Book Review: Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age

This is a review of Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age by N. David Mermin. His most famous quote is “Shut up and calculate!” for anyone who is confused about Quantum Mechanics, which the same attitude I have when I’m trying different neural networks.

I find it funny that the 2nd article Commencement address feels like a personal attack to my How much energy does it take to hurt your feelings? article. In the article, he claimed that “10 million dollars can pile up half way to the moon” is a terrible way to visualize something or make a comparison. Sorry again for anyone who is bothered by how I use the conservation of energy.

The situation described in the 6th article What’s wrong with this library? is a mixed bag. On one hand, things have gotten worse as there are now even more articles to sift through. However, on the other hand, we no longer need to subscribe to gain access. Instead, we can simply subscribe online or make use of arXiv.

And I really appreciate this joke in this article:

An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by relativity, since no information is being conveyed.

Some of the rest of the articles, which are about Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and Mathematical Musings, are familiar with me, because I’ve already learned about them on my previous courses. You can expect the surprise I have when I see the Stirling’s approximation.

An important reminder about Special Relativity is that, people don’t use rest mass and relativistic mass now. There is only one mass, and $$\begin{aligned} E_0&=mc^2 \\ E^2&=(mc^2)^2+(pc)^2 \end{aligned}$$. See the concept of mass.

And what is interesting to me is that people use English differently, even just about 30 years ago, even in physics. All the new words merged into a GRE test to me. The equations are the same though.