The next time you’re interested in a healthy dose of physics (with a generous splash of literature), resist the temptation of your Wikipedia bookmark, take a step back from the harried, irreverent blogosphere, and dive into the enrapturing prose of pre-Soviet Russia.
In 1913, Yakov Perelman wrote an enchanting book called Physics for Entertainment, and it’s just what Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would have turned out—had they any desire to teach the fundamental laws of the universe. Perelman’s book was only recently translated to English, and seeks (successfully) to “arouse the activity of scientific imagination, to teach the reader to think in the spirit of the science of physics…with all that he normally comes into contact with.”
In chapters like “How to Work Miracles,” “Mathematics and Imagination,” and “Fairy Tale Railway,” Perelman associates the laws of physics with an ample variety of both everyday phenomena (knots, eggshells, fire, jumping from a moving vehicle) and the wildest fantasies of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Cyrano de Bergerac, Gogol, Mark Twain, Voltaire, Pushkin, and Edgar Allan Poe. Blending flowery prose with equations, neither of which are burdensome, he weaves his own delightful narrative with the imaginations of a great writer, producing a highly engaging piece of educational literature.
Some excerpts, illustrating Perelman’s merging of science fiction with physics non-fiction: (more…)
