Download or read book Alvarez Adventures of a Physicist written by Luis W. Alvarez and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, Luis W. Alvarez participated in the Allies’ development of radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. He then worked as an experimental physicist on cyclotrons, particle accelerators and bubble chambers at UC-Berkeley with Ernest Lawrence. Later in life, he used cosmic rays to “X ray” an Egyptian pyramid, developed a new theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and won the 1968 Nobel prize in physics for his work on elementary particles. In this autobiography, Alvarez shares insights on the process of scientific discovery, risk-taking in science and how theoretical and experimental physics interact. “[A] delightful autobiography... [A] fascinating book... It should be read by everyone who is interested in science and adventure, or who just wants to meet one of our most fascinating contemporaries.” — James Trefil, New York Times Book Review “Beyond its self-portrait, Alvarez provides an exceptionally clear view of the world of science.” — Alan Lightman, Washington Post Book World “This is a richly absorbing autobiography... Personally as well as scientifically forthright and plainspoken, [Alvarez] holds the reader with the story of his life as a scientist, much of the time at Berkeley, Calif., working with such men as Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Enrico Fermi.” — Publishers Weekly “A gripping book. It succeeds well in making the scientific experience and the excitement of discovery accessible to the general reader.” — Richard L. Garwin,Physics Today “A fascinating life.” — Elena Brunet, Los Angeles Times “One of the best popular books on science to emerge from the laboratory in years.” — Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times “Luis W. Alvarez has an unsurpassed reputation among scientists for a lifelong record of crucial participation in important discoveries in pure and applied science. In this book he performs an additional service by revealing his thought processes.” — Philip Abelson, Science Advisor, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Download or read book Discovering Alvarez written by Luis W. Alvarez and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1987-12-30 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luis W. Alvarez has had a breathtakingly varied and important career of discovery, adventure, and invention. The winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on subatomic particles, Alvarez participated as a scientific observer of the Hiroshima bombing mission, formulated the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinctions, discovered the radioactivity of tritium, took x-rays of the Second Pyramid at Giza, designed the Berkeley proton linear accelerator, first observed fundamental particle resonances, created the variable-focus thin lens, analyzed the Kennedy assassination film, and invented the Ground Control Approach radar system for airplane landings, to name but a few of his experiences and accomplishments. Discovering Alvarez collects articles by this innovative physicist, documenting his outstanding contributions. The articles, which span his career, are accompanied by a remarkable collection of commentary by the colleagues and students who worked closely with Alvarez on each project or discovery.

Download or read book T rex and the Crater of Doom written by Walter Alvarez and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized detritus blasted through the atmosphere upon impact, falling back to Earth around the globe. Disastrous environmental consequences ensued: a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the plant and animal genera on Earth had perished. This horrific chain of events is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific mystery: what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Walter Alvarez, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, tells the story behind the development of the initially controversial theory. It is a saga of high adventure in remote locations, of arduous data collection and intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of friendships made and lost, and of the exhilaration of discovery that forever altered our understanding of Earth's geological history.

Download or read book Physics 1963 1970 written by and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1998 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/3729

Download or read book Constructing Quarks written by Andrew Pickering and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999-12 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely regarded as a classic in its field, Constructing Quarks recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status of scientific knowledge, Andrew Pickering suggests that scientists are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they are social beings as well as active constructors of natural phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice. "A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily recommend."—Michael Riordan, New Scientist "An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."—Hugh N. Pendleton, Physics Today

Download or read book The Power of the Zoot written by Luis Alvarez and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-06-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flamboyant zoot suit culture, with its ties to fashion, jazz and swing music, jitterbug and Lindy Hop dancing, unique patterns of speech, and even risqué experimentation with gender and sexuality, captivated the country's youth in the 1940s. The Power of the Zoot is the first book to give national consideration to this famous phenomenon. Providing a new history of youth culture based on rare, in-depth interviews with former zoot-suiters, Luis Alvarez explores race, region, and the politics of culture in urban America during World War II. He argues that Mexican American and African American youths, along with many nisei and white youths, used popular culture to oppose accepted modes of youthful behavior, the dominance of white middle-class norms, and expectations from within their own communities.

Download or read book An Invitation to Quantum Field Theory written by Luis Alvarez-Gaumé and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-11-26 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to Quantum Field Theory (QFT) at an elementary level—with only special relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics as prerequisites. For this fresh approach to teaching QFT, based on numerous lectures and courses given by the authors, a representative sample of topics has been selected containing some of the more innovative, challenging or subtle concepts. They are presented with a minimum of technical details, the discussion of the main ideas being more important than the presentation of the typically very technical mathematical details necessary to obtain the final results. Special attention is given to the realization of symmetries in particle physics: global and local symmetries, explicit, spontaneously broken, and anomalous continuous symmetries, as well as discrete symmetries. Beyond providing an overview of the standard model of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions and the current understanding of the origin of mass, the text enumerates the general features of renormalization theory as well as providing a cursory description of effective field theories and the problem of naturalness in physics. Among the more advanced topics the reader will find are an outline of the first principles derivation of the CPT theorem and the spin-statistics connection. As indicated by the title, the main aim of this text is to motivate the reader to study QFT by providing a self-contained and approachable introduction to the most exciting and challenging aspects of this successful theoretical framework.

