Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw - The Quantum Universe

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, if flawed, account of quantum theory

Any attempt to explain Quantum Theory is likely to be tough going unless it's so facile as to be pretty well worthless, and parts of this book will be very tough going for anyone with little background in physics or maths. Cox and Forshaw treat the subject and their readers with respect in that they do not fudge issues nor duck important ideas and problems, which means that some pretty serious brainwork is required to follow what they are saying.

I thought some parts of this book were excellent and other parts not so good. The explanations of such things as the Quantum Measurement Problem and the Epilogue on the Death of Stars, for example, are in the excellent category. Much less good was the explanation of phase and quantum interference by constant reference to "clocks," which I found clumsy and unhelpful (although others may disagree). This is quite a serious flaw, as it permeates much of the book. However, the style is readable and the treatment of the subject quite rigorous for a "popular" book, so overall I found it an incisive account of the state of Quantum Theory in late 2011

There is a reasonable amount of mathematics in the book, although most is explained in a way that should be comprehensible to those with only a little background in the subject. It is badly hindered, though, by a number of unnecessary errors which really should have been eliminated in proof reading. For example, a footnote on p67 asserts that... "a microgramme...is a millionth of a kilogramme." More seriously, in the otherwise excellent Epilogue in which the authors take us gently and expertly through a rather complex mathematical process, several errors in the text will make the argument almost impossible for anyone with little maths to follow. Examples include "rho" rather than "rho-bar" on p234, and "r-squared" rather than plain "r" on p235 and there are others. It just isn't good enough in a book like this, and I hope this will be corrected in future editions.

Flaws aside, I would recommend this to anyone who isn't afraid to get stuck into a bit of roughly A Level standard algebra and reasoning and who wants a proper account of where quantum physics stands and what it may mean. It's a generally readable and enjoyable intellectual adventure.