Super Tiny, Super Big

Smash! : Exploring the Mysteries of the Universe with the Large Hadron Collider by Sara Latta
Minneapolis : Graphic Universe, [2017]
72 p. : chiefly ill. ; 24 cm.

This little comic book is more of an hors d'oeuvre than an entree, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Weighing in at a mere 72 pages, and managing to convey the amazing science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) without getting bogged down in its wild complexities, Latta has managed to create a work that should whet the reader's appetite to know more.   It did mine!

Though the story-line is a bit corny (a little youngish for high school) the science is admirable.  In one part of the book, in the space of just a couple pages she manages to cover most of the basics of the standard model: the six "flavors" of quarks,  six kinds of leptons, the four fundamental forces and the bosons associated with them - and, of course, the most famous triumph of the LHC, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

It's nice to have a brief, very accessible book to recommend to a student who is not deep into advanced science, and yet wants to know about particle physics.  If you know such a student, Smash! might be just what they need.

Big Ideas, Little Book

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
New York, N.Y. : Riverhead Books, 2016.
86 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

Seven Brief Lessons is one of those lovely little science books that is at once accessible to the lay reader, but also introduces concepts and ideas that leave you more curious (and perplexed even) than when you started.  How confused or satisfied you are after finishing the book will somewhat depend on your knowledge of, and familiarity with scientific concepts.  But even a science novice can come away with a lot to ponder after reading this book.

Rovelli wants to touch on some of the most astounding and important concepts in physics that have developed in the last 115 years.  He starts out with Einstein by mentioning his "Special Theory of Relativity" which dealt with the fluid nature of time, and then proceeds to expound on what he considers one of science's preeminent masterpieces, Einstein's "General Theory of Relativity."  It is this theory that establishes space as a field that is shaped by gravity.

Rovelli continues on in his lessons to discuss quanta, the nature of the cosmos, the search for a unifying theory that will connect the macro understanding of gravity and space to the nearly incomprehensible phenomena of quantum physics at the subatomic level.  His book spirals off into ruminations on heat, time, and the "granular" nature of space itself.

He brings his book to a close with a meditation on the human condition and its place fully within the matrix of nature.

Less a book of answers - or even a summary of where physics stands - this book is more of a jumping off point for pondering the wondrous and nearly unbelievable nature of what humans know and still don't know about the universe we find ourselves in.