Michel Lagues – författare

À tous ceux que la science interpelle, intrigue, effraie, passionne, à tous ceux qui ne veulent pas être des consommateurs aveugles, les Éditions Odile Jacob proposent une collection de livres scientifiques destinés aux enseignants, comme aux parents d’élèves qui voient revenir chez eux des enfants plein d’interrogations. Ils n’ont pas pour vocation de préparer quiconque à un examen ou à un concours, mais de satisfaire la curiosité de tous ceux qui veulent se cultiver. Cette collection invite nos concitoyens à mettre "le pied à l’étrier". Ce livre, écrit par un jeune scientifique fraîchement diplômé de l’Université, nous introduit dans les grands principes de conservation de la physique qui sont sous-jacents aux discussions sur l’environnement. Daniel Mangili, professeur de physique au lycée Saint-Louis dans les classes préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles, anime cette nouvelle collection.

During a century, from the Van der Waals mean field description (1874) of gases to the introduction of renormalization group (RG techniques 1970), thermodynamics and statistical physics were just unable to account for the incredible universality which was observed in numerous critical phenomena. The great success of RG techniques is not only to solve perfectly this challenge of critical behaviour in thermal transitions but to introduce extremely useful tools in a wide field of daily situations where a system exhibits scale invariance.The introduction of scaling, scale invariance and universality concepts has been a significant turn in modern physics and more generally in natural sciences. Since then, a new "physics of scaling laws and critical exponents", rooted in scaling approaches, allows quantitative descriptions of numerous phenomena, ranging from phase transitions to earthquakes, polymer conformations, heartbeat rhythm, diffusion, interface growth and roughening, DNA sequence,dynamical systems, chaos and turbulence. The chapters are jointly written by an experimentalist and a theorist. This book aims at a pedagogical overview, offering to the students and researchers a thorough conceptual background and a simple account of a wide range of applications. It presents a complete tour of both the formal advances and experimental results associated with the notion of scaling, in physics, chemistry and biology.

During a century, from the Van der Waals mean field description (1874) of gases to the introduction of renormalization group (RG techniques 1970), thermodynamics and statistical physics were just unable to account for the incredible universality which was observed in numerous critical phenomena. The great success of RG techniques is not only to solve perfectly this challenge of critical behaviour in thermal transitions but to introduce extremely useful tools in a wide field of daily situations where a system exhibits scale invariance.The introduction of scaling, scale invariance and universality concepts has been a significant turn in modern physics and more generally in natural sciences. Since then, a new "physics of scaling laws and critical exponents", rooted in scaling approaches, allows quantitative descriptions of numerous phenomena, ranging from phase transitions to earthquakes, polymer conformations, heartbeat rhythm, diffusion, interface growth and roughening, DNA sequence,dynamical systems, chaos and turbulence. The chapters are jointly written by an experimentalist and a theorist. This book aims at a pedagogical overview, offering to the students and researchers a thorough conceptual background and a simple account of a wide range of applications. It presents a complete tour of both the formal advances and experimental results associated with the notion of scaling, in physics, chemistry and biology.