This book aims to connect the small and the large, the seemingly insignificant and the immensely important. In this book Czerski takes the approach of starting each chapter by describing the physics behind a familiar and everyday phenomenon, such as the popping of popcorn or the waves on a beach. She then goes on to explain how the same physical principles apply to other phenomena that affect our world in interesting or surprising ways. Each chapter is thematically linked by the physical principles involved, but ranges widely across time, location and scale to explore how similar principles govern our world.
Throughout the book, the author brings in expertise in her own particular specialism: investigating bubbles in sea water. She tells some of the stories from her work. For example, in a section on electricity, she describes the sea battery that her equipment uses on an expedition to investigate these sea bubbles. So we get a sense of what it’s like to be a physicist working in this way as well as exploring the topic at hand.
Water, that most familiar of substances, makes many appearances in the book, so that by the end it seems like quite a strange substance. Its unique physical properties give it the properties of surface tension and the ability for solid ice to float on liquid water. We use its evaporation to cool things (and ourselves) down, and the flow of water to store and provide energy. Along the way, we also learn how detergents allow bubbles to form.
I really enjoyed the way that each chapter roved across several different topics, applying the same basic principles to many different areas. One of the things this book does really well is to explore physics at different scales. We go from the interactions of electrons, all the way up to the spin of the earth. In exploring how huge redwood trees manage to get water from the ground to the leaves at the top, Czerski has to explain the physics of the very small, in terms of capillary action, for example. There are some enjoyable perspective shifts, such as viewing air pressure (something we don’t normally notice in everyday life) as an extremely powerful force. There is a great description of an experiment performed in 1654 to demonstrate the force exerted by air pressure. The description of what electricity is, and how humans have gradually learned to harness and control it, as it builds up from static electricity to the use of electricity in everyday life, is really well written and perspective shifting. I really liked the way this book cast light on familiar phenomena in unfamiliar ways.
I normally like my books to have lots of good diagrams to help explain important concepts. This book doesn’t have any. In most cases, the writing is clear enough (and the phenomena are familiar enough to us) that it doesn’t matter too much. But I think there are some cases where a well-chosen diagram would help to illustrate and explain the physics being described.
Even if much of the physics is already familiar to you, I think the way that this book joins together disparate topics, and the different ways of looking at things that it offers, makes it well worth reading.