913: Coauthoring an Article 309
85.Einstein in 1905: The Fourth Article 311
86.And Mercury Proves It 312
87.The General Theory of Relativity 313
88.Testing, Testing, 1-2-3 316
89.The Big Problem with Relativity and the Rest 318
Chronology of Scientists 320
Acknowledgments 325
About the Author 326
Foreword
by Michael Stevens
Hello! My name is Michael Stevens and I wrote this foreword . . .
. . . or did I?
How do you actually know that I, Michael Stevens, wrote the words
you are reading right now? Is it because you trust the author and pub-
lisher of this book? Is it because you follow me on social media and saw
me claim to have written this? Perhaps. But did you actually see me
write this? Can you really be sure that you know anything at all? Isn’t
there always some possibility, no matter how remote or unbelievable,
that what you think you know is wrong? For that matter, what the heck
does it mean to know something in the first place?
Maybe we can start by agreeing that whenever you say you “know”
something, you’re simply saying that you believe that thing to be true—a
description of reality as it is—for reasons that adequately convince you.
That’s pretty good. And it’s that last bit, the reasons, that science con-
cerns itself with. Science doesn’t claim to deliver absolute philosophical
truths, and it never promises to provide access to all answers, but as a
means of investigation it has emerged as our most consistent, reliable,
and adaptable weapon against mystery. As far as we know, it may also be
the best we’ll ever have.
To be sure, there are other ways to feel that you know something.
For example, you could believe without question that a message in a
dream or a voice in your head is true. Or your intuitive feeling that
something must be true could be enough to satisfy you. But of all the
methods we’ve got, the scientific method continues to be our most pow-
erful. It doesn’t shy away from being wrong or challenged—in fact, if an
idea isn’t willing and able to be refuted, it’s probably not scientific at all!