We live in a special time in history. The knowledge of the world is expanding at an exponential rate. Perhaps more important, to quote one of my favorite scientists of all time, Carl Sagan: “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”1 This is a real problem and it needs to be fixed.

And, beyond that, there is an excitement to science that most people miss out on. Part of the problem is that mathematics truly is the language of science, and the mathematics involved has become so complex that only those with a high degree of training can appreciate science in its native language. But now and then a “translator” comes along who can convey the meaning, the beauty, and the excitement to the rest of us.

What Mike Walker has done in this book places him on the cutting edge as such a translator. Though he is a nonacademic, through this popular book he has conveyed a clear understanding of the physical world, while circumventing the math. As he demonstrates, you don't HAVE to go to a classroom to understand the excitement. Then again, going to the classroom these days might not even GET you the excitement because you'll get mired in the math, or they just don't teach the fun stuff discussed here—even if you are majoring in physics. While some of the details will not stand the test of time (which is true in any cutting-edge field), I feel comfortable recommending this book also to all students, as a supplement to the normal text so that they may more fully understand what is going on beyond the math. Quantum Fuzz is not designed to replace course textbooks, but it sure is a lot more fun, readable, and interesting.

At the core of this book is quantum mechanics. While it surely goes beyond the ideas, and well into the applications, Walker brings to life one of the most strange, fascinating, and beautiful descriptions of our physical world. He takes great pains to describe that part of quantum mechanics particular to the atom, and he uses it as a basis for explaining chemistry and everything around us. It is this part of physics that is “translated” for us through the nonmathematical and largely visual presentations of Quantum Fuzz. This book further “comes alive” through sections now and then relating to the history of the development of physics and chemistry, and to the lives of the many prominent scientists most responsible for moving this history along.

I like the descriptions of how troubling early scientists found quantum mechanics to be, despite its incredible successes at predicting the outcomes of experiments. I love the stories of some of the great debates between science's giants. For example, Albert Einstein (who hated quantum mechanics and its counterintuitive conclusions but ultimately won a Nobel Prize for his work in the area), is reputed to have said “God doesn't play dice with the Universe,” and Niels Bohr (another Nobel laureate) responded with the not-quite-as-famous-but-equally-important retort, “Don't tell God what to do.” Bohr was also to have said, “Anybody who is not shocked by this subject has failed to understand it.” And yet here it is, more than eighty years later, and quantum mechanics is arguably the most successful, debated, and tested theory in history.

This is not the first book that interweaves science and history. Indeed, most nonacademic books on this subject do so as a way of softening the conceptual challenge. But Walker also explains chemistry as it follows from the physics, and how the understanding of quantum mechanics has made possible much of modern invention and technology. He does this from the vantage point of a lifetime of work in industrial laboratories (and even includes brief descriptions of some of the projects that he himself has worked on). And he goes beyond what we see here on Earth to show how we use our knowledge and understanding of quantum mechanics to interpret what we see of the cosmos, to understand how the universe began with a big bang and came to be the way it is today.

Ultimately, human beings and the things here on Earth are all made of atoms. Yet most people know nothing of their diffuse, fascinating symmetries, and how these forms determine much of the properties of our universe. This book is an opportunity to come on board and sail to new lands of understanding.

I believe that you will enjoy this book as I did. And I am sure that you will agree that scientific fact is, indeed, much stranger than fiction.

David Toback
Thaman Professor for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy
Texas A&M University
September 2016

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Professor Toback teaches a course in cosmology for nonscience majors and in 2013 published the very readable Big Bang, Black Holes, No Math.