Why Quark Rhymes with Pork

And Other Scientific Diversions

N. David Mermin

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781316474198
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Physics
• Index: Physics

A collection of offbeat, entertaining and primarily nontechnical essays on physics and those who practice it, from eminent theoretical physicist N. David Mermin. Bringing together for the first time all thirty of his columns published in Physics Today's Reference Frame series from 1988 to 2009, with updating commentary, this humorous and unusual volume includes thirteen other essays, many of them previously unpublished. Mermin's lively and penetrating writing illuminates a broad range of topics, from the implications of bad spelling in a major science journal, to the crises of science libraries and scientific periodicals, the folly of scientific prizes and honors, the agony of getting funding, and how to pronounce 'quark'. His witty observations and insightful anecdotes gleaned from a lifetime in science will entertain physicists at all levels, as well as anyone else interested in science or scientists at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Preface
• Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
• Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
• Part Three More from Professor Mozart
• Part Four More to be Said
• Part Five Some People I’ve Known
• Part Six Summing it Up
• Index