MY FIRST BOOK OF QUANTUM PHYSICS

In all, probability.

In bright and stylishly retro, if unsystematic, fashion, Ferrón and Altarriba present our current bewildering picture of reality. They start with Newton and his laws, then forge ahead in not particularly chronological order past: Planck’s notion of quanta, the discovery of the photon, subatomic particles and anti-particles, molecules, the uncertainty principle, quantum entanglement, Marie Curie’s work, the tunnel effect, the Standard Model, and the recently verified Higgs boson. In their haste to cover so much they sometimes neglect to define or explain terms when first used, make a misleadingly backward claim that the “higher the frequency of a photon, the more energy it will have,” and include data such as atomic weights in a periodic table and mass numbers for the 16 types of particles (e.g., “=2.4 Me/c2” for up quarks) without comment or explanation. They also show a tendency to anthropomorphize (“Some atoms have such a big nucleus that they start to feel ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’ ”), close with a timeline that contains a certain amount of unexplained new material, and finish off with a spread of untranslated equations and constants. If not enlightenment—an elusive goal—readers will come away with plenty of new vocabulary, plus nodding acquaintances with Einstein and other greats, Schrödinger’s cat, and the central role of quantum physics in current and future tech.

Nominally aimed at children 8 and up, this may have more appeal to parents of graduates of Baby University and like series.