书名：For the Love of Physics 爱上物理：我在MIT教物理

作者：Walter Lewin沃尔特·卢因

出版社名称：Free Press

出版时间：2012

语种：英文

ISBN：9781451607130

商品尺寸：14 x 2.3 x 21.4 cm

包装：平装

页数：320 （以实物为准）

连续30多年来，卢因都是麻省理工学院（MIT）很受学生喜爱的教授。他把物理学变得通俗易懂，更使之充满乐趣。他把自己的身体当成实验器材，而上课，则经常像魔术表演或玩命的特技，他有时把自己的头置于摆动的球的轨迹之间，有时用30万伏的高压通过身体，有时教你在自家做出一道彩虹并把它握在手上，有时则给学生演示天空为什么是蓝色的，云为什么是白色的。正如卡尔·萨根之于天文学，布赖恩·格林之于宇宙学，卢因是物理学方面的专家。在For the Love of Physics《爱上物理：我在MIT教物理》这本趣味读物中，他让我们睁开眼睛，以前所未有的角度，观察物理学所揭示的隐藏在周围世界中的美和力量。“我要把人们领进自己的世界，”他说，“那是一个他们所居住、所熟悉的世界，只是暂时他们还不像物理学家那样认识它。”推荐理由： 1.让比尔·盖茨着迷、史上好玩的物理课； 2. 麻省理工学院的“网络明星”、深受学生喜爱的物理教授，以前所未有的角度，揭示隐藏在周围世界中的美和力量； 3. 英文原版，内容无删减。纸质护眼。 媒体推荐“沃尔特•卢因对物理学有着毫不打折的激情，这种激情渗入了这本有些自传性质的科学之旅的每一页。作出发现的兴奋是一种传染病。”——马里奥•利维奥，《黄金比率》（The Golden Ratio）和《上帝是数学家吗？》（Is God a Mathematician?）的作者。 “在这本趣味横生、引人入胜，同时又浅显易懂的书中，教室里的超级英雄沃尔特•卢因很好分享了学习的喜悦，让我们认识到世界是可知的。”——詹姆斯•卡卡里沃斯教授，《超级英雄的物理学》（The Physics of Superheroes）和《量子力学传奇》（The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics）的作者。 InFor the Love of Physics, beloved MIT professor Walter Lewin, whose riveting physics lectures made him a YouTube super-star, takes readers on a remarkably fun, inventive, and often wacky journey that brings the joys of physics to life. “For the Love of Physics captures Walter Lewin’s extraordinary intellect, passion for physics, and brilliance as a teacher” —Bill Gates. For more than thirty years as a renowned professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lewin’s lectures made physics not only accessible but fun, whether putting his head in the path of a wrecking ball, supercharging himself with three hundred thousand volts of electricity, or demonstrating why the sky is blue and clouds are white. InFor the Love of Physics, Lewin takes readers on a marvelous journey, opening our eyes as never before to the wonders of physics and its amazing ability to reveal the beauty and power embedded in our world. Could it be true that we are shorter standing up than lying down? Why can we snorkel no deeper than about one foot below the surface? Why are the colors of a rainbow always in the same order, can we stretch a hand out and touch one? Using superbly clear and simple explanations of phenomena we’ve always wondered about, such as what the big bang would have sounded like had anyone existed to hear it, Lewin surprises and delights with physics-based answers to even the most elusive questions. Whether showing us that a flea is strong enough to pull a heavy book across a table, or describing the coolest, weirdest facts about the tiniest bits of matter, Lewin always entertains as he edifies. “For me,” Lewin writes, “physics is a way of seeing—the spectacular and the mundane, the immense and the minute—as a beautiful, thrillingly interwoven whole.”For the Love of Physics is a rare gem that will change the way readers see the world.

Beloved MIT professor Walter Lewin, whose riveting physics lectures have made him a YouTube super-star, offers a mind-opening and delightful journey through the most intriguing discoveries in physics. A wonderful raconteur, Lewin takes readers on a marvellous journey with him inFor the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power of all that physics can reveal to us. He describes the coolest, weirdest facets of the tiniest bits of matter, the wonders of our everyday lives—such as the mysteries of why lighting strikes and what makes musical harmony happen—and the most awesome features of the outer reaches of the universe. Whether explaining why the air smells so fresh after a lightning storm or showing us that a flea is strong enough to pull a heavy book across a table, Lewin always entertains as he edifies.For the Love of Physics is a rare gem that will change the way readers see the world.

