this book is a whole lot of fun. bodanis spreads his arms real wide and grabs a huge of load of knowledge-forming information, packs it all together like neutrons and protons, forms it into a nice little ball and hands it to you on a thin, ceramic plate that had last been used to feed sloppy joes to a ten year old glued to the public broadcasting system.

a millisecond-by-millisecond narrative of the hiroshima bomb's innards as it fell was the most thrilling ten minutes of reading i've had in a while.

Spang

The thrills of being in the queue at Houston’s court house:

A couple of weeks ago I was summo
ns for jury duty, so while in line, seeing if I was going to be selected, a gentleman in his early sixties was reading this book titled “E=MC2.” I overheard him sharing that he was enjoying it, so that was enough to get my curiosity up.

I guess this book is an expansion of a book I read a few weeks ago titled “A Brief History of Time” by Steven Hawking. I don’t believe this book was written as well as Hawkins’ book, but it had some amazing items in it that just astonished me.

For example, the atomic boom we dropped on Japan in World War II exploded 2,000 feet above the earth. In addition, militarily we didn’t even need to drop this boom to win the war, so I guess tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. Furthermore, we dropped it directly over a hospital, but that’s really a moot point considering the power and velocity of this weapon.

More importantly, this book helps me with my understanding of the world and universe we live in. It’s fascinating to glimpse or even think about different dimensions of space and time within our universe. Let alone how the big bang theories apply to our current space in time, and how our universe is developing.

I mean how does one capture the depths of this in just a few paragraphs? All I can say is OMG, there is so much to learn. Keep it coming.

Another Science History book... this one not as good as others. Still it had a lot of interesting notes on renowned science figures. Unfortunately, it seemed to dwell on war history and salacious tidbits which may be interesting to some but not to me.

A lot of this book is not easy to follow despite the obvious efforts Bodanis has put in to make it more accessible to the lay reader. It's the anecdotes that make it an interesting read. The author marries his narrative of scientific progress with the last two centuries' pivotal events. This makes it not just a recounting of the triumph of science but also a chronicle of the role scientists have played in shaping history. The high point of this book is the part dealing with the development and the use of the atom bomb. Its fascinating as well as harrowing. That part more than makes up for the numerous duller tracts.

Extremely technical and science forward. Wouldn’t read it again but there were some interesting facts and history.

This book made me fall in love with physics all over again. Much like spinning together a crazy plot or fairy tale, scientists must think "out-of-the-box" in order to take a theory to the next level. You kind of feel lighter than air as you read about their thought process.

I loved picturing Einstein at his home with his newborn son on his knee, plotting how light affects the conversion from mass to energy. There is something fantastic about equations--the way all the pieces fit together is quite inspiring. Bodanis also describes how the atomic bomb was developed and other applications of of E=mc(squared).

Anyway, Bodanis is one of my favorite authors. I would also recommend his book about Emilie du Chatlet and Voltaire. He manages to merge science with history and make his vignettes come alive with oodles of odd factoids and anecdotes.

I see here that one reviewer thought that some of the mathematics in this book were incorrect. For me, I wasn't as concerned with accuracy, preferring to read about how people solve problems, build off of each others ideas, and how jealous and ego-centric scientists can be. A great read.

I so enjoy science histories, and this is a good one, amply demonstrating that geniuses are people, too, with all their conceits, deceits, and prejudices. As advertised, one need not be scientifically inclined to understand the World's Most Famous Equation. This is an easy read, and, if the author may swing a little wild with some of his examples and philosophizing, he manages to get his points across with room to spare.

3.5

Decent enough, somewhat interesting

Dit is best wel een leuk book, als je geeky/nerdy genoeg bent tenminste.
Op de cover van mijn examplaar staat Einstein, dus zou je snel de fout kunnen maken dat dit over een biografie gaat van de bekenste geleerder aller tijden, maar niets is minder waar.
De subtitel 'Biografie van de bekenste formule' vat het helemaal samen. De formule wordt uit elkaar gehaald en naalde voor draadje besproken en uitgelegd. Zo krijgt elk element zijn geschiedenis en oorsprong. Ja, zelfs het gelijkheidsteken krijgt zijn hoofdstuk. Uiteindelijk is dit allemaal geen verbode luxe, want zonder al deze voorgaande informatie is het heel moeilijk om uiteindelijk E=mc2 te begrijpen.
Eenmaal de formule uitgelegd wordt er een groot aantal pagina's aan de ontwikkeling van de atoombom besteed en uiteindelijk wordt afgesloten met de relevantie van de formule en het heelal.
Er komen dus veel meer wetenschappers bij kijken dan enkel Einstein, het lijkt wel een best-of. Gelukkig is David Bodanis een goede verteller en de wetenschap, geschiedenis en de mens achter de wetenschapper worden zonder problemen door elkaar verweven. Ook zijn kracht om natuurkunde op een simpele manier aan de man te brengen is lovenswaardig. Opgepast, soms moet je wel even doorbijten en een bepaalde paragraaf herlezen om alles te begrijpen.

This book has a lot of AHA moments. It is written in a true biography form, with the reader learning about the ancestry of this most famous formula. You hear about all the personalities that led up to this formula. There is some question of whether Einstein or his wife really came up with the formula.

I liked the book. The middle was a bit too much biography about personalities and their traits that could have been left out or condensed. His writing of the atomic bomb as it floated down over Hiroshima was elegant and disturbing at the same time. Quite a trick in literature.

I am usually a fiction reader, but this "biography" of the equation E=MC2 was wonderful and I completely recommend it!

Bodanis first breaks down the equation into each of its parts and talks about the history of energy, mass, etc. He re-creates the discoveries that slowly added up to Einstein's theory. The book was well written, but the actually history is actually fascinating as well. My favorite parts of the book are the fact that there were quite a few women profiled and the story of the Norwegian Resistance during WWII.

One thing that I had to keep reminding myself while reading, was the fact that the book is about the equation, so people's stories and the history of certain discoveries are only discussed in so far as they connect with the equation. But there is a huge reference list at the end of the book in order to do additional reading on any of the topics or people mentions.