(February 8, 2013 at 3:20 pm)Napoléon Wrote: I've never been big on reading books, but I was considering going on Amazon and picking up something sciencey. Something along the lines of "A Brief History of Time" by Hawking, or "Death by Black Hole" by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I'd like to read a book that's quite a bit about physics but doesn't require much understanding in that particular field, perhaps even a book on string theory that explains it in Lehman's terms.
Any recommendations? Are there any must have books like this out there?
String Theory (or as its now called, M-Theory) is a trickey beast. There are different version of it and there isn't an overall consensus. These are all available in English (and possibly German).
A cracking good book is Lee Smolin's 'The Trouble With Physics' - A good laymans' overview of the history of Quantum Physics from Relativity up to today and the competing theories (hence the title).
John Gribbin's 'In Search of Schroedinger's Cat' - more about how String Theory emerged and has a sequel called 'Shroedinger's Kittens'. (Gribbin's books in general are very good and he covers a wide range of topics).
Marcus Chown's 'Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You' - excellent for the beginner. Marcus writes for New Scientist.
I will also agree with Why Does E=MC2, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. This is also available on CD read by Forshaw.
I would say, because of the nature of QP and String Theory (M-Theory) you will probably need to read a few books to get all the approaches to it. But, keep going, it's well worth it.
MM