Download or read book Handbook of Radar Scattering Statistics for Terrain written by Fawwaz Ulaby and published by Artech House. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic reference for radar and remote sensing engineers, Handbook of Radar for Scattering Statistics for Terrain, has been reissued with updated, practical software for modern data analysis applications. First published in 1989, this update features a new preface, along with three new appendices that explain how to use the new software and graphical user interface. Python- and MATLAB-based software has been utilized so remote sensing and radar engineers can utilize the wealth of statistical data that came with the original book and software. This update combines the book and software, previously sold separately, into a single new product. The text first presents detailed examinations of the statistical behavior of speckle when superimposed on nonuniform terrain. The Handbook of Radar Scattering Statistics for Terrain then supports system design and signal processing applications with a complete database of calibrated backscattering coefficients. Compiled over 30 years, the statistical summaries of radar backscatter from terrain offers you over 400,000 data points compiled in tabular format. With this text, you'll own the most comprehensive database of radar terrain scattering statistics ever compiled. Derived from measurements made by both airborne and ground-based scatterometer systems, the database includes information from 114 references. The text provides over 60 tables of backscatter data for 9 different surface categories, all derived under strict quality criteria. Rigorous standards for calibration accuracy, measurement precision, and category identification make the database the most reliable source for scattering statistics ever available.

Download or read book A Most Improbable Journey A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves written by Walter Alvarez and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A thrilling synthesis from a brilliant scientist who discovered one of the most important chapters in our history." —Sean B. Carroll Big History, the field that integrates traditional historical scholarship with scientific insights to study the full sweep of our universe, has so far been the domain of historians. Famed geologist Walter Alvarez—best known for the “Impact Theory” explaining dinosaur extinction—has instead championed a science-first approach to Big History. Here he wields his unique expertise to give us a new appreciation for the incredible occurrences—from the Big Bang to the formation of supercontinents, the dawn of the Bronze Age, and beyond—that have led to our improbable place in the universe.

Download or read book Catastrophic Thinking written by David Sepkoski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-12-06 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of scientific ideas about extinction that explains why we learned to value diversity as a precious resource at the same time as we learned to “think catastrophically” about extinction. We live in an age in which we are repeatedly reminded—by scientists, by the media, by popular culture—of the looming threat of mass extinction. We’re told that human activity is currently producing a sixth mass extinction, perhaps of even greater magnitude than the five previous geological catastrophes that drastically altered life on Earth. Indeed, there is a very real concern that the human species may itself be poised to go the way of the dinosaurs, victims of the most recent mass extinction some 65 million years ago. How we interpret the causes and consequences of extinction and their ensuing moral imperatives is deeply embedded in the cultural values of any given historical moment. And, as David Sepkoski reveals, the history of scientific ideas about extinction over the past two hundred years—as both a past and a current process—is implicated in major changes in the way Western society has approached biological and cultural diversity. It seems self-evident to most of us that diverse ecosystems and societies are intrinsically valuable, but the current fascination with diversity is a relatively recent phenomenon. In fact, the way we value diversity depends crucially on our sense that it is precarious—that it is something actively threatened, and that its loss could have profound consequences. In Catastrophic Thinking, Sepkoski uncovers how and why we learned to value diversity as a precious resource at the same time as we learned to think catastrophically about extinction.

Download or read book Revolutionary Violence and the New Left written by Alberto Martin Alvarez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading figures and rising stars in the field present the first contribution explaining the transnational nature of the revolutionary violence of the New Left. Focusing on the processes of dissemination of ideologies and mobilization of ideas and repertoires of action among the revolutionary organizations of the New Left in Latin America, Europe, and the United States, this book contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of the New Left wave and, at the same time, helps explain the "why" of the emergence of very similar armed leftist groups in vastly different geographical and political contexts.

