Preface
Science, Technology, and Quantum Physics: Mind the Gap
Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.
Erwin Schrodinger
Figure P.1 Celestial map from the seventeenth century, by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit (1630–1698).
In This Preface
P.1 Three Secrets of Nature
P.2 From Natural Philosophy to Physics
P.3 Physics the Most Fundamental Science
P.4 Quantum Physics: The Science of the Molecular Age
P.5 Why This Book
P.6 In This Book
P.7 Back to the Future
To an artist, in Shakespeare’s words, All the world’s a stage. Taking this metaphor to another level, to a scientist, the whole universe is a colossal party with a cosmic dance on dance floors at all levels, ranging from an expanding universe with swirling galaxies, to planets revolving around their suns, to organisms of all shapes and sizes dancing through their life cycles, to molecules in action inside living and nonliving systems, to atoms making and breaking bonds to make molecules and crystals, to electrons dancing around the nucleus of atoms, and so on. The universe and everything in it, living and nonliving, originally started (and still starts) at the microscopic level, a level too small for human senses to resolve. In this book, we focus on the concept of micro in contrast to that of macro; micro means anything small enough not to be seen by the naked eye, including the size scales ...
