Why Does E=mc2?

Customer Reviews

• Solid Introduction To Famous Equation and Its Implications  Jul 22, 2009 (30 of 30 found this helpful)

  Cox and Forshaw have presented a streamlined, focused popular science book aimed at teaching relatively new physics readers the basics and history of the famous equation in the title. While experienced physics readers will not likely learn new information, the book offers an approachable description of relativity, how we know it works, and why it is important in the modern world and beyond.
  
  While I personally didn't gain much new from this book (as a reasonably experienced non-professional physics reader), I believe newer readers could be in for a treat. I'd certainly recommend starting a discovery of relativity with this book if the concept seems difficult. The authors take time to explain various points, and offer solid presentations and reasonable analogies to aid in the explanation. Combined with a singularly-focused subject, the book is an excellent starting point for curious, intelligent readers wishing to know more details about E=mc2. Four stars.

• Einstein's famous formula made understandable  Aug 15, 2009 (15 of 15 found this helpful)

  I read Professors Cox & Forshaw's new book on Einstein's E = mc2 in one day: I couldn't put it down. I have tried for years to get a handle on the equation and how to think about spacetime, have read many books for the lay public (I am a psychiatry professor, so I am a layman when it comes to physics) -- and this new book is the only one that I could grasp and that really made sense. It's a great tribute to the authors and a great service to the public.
  Michael H Stone, MD

• Haunting and beautiful  Aug 23, 2009 (9 of 9 found this helpful)

  It's a great feeling to come back tired from work and pick up such a book. After all, like most people I rarely have time to ponder seriously about the universe and the meaning of time and space.I am a high school French teacher so my training in science is rather limited. But after a few hours spent thinking about time,space, distance, energy and matter with Cox and Forshaw,I felt enlightened and rejuvenated! It really read like a thriller, whenever I put the book down I could not stop thinking about it and at dinner I could not shut up about it. The more my friends asked me questions about what I read the more I felt like going back and re-reading until I could explain it in my own words. Now that I am done with it, it's haunting me, driving home or playing with my cat; it keeps me thinking...

• A good place to start  Aug 1, 2009 (12 of 13 found this helpful)

  Nutshell review - This is a good book introducing the reader to the seemingly magical world of quantum physics and the work of some of the world's greatest physicists. It is written in a clear and accessible manner by authors who are physicists in their own right. Math is kept to the minimum necessary, thank goodness ;), and the authors take great care to keep us lay-readers entertained while at the same time teaching us about some very interesting aspects of how the universe works. The only aspect which I think was not explored enough was the sub-title about why we should care that E=mc2.
  
  A couple of other books of interest in this same genre are The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene and In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality by John Gribbin (slightly older but good reading).
  

• Weighty...  Aug 20, 2009 (6 of 6 found this helpful)

  E = mc2
  
  The energy contained in anything is equal to its mass multiplied by the speed of light.
  
  As the title of this book suggests this book seeks to answer the twin questions of why nature should work this way and why we should care that nature works this way.
  
  Like all basic questions the ones posed in this book actually turn out to be quite instructive about why nature works the way it does.
  
  Though admittedly we still have much more learning to do about whys and wherefores of this process this book was great in making the connection that there is a correlation between the mass of a thing and the potential energy it contains.
  
  Burn a log and it weighs less. Start a uranium reaction and mass itself is extinguished in the process producing energy that travels at the speed of light.
  
  Why the energy produced from such a reaction should travel at the speed of light tells us much about what Oxford's John Barrow would term the impossibilities of science...inherent limits to nature and how it operates that give us useful guides to understanding it better.
  
  And understanding nature, as both Einstein and Spinoza would have us believe is understanding God, "the old one," himself...reason as good as any why we should care.
  
  This book is highly recommended.