Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics
This exploration of enigmas in physics is aimed at popular-science readers, but in places, it does require at least a working knowledge of higher math. Some of the famous paradoxes (or, rather, perceived paradoxes) that quantum physicist and university professor Al-Khalili dissects are relatively easy to grasp, such as the one that explains, despite what our brains might tell us, why you only need a group of 57 people to guarantee that at least two of them will share a birthday. But others, such as Zeno’s famous paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise (which seems to suggest that, no matter how fast Achilles runs, he can never catch up to the slower tortoise), take quite a bit of explaining and occasionally some physics history or mathematics. It’s a very interesting book with some nifty surprises: Olber’s Paradox, for example, which asks why the sky gets dark at night when there are billions of stars up there, provides proof of the Big Bang theory. Not for your average brain-teaser fan, but this volume should have definite appeal to readers with the necessary grounding in the subject. --David Pitt