Professor Maxwell's Duplicitous Demon - The Life and Science of James Clerk Maxwell

Brian Clegg

Summary

Asked to name a great physicist, most people would mention Newton or Einstein, Feynman or Hawking. But ask a physicist and there's no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list.

 

Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive colour. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein's special relativity to modern electronics. 

 Along the way, he set up one of the most enduring challenges in physics, one that has taxed the best minds ever since. 'Maxwell's demon' is a tiny but thoroughly disruptive thought experiment that suggests the second law of thermodynamics, the law that governs the flow of time itself, can be broken. This is the story of a groundbreaking scientist, a great contributor to our understanding of the way the world works, and his duplicitous demon.

Available since: 02/07/2019.

Print length: 304 pages.

Science & Technology

Other books that might interest you

Emergency Care For Beginners -...

Branda Nurt

If you’re one of those people who spend your time worrying about hypothetical scenarios, you may have worried about what to do in the case of a gunshot wound. This is a realistic worry as firearms become easier to obtain, and mass shootings plague the media. What can you do to protect your family and those around you? What should you do to be prepared to treat someone with a gunshot wound? Where must you go to find out?
If you spend your time thinking about this repeatedly, imagining possible solutions for these problems, you’re one of those people who make everyone around them safer, and this book is perfect for you.
The search for these answers has led you to the right place; this book will teach you everything you need to know about gunshot wound treatment. You’ll learn about basic anatomy and physiology to develop a general understanding of how the body works, what could go wrong, and how to address it to sustain life. You’ll learn about ballistics and the kind of damage caused by a gunshot wound. You’ll learn about the proper use of bandages and immobilizations. You’ll learn how to apply CPR from beginning to end. Finally, you’ll learn the basic walk-through to approach a wounded patient, step by step, and treat a gunshot wound.
All the knowledge in this book is up to date with the latest protocols and health guidelines. The information is reliable, precise, and safe to follow. The Marines developed the scheme of the treatment first approach to gunshot wounded patients used in this book and it has increased their survival rate just like it’ll keep your family safe. The book’s designed to be a beacon of clarity between a sea of confusing and conflicting information.
After you’re done with this book, you’ll assemble a large first aid bag where every component will be there for a reason, and you’ll know how to use it.

Show book

American Robin and Other Bird...

Greg Cetus

You may have seen this orange breasted birds tugging earthworms out of the ground and heard their cheery song.  They appear early in spring and can be seen across towns and villages.  This early bird is at home naturally in wilder areas including mountain forests. American robin's birdsong is a melodious sound of spring. It is often a string of clear whistles, often repeated and described as cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily.  This recording of American robin comes from deep wintergreen forests and offers and chorus of other birds forming a beautiful natural soundscape perfect for meditation, mindfulness or as productivity aid. Here's a selection of individual birds you may be able to hear in this recording: American Robin, Varied Thrush, Pacific Wren, Vesper Sparrow, Western Kingbird, Northern Harrier, Rufous Hummingbird, Greater Roadrunner, Virginia Rail, Warbling Vireo, American Bittern, Purple finch, Wilson's Warbler, Northern Flicker, and a variety of smaller ground and aerial forest creatures and plants.

Show book

I Love My Computer Because My...

Jess Kimball Leslie

I Love My Computer Because My Friends Live in It is tech analyst Jess Kimball Leslie's hilarious, frank homage to the technology that contributed so significantly to the person she is today. From accounts of the lawless chat rooms of early AOL to the perpetual high school reunions that are modern-day Facebook and Instagram, her essays paint a clear picture: That all of us have a much more twisted, meaningful, emotional relationship with the online world than we realize or let on. Coming of age in suburban Connecticut in the late '80s and early '90s, Jess looked to the nascent Internet to find the tribes she couldn't find IRL: fellow Bette Midler fans; women who seemed impossibly sure of their sexuality; people who worked with computers every day as part of their actual jobs without being ridiculed as nerds. It's in large part because of her embrace of an online life that Jess is where she is now, happily married, with a wife, son, and dog, and making a living of analyzing Internet trends and forecasting the future of tech. She bets most people would credit technology for many of their successes, too, if they could only shed the notion that it's as a mind-numbing drug on which we're all overdosing.

Show book

Cro-Magnon - How the Ice Age...

Brian Fagan

Bestselling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges-including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama. Using their superior intellects and tools, these ingenious problem solvers survived harsh conditions that eventually extinguished their Neanderthal cousins.Cro-Magnon captures the indomitable adaptability that has made Homo sapiens an unmatched success as a species. Living on a frozen continent with only the most basic tools, Ice Age humans survived and thrived.

Show book

Future Presence - How Virtual...

Peter Rubin

A Wired senior editor and virtual reality expert presents a captivating, candid glimpse into the future ""realities"" of this emerging technology: how we will use it to form previously impossible relationships, explore new frontiers of intimacy, and how it will forever change human connection. 
Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same. 
Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry’s go-to authority on the subject, calls it an ""intimacy engine."" While once we needed another person to feel the sensations of closeness, trust, vulnerability, confidence, and titillation, VR will give us the ability to induce these sensations by ourselves for the first time in human history. This metamorphosis, Rubin argues, is going to have a powerful impact on relationships that will ripple throughout our society and our individual lives. 
A journey into this uncertain future and a glimpse at the cultural implications and promises of a new reality, Future Presence explores a host of complex questions about what makes us human, what connects us, and what is real. Offering a glimpse into the mind-blowing things happening in universities, labs, and tech companies around the world, Rubin leads readers on an entertaining tour of the weirdest, wildest corners of this fascinating new universe. Describing this book as ""half travelogue and half crystal ball"", Rubin will:Introduce readers to the creators and consumers of VR technologyShow readers what an experience is like inside the current VR devicesExplain how this technology will upend everything we know about human connection in the future 
At once the incredible, inevitable story of virtual reality’s rise and a look towards the future of our fantasies, Future Presence is a deeply personal examination of what connects us, and an analysis of what relationships, empathy, and sex could look like—sooner than we think.

Show book

The Love Lives of Birds -...

Laura Erickson

From the lifelong devotion of the American crow to the dalliances of the eastern bluebird, from the bald eagle’s dazzling aerial display to the male ruby-throated hummingbird’s reputation as a “deadbeat dad” — courtship, mating, and parenting differ dramatically among birds. Ornithologist and author Laura Erickson takes readers on a romance-fueled romp through the love lives of 35 species, exploring the diversity of avian approaches to pairing up. Each species spotlight pairs Erickson’s remarkable depth of scientific knowledge with her talent for drawing humorous and insightful parallels between human and bird. The result is a riveting read for bird-watchers and nature lovers alike.

Show book