Alice in Quantumland:  An Allegory of Quantum Physics

By: Robert Gilmore

Type: Allegory

Setting: Quantumland

Description:

We follow the adventures of Alice as she tours Quantumland and meets up with such strange individuals as the Classical and Quantum Mechanics, scores of electrons and other subatomic particles and scientific principles (and principals!) 

Comments:

Lewis Carroll meets Werner Heisenberg and the gang. Throw in a pinch of The Phantom Tollbooth and season heavily with Gödel, Escher, Bach and Voila! Imagine being introduced to the worlds of Newtonian and particle physics in an Alice in Wonderland setting. That is what Gilmore’s book is all about. He remained true to the spirit of the original Through the Looking Glass, which Lewis Carroll wrote as an excercise in mathematics and logic for his neice, Alice. This book is also designed to educate, and it does a fine job of explaining some of the tougher aspects of modern physics.

Particularly enlightening are Gilmore’s descriptions of subatomic particles and the gedankenexperiment in which we learn that electron spin information is transferred seemingly instantaneously when one electron’s spin is measured. He also does well in introducing the theory that matter is merely a subcategory of energy, and that it is more accurate to say that energy is conserved in all reactions, rather than mass. Evidently, photons and other subatomic particles are created and destroyed constantly, but the sum total of the energy in the reaction is always the same, even if some mass has been created or destroyed. 

Recommendations:

If you are interested in understanding modern physics, but can’t get past the technical jargon or math, this book provides an excellent way to visualize the processes through metaphor.