沃尔特·卢因，在荷兰出生并长大。1965年，他获得了代尔夫特技术大学的物理学博士学位。1966年，他以博士后研究员身份来到麻省理工学院。同年，他成为这里的助理教授，并在1974年成为教授。他是成就卓著的天体物理学家，是X射线天文学的先驱，发表过450余篇科学论文。卢因在麻省理工学院执教三个物理学核心课程已超过30年。这些讲座非常受欢迎，已经被录像，成为麻省理工学院的“开放式课程网页”、YouTube、iTunes U和“学术地球”（Academic Earth）上的很受欢迎的视频。每年，有超过一百万来自世界各地的人观看这些讲座视频。许多媒体，包括《纽约时报》《波士顿环球报》《国际先驱论坛报》《卫报》《华盛顿邮报》《新闻周刊》《美国新闻与世界报道》等，都曾刊文介绍他的讲座。他所获的荣誉和奖项，包括美国宇航局的杰出科学成就荣誉奖章（1978年）、亚历山大·冯·洪堡奖、古根海姆研究员（1984年）、麻省理工学院的本科教学优秀奖（1984年）、麻省理工学院物理系的W．Buechner奖（1988年）、美国宇航局X射线暴脉冲星的发现奖（1997年），以及埃弗雷特·摩尔·贝克卓越本科教学工作纪念奖（2003年）等。1993年，他成为荷兰皇家艺术与科学学院通讯会员，以及美国物理协会的院士。 Walter Lewin taught the three core classes in physics at MIT for more than thirty years and made major discoveries in the area of X-ray astronomy. His physics lectures have been the subject of great acclaim, including a 60 Minutes feature, stories in theNew York Times,Washington Post,Boston Globe,Newsweek andUS News and World Report. They have also been top draws on YouTube and iTunes University. He was awarded three prizes for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He has published more than 450 scientific articles, and his honors and awards include the NASA Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the Alexander von Humboldt Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He became a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1993. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Introduction导言 1.From the Nucleus to Deep Space从原子核到深空 2.Measurements, Uncertainties, and the Stars测量，误差和恒星 3.Bodies in Motion物体运动 4.The Magic of Drinking with a Straw吸管的魔法 5.Over and Under—Outside and Inside—the Rainbow彩虹面面观 6.The Harmonies of Strings and Winds和谐的乐音 7.The Wonders of Electricity电：神奇的电 8.The Mysteries of Magnetism神秘的磁学 9.Energy Conversation— Plus ça change能量转换 10.X-rays from Outer Space!来自外层空间的X射线 11. X-ray Ballooning, the Early Days早期的气球X射线研究 12.Cosmic Catastrophes, Neutron Stars, and Black Holes宇宙灾难、中子星和黑洞 13. Celestial Ballet天体芭蕾 14. X-ray Bursters!爆发源 15.Ways of Seeing观察的方式 Acknowledgments致谢 Appendix 1附录1 Appendix 2附录2 Index索引

From the Nucleus to Deep Space It’s amazing, really. My mother’s father was illiterate, a custodian. Two generations later I’m a full professor at MIT. I owe a lot to the Dutch educational system. I went to graduate school at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and killed three birds with one stone. Right from the start, I began teaching physics. To pay for school I had to take out a loan from the Dutch government, and if I taught full time, at least twenty hours a week, each year the government would forgive one-fifth of my loan. Another advantage of teaching was that I wouldn’t have to serve in the army. The military would have been the worst, an absolute disaster for me. I’m allergic to all forms of authority—it’s just in my personality—and I knew I would have ended up mouthing off and scrubbing floors. So I taught math and physics full time, twenty-two contact hours per week, at the Libanon Lyceum in Rotterdam, to sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds. I avoided the army, did not have to pay back my loan, and was getting my PhD, all at the same time. I also learned to teach. For me, teaching high school students, being able to change the minds of young people in a positive way, that was thrilling. I always tried to make classes interesting but also fun for the students, even though the school itself was quite strict. The classroom doors had transom windows at the top, and one of the headmasters would sometimes climb up on a chair and spy on teachers through the transom. Can you believe it? I wasn’t caught up in the school culture, and being in graduate school, I was boiling over with enthusiasm. My goal was to impart that enthusiasm to my students, to help them see the beauty of the world all around them in a new way, to change them so that they would see the world of physics as beautiful, and would understand that physics is everywhere, that it permeates our lives. What counts, I found, is not what you cover, but what you uncover. Covering subjects in a class can be a boring exercise, and students feel it. Uncovering the laws of physics and making them see through the equations, on the other hand, demonstrates the process of discovery, with all its newness and excitement, and students love being part of it. I got to do this also in a different way far outside the classroom. Every year the school sponsored a week-long vacation when a teacher would take the kids on a trip to a fairly remote and primitive campsite. My wife, Huibertha, and I did it once and loved it. We all cooked together and slept in tents. Then, since we were so far from city lights, we woke all the kids up in the middle of one night, gave them hot chocolate, and took them out to look at the stars. We identified constellations and planets and they got to see the Milky Way in its full glory.