"The Principles and Laws of Physics You Should Know"

[mostakimvip04]

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, we have been flooded with scientific terms such as earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power, but the most important thing to understand these is physics. We owe it all to the Shinkansen and mobile phones, but in fact physics is not that easy.

The author is one of Japan's leading astrophysicists and a master of explaining abstract cosmology in an easy-to-understand way. He states, "All phenomena caused by nature can be understood by human wisdom" (page 14), and although he admits that this may seem a little arrogant, he states it with determination.

The purpose of physics is to "construct theories remove background image that can explain the various phenomena in nature in terms of the properties, motion, and reactivity of the substances that cause the phenomena" (page 16). The author states that such theories "must be predictive." Science has the power to predict and control, and physics is the most "predictive" of all sciences.

There are many introductory books that explain the laws of physics when you go to a bookstore. However, what makes this book great is that it not only explains the laws and principles in a friendly manner, but also provides a bird's-eye view of the underlying physics way of thinking. The author has also written an excellent book called "How to Think and Learn Science" (Iwanami Junior Shinsho), and it is extremely important for business people to have a proper understanding of scientific thinking.


Let's take a look at the table of contents. Chapter 1, "What are principles, laws, and theorems?", discusses the content and basic premise of physics. Chapter 2, "Principles of Physics" and Chapter 3, "Laws of Physics", cover familiar concepts such as Archimedes' principle, the principle of buoyancy, the principle of leverage, the law of free fall, and the law of universal gravitation. This is where the author's ingenuity comes in, making physics seem less unfamiliar to readers.