A Brief History of Time

nerdy math joke I heard on the internet somewhere:

There was a mathematician and an engineer at a coffee shop when the coffee machine caught on fire. The engineer got a bucket of water and poured it on the machine and everything was fine. The next day the same mathematician and engineer went to the same coffee shop and the coffee machine caught fire again. This time, the mathematician got a bucket of water and handed it to the engineer and exclaimed, "There! It's been reduced to a problem we know how to handle!"

hee hee

my post:

I've been reading "A Brief History of Time," by Stephen Hawking lately and I'm almost done. I have to say it is one damned good read. For the most part Dr. Hawking manages to explain very complicated physics concepts in ways that I could understand. He uses wit, analogies and anecdotes to give a very clear picture of what he is trying to say. Of course this book won't make you an astrophysicist, but it will elaborate some topics enough so you can look smart in front of your friends.

Such topics as blackholes, expansion of the universe, moving galaxies, relativity, and quantum mechanics are covered and explained in ways that anyone with just an interest in physics would be able to understand. Personally, I've taken Physics 40A and 40B and am in 40C right now, and I have to admit that those classes did help understand some of his stuff. But I believe that they aren't necessary to get a general idea of the topics that he tries to elaborate on.

To be fair there were some topics that Dr. Hawking covers which went completely over my head. Stuff like the "spin" of sub-atomic particles makes no sense to me, but that's why I'm not a particle physicist.

I did, however, understand enough to have a fun little conversation with some friends about how blackholes are not a "hole," but rather an actual physical object that looks like a hole. Or how redshift and blueshift of galaxies work, and why there are more redshifted galaxies than blueshifted galaxies. I'm on the chapter about string theory right now, and Dr. Hawking has been able to explain it better than in any other book that I've read covering string theory so far.

I'll end with another nerdy math joke:

black holes are where god divided by zero

hee hee

-Osvaldo Enriquez