Boojums All the Way Through is a collection of essays that deals in a variety of ways with the problem of communicating modern physics to both physicists and non-physicists. The author is Professor David Mermin, a well-known theoretical physicist, who recently won the first Julius Edgar Lileinfeld prize of the American Physical Society 'for his remarkable clarity and wit as a lecturer to nonspecialists on difficult subjects'. David Mermin's wry humour is clearly apparent in most of these articles, but even those that are more serious are characterized by a liveliness and commitment to finding startlingly simple ways of presenting ideas that are traditionally regarded as complex. This book will appeal to physicists at all levels, to mathematicians, scientists and engineers, and indeed to anyone who enjoys reading non-technical accounts of new ways of looking at modern science.

In It's About Time, N. David Mermin asserts that relativity ought to be an important part of everyone's education--after all, it is largely about time, a subject with which all are familiar. The book reveals that some of our most intuitive notions about time are shockingly wrong, and that the real nature of time discovered by Einstein can be rigorously explained without advanced mathematics. This readable exposition of the nature of time as addressed in Einstein's theory of relativity is accessible to anyone who remembers a little high school algebra and elementary plane geometry. The book evolved as Mermin taught the subject to diverse groups of undergraduates at Cornell University, none of them science majors, over three and a half decades. Mermin's approach is imaginative, yet accurate and complete. Clear, lively, and informal, the book will appeal to intellectually curious readers of all kinds, including even professional physicists, who will be intrigued by its highly original approach.

By identifying unifying concepts across solid state physics, this text covers theory in an accessible way to provide graduate students with an intuitive understanding of effects and the basis for making quantitative calculations. Each chapter focuses on a different set of theoretical tools, using examples from specific systems and demonstrating practical applications to real experimental topics. Advanced theoretical methods including group theory, many-body theory, and phase transitions are introduced in an accessible way, and the quasiparticle concept is developed early, with discussion of the properties and interactions of electrons and holes, excitons, phonons, photons, and polaritons. New to this edition are sections on graphene, surface states, photoemission spectroscopy, 2D spectroscopy, transistor device physics, thermoelectricity, metamaterials, spintronics, exciton-polaritons, and flux quantization in superconductors. Exercises are provided to help put knowledge into practice, with a solutions manual for instructors available online, while appendices review the basic mathematical methods used in the book.

High school students enter a time gate to an unknown planet for a survival test, but something goes wrong and they have to learn to survive by their own resourcefulness.

A collection of offbeat, entertaining and primarily nontechnical essays on physics and those who practice it, from eminent theoretical physicist N. David Mermin. Bringing together for the first time all thirty of his columns published in Physics Today's Reference Frame series from 1988 to 2009, with updating commentary, this humorous and unusual volume includes thirteen other essays, many of them previously unpublished. Mermin's lively and penetrating writing illuminates a broad range of topics, from the implications of bad spelling in a major science journal, to the crises of science libraries and scientific periodicals, the folly of scientific prizes and honors, the agony of getting funding, and how to pronounce 'quark'. His witty observations and insightful anecdotes gleaned from a lifetime in science will entertain physicists at all levels, as well as anyone else interested in science or scientists at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Examines the ramifications of Einstein's relativity theory, exploring the mysteries of time and considering black holes, time travel, the existence of God, and the nature of the universe.