Yakov Perelman

Hard Bound

432 Pages

Mir Publishers, Moscow

Foreword:
Perelman's Physics for Entertainment owes its wide popularity to the rare talent of its author who was able to single out and present in an entertaining form ordinary facts and phenomena that have a deep physical meaning.

The aim of the book is not so much to give you some fresh knowledge, as to help you "learn what you already know". In other words, the idea is to brush up and enliven your basic knowledge of physics, and to teach you how to apply it in various ways. To achieve this purpose, conundrums, brain-teasers, entertaining anecdotes and stories, amusing experiments, paradoxes and unexpected comparisons-all dealing with physics and based on everyday experience and science fiction-are included. The author quotes extensively from Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain and other writers, because besides providing entertainment, the fantastic experiments these writers describe may well serve as instructive illustrations at physics classes.

On the other hand, you will find very little in the way of parlour tricks or spectacular experiments. The book seeks to stimulate your thinking along scientific lines and to amass associations with a variety of things from everyday life. This English-language edition is a translation from the 21st Russian edition of Physics for Entertainment, Book 1 and Book 2. Chapters from 11th to 20th are Book 2. Although the two halves of the book are essentially independent and can be read in any sequence, the last ten chapters are, by and large, meant for the more advanced reader.

Perelman once noted that Physics for Entertainment has been written not to leave an inquisitive mind satisfied. On the contrary, its task is "to whet thirst for knowledge, to evoke desire for further reading".