A Chorus of Bells and Other Scientific Inquiries

Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Science, Physics, Nuclear Physics, Quantum Theory

• Author: Jeremy Bernstein
• ISBN: 9789814596596
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Publication: May 21, 2014
• Imprint: WSPC
• Language: English

This book of essays in four parts, was written over a decade and full of surprises for the breadth and variety of its subject matter. The first part is about the foundations of the quantum theory which reflects the author's many conversations with the late John Bell who persuaded him that there is still no satisfactory interpretation of the theory. The second part deals with nuclear weapons. One of the essays concerns the creation of the modern gas centrifuge which was done by German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The proliferation of these centrifuges was one of the issues in the spread of nuclear weapons. The third section deals with financial engineering with a profile of Louis Bachelier, the French mathematician who created it at the beginning of the 20th century. The final section deals with the Higgs boson and how it is used for generating mass. It includes a detailed article of how this mechanism works.

Contents:

• Quantum Theory:

  • A Chorus of Bells
  • A Quantum Past
  • A Double Slit
  • Dirac, Some Strangeness in the Proportion
  • Another Dirac
  • More About Bohm's Quantum
  • Max Born and the Quantum Theory
  • The Quantum Measurement Problem

• Nuclear Weapons:

  • Oppenheinmer
  • Unintended Consequences
  • An Unlikely Collaboration
  • A Nuclear Supermarket
  • Who's Next?
  • A Memorandum that Changed the World

• Mathematics and Finance:

  • Bachelier
  • A Primer of Things You Need to Know to Follow the Financial News

• The Higgs Boson:

  • A Question of Mass
  • An Upper Bound
  • A Higgs Memorandum

Readership: The reader with an interest in quantum mechanics, and biographies of John Bell, Paul Dirac as well as Louis Batchelier, who created the field of financial engineering.
Key Features:

• The book would be interesting for the informed reader in quantum mechanics (for the first part), and should be readily accessible to the layperson in the other parts