SERIES IN POPULAR SCIENCE – serie

From Leonardo to Oppenheimer, from candles to lasers, from cave drawings to cinema, from stonehenge to quantum mechanics, from Genesis to the Big Bang, light has filled our thoughts, our way of life, our aesthetics, our technology, and our means for survival. Richard Weiss leads us along these paths over the past 500 light years. The way is lit by pioneers such as Rembrandt, Einstein, D W Griffith, Newton, and Heisenberg. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIGHT, AND THOSE THAT LIT THE WAY is a summer's day roller-coaster ride through five centuries of man's achievements in understanding and manipulating light.

In 1936, at age 31, Carl David Anderson became the second youngest Nobel laureate for his discovery of antimatter when he observed positrons in a cloud chamber.He is responsible for developing rocket power weapons that were used in World War II.He was born in New York City in 1905 and was educated in Los Angeles. He served for many years as a physics professor at California Institute of Technology. Prior to Oppenheimer, Anderson was offered the job of heading the Los Alamos atomic bomb program but could not assume the role because of family obligations.He was a pioneer in studying cosmic rays at high altitudes, first atop Pike's Peak, then after the war in a specially equipped B-29.

This is a brief history of the development of microscopy, from the use of beads and water droplets in ancient Greece, through the simple magnifying glass, to the modern compound microscope. The technology and optical theory are developed in a straightforward manner, and this leads to a description and explanation of the most modern technologies in electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy as well as the new scanning probe microscopies. A series of very interesting applications of the various microscopic techniques are described. The most recent pioneering techniques in near field and confocal optical microscope technologies are described and evaluated for their future importance.

Percussion instruments may be our oldest musical instruments, but only recently have they become the subject of extensive scientific study. This book focuses on how percussion instruments vibrate and produce sound and how these sounds are perceived by listeners.

From Leonardo to Oppenheimer, from candles to lasers, from cave drawings to cinema, from stonehenge to quantum mechanics, from Genesis to the Big Bang, light has filled our thoughts, our way of life, our aesthetics, our technology, and our means for survival. Richard Weiss leads us along these paths over the past 500 light years. The way is lit by pioneers such as Rembrandt, Einstein, D W Griffith, Newton, and Heisenberg. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIGHT, AND THOSE THAT LIT THE WAY is a summer's day roller-coaster ride through five centuries of man's achievements in understanding and manipulating light.