The Quantum Universe: Everything that can happen does happen

A great book that's good at explaining quantum physics in a relatively simple way. It gives you what seems like a fairly comprehensive understanding without being too hard reading. Although I didn't fully understand some of the maths I didn't need to in order to understand the book. It's kept fairly light hearted with lots of small jokes. It's not a book for those who don't enjoy or who aren't any good at physics. As long as you go into this book ready to re-read things until you understand it's great.

A nice catchy title, and Cox and Forshaw remind the reader every so often that the unbelievable truth is what quantum physics means. The book is readable, but uneven. It is an attempt to make quantum physics understandable to everyman, but at times reads more like an undergraduate text. I was quite able to follow it, but have a fairly strong scientific background. I don't think anyone without at least A-level physics would really understand it. What was most enjoyable was the way that the history of quantum physics was seen from the present day, with important landmarks nicely positioned to illustrate the understanding we have today. It explains some aspects to great depth and dismisses others as either too complicated or irrelevant to the reader, which comes across as patronising. The description of the atomic valency and the function of the transistor from a quantum viewpoint are exquisitely well done. There are some areas that could be better explained - a table of the known particles is listed (Fig 11.1) and the expectation seems to be that you will know what the lepton and quark letters mean. It would have been useful to have as much space (or indeed any) devoted to a description of quarks and the chapter on empty space could have usefully given a lot more detail on quarks and nuclear anatomy. Overall, a very creditable attempt to make quantum physics more accessible(oddly enough, I felt on most familiar territory with the probability and statistics analogies and examples) but definitely a little scientific background required to get the most out of this.

For the last 2 weeks this has been an excellent read on the train, proving to be difficult to put down when I reach my stop! Extremely well written and for a quantum physics book it actually manages to be entertaining. Looking forward to the next book!