belgaer's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
4.0
Very fun! The journey allegory gets a bit tiresome when it’s trotted out chapter after chapter, but the book as a whole is very informative and light hearted. It gets much deeper into high energy physics than I expected. Very impressed by how intuitive the explanations of the W and Z bosons, and the Higgs are. Particularly impressed by how it manages to finish in a fun, if predictable way. Even the tired exploration metaphor is a little bit more fun when calling modified gravity theorists “salty sea dogs.”
ruthieem's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Having read several other books on particle physics, Atom Land explained several subjects in ways I haven’t previously come across. Butterworth’s explanation of the weak force was especially helpful for my understanding; I’ve found that most authors tend to brush past it. But I do think this book would be most enjoyable to readers with at least some knowledge of particle physics, as Butterworth’s explanations are not the most thorough, and a good portion of the narrative is dedicated to imagining the world of Atom Land.
skyclad's review against another edition
2.0
It was not a great book for me. maybe I needed more background info on physics to enjoy it more
poirotketchup's review
3.0
I feel less like an uneducated layperson on quantum physics and more like a kind-of-educated layperson. This book gives a good overview of the standard model, and doesn't get much into the wild theorizing that dominates most popular writings I've seen on the subject. It does get rather hard to follow near the end, but that's to be expected.
aloyokon's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting way to explain quantum mechanics and subatomic particle physics.
dkevanstoronto's review against another edition
4.0
This book by Jon Butterworth is a real treasure for those who like their intellectual feasts with the wine of humor. Butterworth uses the metaphor of a map to describe the world of experimental physics. He not only explains what we know but also and more importantly what we don't know.
I think an alternate title should be "Here be dragons". Like the early map makers who drew dragons where they had no information here Butterworth goes one better, he envisions what it is like to be a scientist journeying into those outer reaches where what we know is often speculative.
The book acts as a synopsis of the current state of research. Now that we have identified the Higgs-Boson we are really no further to answering some of the other questions that physics beset with. Instead there are ideas about alternate dimensions, unknown particles and ideas that are so wild its hard to conceptualize. Hard but not impossible as Butterworth proves in this book. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject.
I think an alternate title should be "Here be dragons". Like the early map makers who drew dragons where they had no information here Butterworth goes one better, he envisions what it is like to be a scientist journeying into those outer reaches where what we know is often speculative.
The book acts as a synopsis of the current state of research. Now that we have identified the Higgs-Boson we are really no further to answering some of the other questions that physics beset with. Instead there are ideas about alternate dimensions, unknown particles and ideas that are so wild its hard to conceptualize. Hard but not impossible as Butterworth proves in this book. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject.
ederwin's review against another edition
4.0
A quick, entertaining read. Tough going for me in the beginning, because it was covering stuff I know very well already and doing so inside an annoying (to me) story of traveling between different islands representing different classes of subatomic particles. Maps of those islands, reminiscent of those in A Wizard of Earthsea and similar fantasy stories were attractive, but added little for me. The book really started to become interesting to me only when it started discussing the weak nuclear force, which I've studied much less than other ideas in physics. Near the end, there are a few short chapters on more speculative theories (super-symmetry, string theories, etc.) going beyond the standard model that are treated here with appropriate skepticism, but not outright dismissal.
johnreader's review against another edition
4.0
I first have to suggest that you should make time for sustained reading sessions. I broke up my own reading with other books and found I was lost upon picking this one back up. Having said that, though, I loved the metaphor. I could easily imagine teaching a survey course with the map metaphor as the frame on which to hang the semester. The drawings are not only lovely but also helped orient me while reading. My only quibble is that the focus on the metaphor sometimes hid what was being talked about. For example, his "discussion" of branes was so breezy that the reader, unless they are already familiar with that theory, wouldn't really understand that a theory had been discussed. There is a suggestions for further reading that I think would be better to read prior to this book, mainly because Atom Land does a better job at putting all of those different discussions into a larger whole.
tachyondecay's review against another edition
2.0
Ben is still split on this one, folks. Atom Land: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (And Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics tries to teach us about … well, particle physics. Specifically, Jon Butterworth takes us on a tour of the different particles in the Standard Model of physics, explains the three fundamental forces that interact with them, and then expands our horizons by briefly touching on the frontiers of physics research. The subject matter is fascinating, and Butterworth’s presentation of it is generally pretty interesting. Yet the book itself never quite gels for me. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.
The title of this book is literally the metaphor Butterworth uses throughout: he pitches this as a journey through the land of particle physics, starting at the Isle of Leptons and taking us all the way to the high-energy land of Bosonia on the eastern edge of the map. I’m so ambivalent about this metaphor. I think I mostly hate it, because it sounds so contrived. But there are parts that managed to get to me—and the little maps at the start of each section are cute! So your mileage may vary, and maybe this is the metaphor that finally helps you make sense of particle physics. Probably not though.
