MODERN PHYSICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

MODERN PHYSICS.

A POPULAR EXPOSITION. "Among tlie physicists tlie layman is like a man who comes into the* theatre only after the first act." remarks Paul Karlson in the preface to "You and the Universe: Modern Physics for Everybody" (Allen and Umvin). "And it is just the first act that is important; the second is more a private performance for connoisseurs." His book, which was originally published in Germany and has been Translated by Bernard Miall, is intended to give the layman a broad grasp of the subject, .and especially to enable him to understand what* the great modern physicists are doing, what they have accomplished, and the obstacles before which they have temporarily halted. So far as the difficulties of the subject, permit, it is simply written, and the sprightly illustrations which accompany the text help the exposition.

In his conclusion, after discussing the difficulties of the layman who seeks to understand physics, the author says: I 1 or centuries the world was regarded as a great piece of clockwork" the mechanical plaything of a god. The image proved to be inadequate—and had to be discarded. . . . Electrical fields, oscillating tensions, have filled space and banished the mechanical models. And this image, too, is melting in the light of the new knowledge. Only mathematical symbols, the creation of the intellect, are left." Here the layman is left far behind, but Mr. Carlson's book will at least enable him to understand more of "ordinary physics, which, outside the laboratories, still governs, as it always will, our technical activities ancli our lives."