Walter Lewin - For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge Of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

Praise for

Fascinating.... A delightful scientific memoir combined with amemorable introduction to physics.

Kirkus Reviews

MITs Lewin is deservedly popular for his memorable physics lectures(both live and on MITs OpenCourseWare website and YouTube), andthis quick-paced autobiography-cum-physics intro fully captures hiscandor and lively teaching style... joyful... [this text] glows with energyand should please a wide range of readers.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Lewin may be the only physics professor in the world who celebratesthe beauty of Maxwells equations for electromagnetic fields by passingout flowers to his delighted students. As the hundreds of thousands ofstudents who have witnessed his lectures in person or online can attest,this classroom wizard transforms textbook formulas into magic. Lewinsrare creativity shines through... a passport to adventure.

Booklist (starred review)

Of all the souls made famous by YouTubeJustin Bieber, those weddingentrance dancers, that guy who loses his mind while videotaping adouble-rainbownone is more deserving than MIT physics professorWalter Lewin. The professors sense of wonder is on full display in a newbook: For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge ofTimeA Journey Through the Wonders of Physics . Why is a rainbow anarc and not a straight line? Why can we typically see auroras only if wereclose to the North or South Pole? If youve ever been interested in learningor relearningthe answers to these and a hundred other fascinatingquestions, Lewins book is for you.

The Boston Globe

Everyone knows that rainbows appear after a storm. But in his newbook, Lewin reveals natures more unusual rainbows hiding in spraykicked up by ocean waves, in fog swirling around headlights, even inglass particles floating above construction sites. After more than thirtyyears of teaching undergraduate physics at MIT, Lewin has honed atoolbox of clear, engaging explanations that present physics as a way ofuncovering the worlds hidden wonders. Quirky, playful, and brimmingwith earnestness, each chapter is a joyful sketch of a topicfrom Newtonslaws to Lewins own pioneering discoveries in X-ray astronomy.Lewins creativity offers lessons both for students and for educators....Throughout it all, his sense of wonder is infectious.

Science News

Walter Lewins unabashed passion for physics shines through on everypage of this colorful, largely autobiographical tour of science. The excitementof discovery is infectious.

Mario Livio, author of The Golden Ratio and Is God a Mathematician?

In this fun, engaging, and accessible book, Walter Lewin, a superhero ofthe classroom, uses his powers for goodours! The authors share the joyof learning that the world is a knowable place.

James Kakalios, professor and author of The Physics of Superheroes and The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics

Free Press

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2011 by Walter Lewin and Warren Goldstein

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Free Press hardcover edition May 2011

FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lewin, Walter H. G.

For the love of physics : from the end of the rainbow to the edge of timea journey through the wonders of physics / by Walter Lewin with Warren Goldstein.

p. cm.

1. Lewin, Walter H. G. 2. PhysicistsMassachusettsBiography. 3. College teachersMassachusettsBiography. 4. PhysicsStudy and teachingNetherlands. 5. PhysicsStudy and teachingMassachusetts. I. Goldstein, Warren Jay. II. Title.

QC16.L485A3 2011

530.092dc22

[B] 2010047737

ISBN 978-1-4391-0827-7

ISBN 978-1-4391-2354-6 (ebook)

For all who inspired my love for physics and art
Walter lewin

For my grandson Caleb Benjamin Luria
Warren Goldstein

S ix feet two and lean, wearing what looks like a blue work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, khaki cargo pants, sandals and white socks, the professor strides back and forth at the front of his lecture hall, declaiming, gesturing, occasionally stopping for emphasis between a long series of blackboards and a thigh-high lab table. Four hundred chairs slope upward in front of him, occupied by students who shift in their seats but keep their eyes glued to their professor, who gives the impression that he is barely containing some powerful energy coursing through his body. With his high forehead, shock of unruly grey hair, glasses, and the trace of some unidentifiable European accent, he gives off a hint of Christopher Lloyds Doc Brown in the movie Back to the Future the intense, otherworldly, slightly mad scientist-inventor.

But this is not Doc Browns garageits the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the preeminent science and engineering university in the United States, perhaps even the world, and lecturing at the blackboard is Professor Walter H. G. Lewin. He halts his stride and turns to the class. Now. All important in making measurements, which is always ignored in every college physics bookhe throws his arms wide, fingers spreadis the uncertainty in your measurements. He pauses, takes a step, giving them time to consider, and stops again: Any measurement that you make without knowledge of the uncertainty is meaningless. And the hands fly apart, chopping the air for emphasis. Another pause.

I will repeat this. I want you to hear it tonight at three oclock in the morning when you wake up. He is holding both index fingers to his temples, twisting them, pretending to bore into his brain. Any measurement that you make without knowledge of its uncertainty is completely meaningless. The students stare at him, utterly rapt.

Were just eleven minutes into the first class of Physics 8.01, the most famous introductory college physics course in the world.

The New York Times ran a front-page piece on Walter Lewin as an MIT webstar in December 2007, featuring his physics lectures available on the MIT OpenCourseWare site, as well as on YouTube, iTunes U, and Academic Earth. Lewins were among the first lectures that MIT posted on the Internet, and it paid off for MIT. They have been exceptionally popular. The ninety-four lecturesin three full courses, plus seven stand-alonesgarner about three thousand viewers per day, a million hits a year. Those include quite a few visits from none other than Bill Gates, whos watched all of courses 8.01, Classical Mechanics, and 8.02, Electricity and Magnetism, according to letters (snail mail!) hes sent Walter, reporting that he was looking forward to moving on to 8.03, Vibrations and Waves.