Butterworth promises early on that he won’t throw any equations at us. This is a fairly standard boilerplate promise in the popular physics book game these days. Atom Land adheres to the letter of this promise but not, I submit, it spirit: there are a few times when Butterworth basically writes in words the equivalent of an equation, and if that isn’t splitting hairs, I don’t know what is. I also don’t agree with this received wisdom that equations should be avoided at all costs. Sometimes equations are elegant, beautiful ways of demonstrating physics. You don’t need to understand or be able to manipulate them to appreciate how they bring together, for example, various forces. And in attempting to avoid the use of equations, Butterworth, like so many other authors of these books, ends up going through contortions or explaining things in a tortured way that ultimately make less sense (in my opinion).
Indeed, one of my major reservations about Atom Land is simply that I’m having a hard time pinning down the intended audience. The first part of the book spends a long time explaining how modern quantum physics understands the nature of a “particle” and wave-particle duality. Yet it isn’t long before Butterworth is throwing around terms that a lot of newbies won’t understand or be able to grasp the way he’s explaining them. Combined with the utter dearth of images and figures, aside from the maps that preface each section, and this makes for some uneven reading.
I will give Atom Land this bit of praise, though: Butterworth spends a lot of time explaining the weak force, and I definitely understand it a lot better than I did before reading this! In particular, he covers concepts like chirality and helicity, which either I’ve never seen mentioned before in any physics books, or I must have totally forgotten about them. Again, the level of his explanations occasionally seems uneven in complexity, but I think I got the gist of it. And it led to some fascinating insights into the weak force, the nature of antimatter, and why symmetry is so important to physics. Moreover, Butterworth often touches on the possibility of finding a “theory of everything” and makes important points each time why that isn’t really the right way to look at physics and science.
It occurred to me while I was reading that it must take a lot of confidence to write a popular physics book these days. There just seems to be so many out there—you must really think you’ve got what it takes, or got something others don’t, for your book to do something the other books haven’t. So, good on Butterworth for taking that leap and writing this book. It’s a decent book. But all it really did was make me want to re-read Knocking on Heaven’s Door, by Lisa Randall, which had an excellent and more concise explanation of the Standard Model—complete with a diagram!
Atom Land stays true to its conceit the entire way through, and Butterworth attempts to explain the fundamental forces of our universe in clear terms. I think he mostly succeeds, but his style doesn’t quite work for me, and there are parts of the book that seem inconsistent in tone and difficulty level. It’s all right, but it’s messy in places. Then again, I guess that’s physics these days.
The title of this book is literally the metaphor Butterworth uses throughout: he pitches this as a journey through the land of particle physics, starting at the Isle of Leptons and taking us all the way to the high-energy land of Bosonia on the eastern edge of the map. I’m so ambivalent about this metaphor. I think I mostly hate it, because it sounds so contrived. But there are parts that managed to get to me—and the little maps at the start of each section are cute! So your mileage may vary, and maybe this is the metaphor that finally helps you make sense of particle physics. Probably not though.
Butterworth promises early on that he won’t throw any equations at us. This is a fairly standard boilerplate promise in the popular physics book game these days. Atom Land adheres to the letter of this promise but not, I submit, it spirit: there are a few times when Butterworth basically writes in words the equivalent of an equation, and if that isn’t splitting hairs, I don’t know what is. I also don’t agree with this received wisdom that equations should be avoided at all costs. Sometimes equations are elegant, beautiful ways of demonstrating physics. You don’t need to understand or be able to manipulate them to appreciate how they bring together, for example, various forces. And in attempting to avoid the use of equations, Butterworth, like so many other authors of these books, ends up going through contortions or explaining things in a tortured way that ultimately make less sense (in my opinion).
Indeed, one of my major reservations about Atom Land is simply that I’m having a hard time pinning down the intended audience. The first part of the book spends a long time explaining how modern quantum physics understands the nature of a “particle” and wave-particle duality. Yet it isn’t long before Butterworth is throwing around terms that a lot of newbies won’t understand or be able to grasp the way he’s explaining them. Combined with the utter dearth of images and figures, aside from the maps that preface each section, and this makes for some uneven reading.
I will give Atom Land this bit of praise, though: Butterworth spends a lot of time explaining the weak force, and I definitely understand it a lot better than I did before reading this! In particular, he covers concepts like chirality and helicity, which either I’ve never seen mentioned before in any physics books, or I must have totally forgotten about them. Again, the level of his explanations occasionally seems uneven in complexity, but I think I got the gist of it. And it led to some fascinating insights into the weak force, the nature of antimatter, and why symmetry is so important to physics. Moreover, Butterworth often touches on the possibility of finding a “theory of everything” and makes important points each time why that isn’t really the right way to look at physics and science.
It occurred to me while I was reading that it must take a lot of confidence to write a popular physics book these days. There just seems to be so many out there—you must really think you’ve got what it takes, or got something others don’t, for your book to do something the other books haven’t. So, good on Butterworth for taking that leap and writing this book. It’s a decent book. But all it really did was make me want to re-read Knocking on Heaven’s Door, by Lisa Randall, which had an excellent and more concise explanation of the Standard Model—complete with a diagram!
Atom Land stays true to its conceit the entire way through, and Butterworth attempts to explain the fundamental forces of our universe in clear terms. I think he mostly succeeds, but his style doesn’t quite work for me, and there are parts of the book that seem inconsistent in tone and difficulty level. It’s all right, but it’s messy in places. Then again, I guess that’s physics these days.