Download or read book The Mountains of Saint Francis Discovering the Geologic Events That Shaped Our Earth written by Walter Alvarez and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-12-17 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's leading geologists takes readers into Italy's Apennine Mountain Range—the Mountains of Saint Francis—on a journey to discover the fascinating secrets of the Earth's deep history. Modern geologists, Walter Alvarez among them, showed in the last decades of the twentieth century that the history of our planet has witnessed events profoundly more dramatic than even the most spectacular chapters in human history. More violent than wars, more life altering than revolutions—understanding the geologic events that have shaped the Earth's surface is the quest and the passion of geologists. In the knowledgeable and graceful prose of Alvarez, general readers are led to explore the many mysteries that our planet guards. The author has chosen Italy as a microcosm in which to explore this amazing past for several reasons. First, it is the land where the earliest geologists learned how to read the history of the Earth, written in nature’s rock archives. Second, it is where Alvarez and his Italian geological friends have continued to decipher the rock record, uncovering more historical episodes from the Earth’s past. And third, the lovely land of Italy is unusually rich in geological treasures and offers examples of the key processes that have created the landscapes of the entire world. The Mountains of Saint Francis begins in Rome. We discover that the landscape of Rome was built by violent volcanic eruptions in the very recent past, almost certainly witnessed by our human ancestors. Next we travel to Siena and come face to face with a fundamental discovery of the geologists—that much of the dry land that we currently inhabit was once underwater, beneath ancient seas or oceans. Then we stop in the small medieval city of Gubbio and contemplate the amazing secret that the limestone rocks kept hidden for 65 million years—that a huge asteroid smashed into the Earth, disrupting the environment so severely that the dinosaurs, and perhaps half of the other forms of life inhabiting the Earth at the time, disappeared forever, opening the way for the rise of the mammals and eventually of humans. The impact theory that came from those Italian limestones at Gubbio was one of the great geological discoveries of the twentieth century. Just as important to the field of geology was the theory of plate tectonics—the understanding that the outer layer of the Earth is divided into crustal plates that move around, sometimes carrying continents into collisions with one another, like the great collision between Italy and Europe that built the Alps. And yet, to explain the Mountains of Saint Francis requires something more than a collision between continents. These are mountains that are still jealously guarding the secret of their past, and in this book we go along with the geological detectives as they try to uncover that secret. It is a journey that has seen the land of Italy lifted out of the sea, squashed and folded, torn apart, left high and dry when the Mediterranean Sea evaporated away, and then flooded when the Atlantic waters poured back in. The story of the Earth's history is fascinating in its own right, but with Alvarez as the tour guide, the journey takes on a human dimension, full of stories about the landscape and history of Italy and about the great geologists who uncovered the deep past of this land. It is a journey recounted in warm tones and subtle colors, reflecting the transcendent beauty of Italy itself.

Download or read book Digital Signal Processing with Kernel Methods written by Jose Luis Rojo-Alvarez and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-02-05 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A realistic and comprehensive review of joint approaches to machine learning and signal processing algorithms, with application to communications, multimedia, and biomedical engineering systems Digital Signal Processing with Kernel Methods reviews the milestones in the mixing of classical digital signal processing models and advanced kernel machines statistical learning tools. It explains the fundamental concepts from both fields of machine learning and signal processing so that readers can quickly get up to speed in order to begin developing the concepts and application software in their own research. Digital Signal Processing with Kernel Methods provides a comprehensive overview of kernel methods in signal processing, without restriction to any application field. It also offers example applications and detailed benchmarking experiments with real and synthetic datasets throughout. Readers can find further worked examples with Matlab source code on a website developed by the authors: http://github.com/DSPKM • Presents the necessary basic ideas from both digital signal processing and machine learning concepts • Reviews the state-of-the-art in SVM algorithms for classification and detection problems in the context of signal processing • Surveys advances in kernel signal processing beyond SVM algorithms to present other highly relevant kernel methods for digital signal processing An excellent book for signal processing researchers and practitioners, Digital Signal Processing with Kernel Methods will also appeal to those involved in machine learning and pattern recognition.

Download or read book Mirror Symmetry written by Kentaro Hori and published by American Mathematical Soc.. This book was released on 2003 with total page 954 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thorough and detailed exposition is the result of an intensive month-long course on mirror symmetry sponsored by the Clay Mathematics Institute. It develops mirror symmetry from both mathematical and physical perspectives with the aim of furthering interaction between the two fields. The material will be particularly useful for mathematicians and physicists who wish to advance their understanding across both disciplines. Mirror symmetry is a phenomenon arising in string theory in which two very different manifolds give rise to equivalent physics. Such a correspondence has significant mathematical consequences, the most familiar of which involves the enumeration of holomorphic curves inside complex manifolds by solving differential equations obtained from a ``mirror'' geometry. The inclusion of D-brane states in the equivalence has led to further conjectures involving calibrated submanifolds of the mirror pairs and new (conjectural) invariants of complex manifolds: the Gopakumar-Vafa invariants. This book gives a single, cohesive treatment of mirror symmetry. Parts 1 and 2 develop the necessary mathematical and physical background from ``scratch''. The treatment is focused, developing only the material most necessary for the task. In Parts 3 and 4 the physical and mathematical proofs of mirror symmetry are given. From the physics side, this means demonstrating that two different physical theories give isomorphic physics. Each physical theory can be described geometrically, and thus mirror symmetry gives rise to a ``pairing'' of geometries. The proof involves applying $R\leftrightarrow 1/R$ circle duality to the phases of the fields in the gauged linear sigma model. The mathematics proof develops Gromov-Witten theory in the algebraic setting, beginning with the moduli spaces of curves and maps, and uses localization techniques to show that certain hypergeometric functions encode the Gromov-Witten invariants in genus zero, as is predicted by mirror symmetry. Part 5 is devoted to advanced topi This one-of-a-kind book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in mathematics and mathematical and theoretical physics.

Download or read book Pions to Quarks written by Laurie M. Brown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-11-24 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical studies and analyses provided in the volume are unique in their scope and level of detail.

Download or read book The Disappearing Spoon written by Sam Kean and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. The Disappearing Spoon masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery -- from the Big Bang through the end of time. Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.

Download or read book Physics written by Alfred B. Bortz and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains a history of physics providing definitions and explanations of related topics and brief biographies of scientists of the twentieth century.