Your favorite book (genre: STEM )?

[smartin]

(08-15-2017 03:45 PM)Jim Horn Wrote:  "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" - when I run across a mind-boggling concept such as the symmetries of physics proving the conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum, I find that Feynman already explained it there 50+ years ago. And clearly. It deserves the praise it gets.

Yes, that's a classic!

Since it hasn't been posted yet, I'd like to add one of my favorites from Kip Thorne (a colleague of Feynman and one of the founding fathers of gravitational wave astronomy) "Black Holes & Time Warps Einstein's Outrageous Legacy"



Also "The Demon-Haunted World" by the late Carl Sagan.

[pier4r]

Since the thread expanded (really nice) then I post also the immediate seconds after the handbooks of mathematics.


A History of Mathematics
Boyer, Carl B.


What Is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods
Courant, Richard

[klesl]

I have many books (S. Hawking, R. Penrose, J. Gleick, R. P. Feynman, J. D. Barrow, S. Weinberg, G. Gamow, P. Davies, J. Grygar, J. Kleczek and many others) and I am not able to chose only one. Everything starting when I was 16-17 and the book was The Brief History of time by S. Hawking)
The above mentioned Kip Thorne's famous book belongd to my favourite. It was release in czech translation in 2004.

[Nigel (UK)]

Old books can be good, too. I like

• Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton. Unlike the Principia it's written in English and full of the details of Newton's experiments with light, along with discussions of more general scientific matters.
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin is also very enjoyable. I read the 6th edition; this contains Darwin's comments on what other people have said about the previous editions. I really enjoyed reading Darwin's gradual development of his arguments and being very impressed by how convincing the book is, given the relatively sketchy knowledge of palaeontology, geology, and indeed biology when it was written.
  

Nigel (UK)

[John Keith]

A recent favorite of mine is Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant, by Julian Havil. Yes, there are a zillion books on mathematical constants but this is a good one. It clearly explains some fairly deep concepts in a way that is understandable to anyone who stayed awake in their high school algebra class. Highly recommended.

John

[pier4r]

(08-17-2017 11:03 AM)Nigel (UK) Wrote:  On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

I have this (italian version) and I wanted to read it but I put it on hold (10+ years ago) because it is super descriptive at the start. And this pigeon, and that pigeon. I mean I understand he wants to gather data to make an argument, but I was not exactly interested in the list of this or that pigeon living in this or that territory. So before skimming it, I put it aside for better times.

[BruceH]

There are some videos of Feynman lectures available online. No app required. ;-)

There is also: 100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists.

[Luigi Vampa]

I wasn't aware about it. Big thanks for sharing that information.