stewart42's review
4.0
Excellent. There are references to diagrams which the audiobook doesn't have. It is slightly dated as it predates the discovery of the Higgs boson, but excellent nonetheless.
kahawa's review
3.0
In the end this was informative, but I felt like the lecturer 'told' his audience how things are, but didn't 'explain' well how and why they are the way they are. He's super smart and spoke incredibly fast, and I think I needed him to slow down and show me why a particle is how it is before moving on to the next concept. It's also a little dated now (2000), so it wasn't able to include the important results of the large hadron collider and Higgs boson.
kenreid's review
5.0
Bit dated, refers to past experiments as future ones. Still an excellent foundation building course.
jupiterheathen's review
4.0
Good course I listened to on Audible. I'm probably going to have to listen again because even though some of the concepts were simplified, I had a hard time visualizing the thought experiments and other fundamental principles featured in the course. The professor was not boring and overall I enjoyed something that was challenging. I understood the overall concepts, but some of the details went way over my head. However, I highly recommend this course.
tanyarobinson's review
Okay, I'm a wimp. I was so proud of my non-scientist self for tackling these lectures, feeling all smug that I was stretching my mind. Well, I found my mind didn't feel so much stretched as bored beyond desire for existence. I listened to 7 lectures before I gave up. I guess there's a reason why I remain a non-scientist...
mikusa's review
3.0
In the end this was informative, but I felt like the lecturer 'told' his audience how things are, but didn't 'explain' well how and why they are the way they are. He's super smart and spoke incredibly fast, and I think I needed him to slow down and show me why a particle is how it is before moving on to the next concept. It's also a little dated now (2000), so it wasn't able to include the important results of the large hadron collider and Higgs boson.
mattm's review against another edition
5.0
A terrific intro to 20th and 21st century physics (Einstein and later).
Despite having taken two years of honours high school physics and reading a number of books on the topic, there were a number of concepts about relativity and quantum mechanics I still grasped only loosely.
Professor Wolfson has a way of explaining difficult concepts simply and very visually that really "clicks" with my mind: time dilation, relativistic frames of reference, etc. I wish I'd had this background from the beginning.
Despite having taken two years of honours high school physics and reading a number of books on the topic, there were a number of concepts about relativity and quantum mechanics I still grasped only loosely.
Professor Wolfson has a way of explaining difficult concepts simply and very visually that really "clicks" with my mind: time dilation, relativistic frames of reference, etc. I wish I'd had this background from the beginning.