In this memoir, Kenneth Ford provides tales from his own fifty years of flying light airplanes and gliders, and he profiles various aviators he has met along the way, people who impressed him with their passion for flying and who brought a special style to their love affair with flying. This book is for anyone of any age who is thinking about becoming a pilot, or is already one, or who just appreciates the romance of the air. It's more than a collection of anecdotes. Ford is a teacher, and here you will learn, in non-technical language, about the kinds of lift that keep gliders aloft, the idiosyncrasies of "tail-dragger" airplanes, the art of landing in a crosswind, how pilots get from A to B, and more.
As Kenneth W. Ford shows us in The Quantum World, the laws governing the very small and the very swift defy common sense and stretch our minds to the limit. Drawing on a deep familiarity with the discoveries of the twentieth century, Ford gives an appealing account of quantum physics that will help the serious reader make sense of a science that, for all its successes, remains mysterious. In order to make the book even more suitable for classroom use, the author, assisted by Diane Goldstein, has included a new section of Quantum Questions at the back of the book. A separate answer manual to these 300+ questions is available; visit The Quantum World website for ordering information. There is also a cloth edition of this book, which does not include the Quantum Questions included in this paperback edition.
This reader-friendly, richly illustrated book provides an engaging overview of quantum physics, from “big ideas” like probability and uncertainty and conservation laws to the behavior of quarks and photons and neutrinos, and on to explanations of how a laser works and why black holes evaporate.
In this engaging scientific memoir, Kenneth Ford recounts the time when, in his mid-twenties, he was a member of the team that designed and built the first hydrogen bomb. He worked with — and relaxed with — scientific giants of that time such as Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Stan Ulam, John von Neumann, and John Wheeler, and here offers illuminating insights into the personalities, the strengths, and the quirks of these men. Well known for his ability to explain physics to nonspecialists, Ford also brings to life the physics of fission and fusion and provides a brief history of nuclear science from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 to the ten-megaton explosion of “Mike” that obliterated a Pacific Island in 1952.Ford worked at both Los Alamos and Princeton's Project Matterhorn, and brings out Matterhorn's major, but previously unheralded contribution to the development of the H bomb. Outside the lab, he drove a battered Chevrolet around New Mexico, a bantam motorcycle across the country, and a British roadster around New Jersey. Part of the charm of Ford's book is the way in which he leavens his well-researched descriptions of the scientific work with brief tales of his life away from weapons.
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