Physics Over Easy by Leonid V. Az谩roff,
World Scientific
Publishing, 拢35, ISBN 981 02 2357 9
THERE鈥橲 no doubt about it, Vera Az谩roff is science鈥檚 newest female
superstar. Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin all won their honours in the usual
way, at the laboratory bench, but Vera is unique鈥攕he earned hers at the
breakfast table.
It all began on a Caribbean cruise when Vera, already a respected
psychologist, met her future husband Leonid, a physics professor at the
University of Connecticut. After they married, Leonid began work on a college
physics text, and his preparations spilled onto the breakfast table, evidently
to his wife鈥檚 delight.
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Now, after years of mixing magnetism with apple fritters and thermodynamics
with French toast, she has graduated with high honours from 1001 breakfast
lectures. Leonid records the most memorable of them in Physics over
Easy, which is conveniently packaged in accounts of 18 cholesterol-sodden
meals. Each piece begins with some prandial foreplay, usually with Vera
commenting on the dish of the day and most end with one of her physics-related
quips (鈥淲e better not have any more eggs Benedict unless we want to
increase our
masses unduly鈥�).
In between, Leonid loftily delivers his tutorials with all the charm of a
robot. It鈥檚 all here: thermodynamics, gravity, electromagnetism, waves, nuclear
physics, the lot. Vera shines as an inquisitive and brilliantly intuitive
student, never asking a silly question but frequently obliging with helpful
summaries.
The book gives us the bones of a fairly standard 鈥淧hysics for poets鈥� course,
although there isn鈥檛 much poetry in this physics.
Still, his science is reliable and some may find it useful to dip into the
book to remind themselves of the basics of physics, if they are prepared to do
without an index. The historical background is rather more shaky鈥攅ven
Leonid鈥檚 hero Einstein is a casualty of the inaccuracies. He tells us that
Einstein did not consider black holes directly (he did) and that he coined the
term 鈥減hoton鈥� (he didn鈥檛).
Physics over Easy might not work as a book, but perhaps it might
make a charming movie.