The Physics of War: From Arrows to Atoms by Barry Packer, Book 1 of 2023

My first book of 2023 is one I was reading off and on through most of last year. It is an odd book that is more history than science, but not history of science. It is a history of weapons that has some very simple physics added to the descriptions to show how the weapons work.  

In its pages are brief origin stories of weapons, such as the long bow and the hydrogen bomb, with some details about the science behind them.  

If you are looking for a history of weapons with a little of the physics of how they work, this book is just what you have been looking for.  If you are looking for details of the science that underpins airplanes, bombs, and missiles, the references in the index will point you to deeper treatment of individual weapons.  

One very helpful aspect of the book is reading about the pace of weapons development and how rapidly those weapons changed war.  The first gatling gun, the predecessor of the machine gun, was developed in the mid 19th Century. Very little was done with it for a couple of decades, then at the beginning of the 20th Century the multi-barrel gatling gun had developed from a large horse-drawn-carriage weapon to a compact, deadly single-barrel weapon that could be fired by two soldiers.  The slaughter of World War I was in part set up by the machine gun which forced stagnant warfare and massive use of cannons.

The first aircraft flew in 1903. By 1916, both sides in World War I had fighter and bomber aircraft over the battlefields.  The first lumbering tanks rolled to battle at 3-5 mph at the end of that war. 

Two decades later tanks were fast, mobile and massed in thousands for invasion covered by swarms of bombers.  The war ended when those bombers dropped the first atomic bombs.  Radar and espionage get their due in this brief history with a nod to drones at the very end. 

Interesting history of weapons with a sprinkle of physics.  

 

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman Book 30 of 2022

 

At the beginning of his third lecture/chapter in the book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Richard Feynman says:

Most of the phenomena you are familiar involve the interaction of light and electrons--all of chemistry and biology for example.The only phenomena not covered by this theory (QED or Quantum ElectroDynamics) are phenomena of gravitation and nuclear phenomena; everything else is contained in this theory.

And QED is a theory because it predicts the behavior of light and electrons better than any other theory. That's how a conjecture becomes a Theory.

Everything about science is contingent. A new discovery submitted to rigorous testing can and will replace the previous understanding.

In his inimitable way, Feynman walks the reader through adding arrows of probability and showing how these probabilities are behind all of matter, everything we see and touch and all the processes that keep living beings alive.

The final chapter of the book is about nuclear physics--the particles inside atoms surrounded by clouds of electrons and photons that hold atoms together and give them their chemical character. And in one last paragraph, Feynman says gravity is something else entirely, vastly weaker the electromagnetic forces which are vastly weaker than nuclear forces.

By then end of the book, I could see the oak table next to me as swarming with energy and activity. Uncountable electrons around and between and among billions of nucleii. And these hard, heavy centers of atoms, while held in a rigid grid also vibrate with activity, exchanging baryons, muons, mesons, and other particles while held rigidly together.

Even a glimpse into the mind of Feynman is as exciting as a story of discovering a new world.

First 29 books of 2022:

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Book 2 of 2022: Marie Curie--a graphic novel biography in middle-school-level French

(In past years I have written an essay about the books I read in the previous year.  As my list of books gets longer and my memory shorter, I decided to write about the books as I read them rather than 2000+ words at the end of the year.)

 

In November I visited the Institute Curie near the Sorbonne in Paris.  This book was on the shelf in the tiny bookstore inside the small museum.  I read kids books in French to keep some level of reading comprehension.  This graphic novel gave me a chance to practice French and to remember what I learned about the life of this remarkable scientist.  

I learned a lot about Marie Sklodowska-Curie's life because more than half the book is about her childhood in Poland and struggles to get to France to study physics.  When I read about her previously, it was about her research and life-saving work in World War One.  

After I finished the book, I looked up how many people have won Nobel Prizes:  962 laureates earning a total of 603 prizes (as of 2020).  Just 59 laureates are women and Marie Curie is the first.  

Just four laureates have received two Nobel Prizes:  

Linus Pauling won a chemistry prize and a peace prize.

John Bardeen won the Nobel twice in physics.

Frederick Sanger won two chemistry prizes.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics and in chemistry: the only person to be awarded to Nobel Prizes in two different fields.  She is extraordinary, even among the short list of multiple Nobel laureates.  

If you read French at all, the book is fun to read and not difficult.  

The summary on Goodreads:

Cette biographie de Marie Curie (1867-1934) retrace les principales étapes de son existence : son enfance en Pologne, sa scolarité studieuse et ses études supérieures, son arrivée à Paris, sa rencontre avec Pierre Curie, ses recherches sur le radium et ses découvertes sur les rayons X, l'obtention de ses prix Nobel en 1903 et 1911 et son engagement pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Air Speed Versus Ground Speed on a Bicycle

 

Riding around the airstrip at Camp Adder, Iraq

One afternoon in Iraq in 2009, I decided to ride to supper from the motor pool on a day with a howling wind out of the west. I rode two miles in a crosswind then had to make a left and ride a half mile straight into that 30-mph wind.  Ten feet after the intersection I stopped.  I could not make my single-speed bike move another foot.  

A couple of Special Forces soldiers in an SUV saw me. They gave me and the bike a ride to the mess hall.  I assured them the ride back would be a "breeze."  I thanked them and went to dinner.  That sandstorm was the only time the wind completely stopped my ride.  

In the last week I was paying attention to air speed versus ground speed on my bike.  The group that I ride with has not gotten together because of rain and detours on the route.  I did my usual 25-mile solo ride that is 12.5 miles south ending in a 3-mile uphill, followed by 12.5 miles north beginning with a series of downhills covering three miles.  

The second of the four hills is the steepest.  Last Saturday Strava my top speed (ground speed) was 49mph.  Sunday it was 52mph. Today it was 48mph. As I was riding home today, I was thinking about my air speed.  

On Saturday, the wind was out of the northwest at 10 mph.  The north component of the wind was 7mph so my air speed was 56mph.  On Sunday the air was calm.  Ground and air speed equal.  Today the wind was 5mph out of the north northeast. That put the headwind a 4mph and my air speed at 52mph.  So Saturday was clearly the fastest ride down the 12 percent grade on Route 272 North.  

 Air is always apparent on a bike.