Book 18 of 52: A Briefer History of Time

A thank you to Helen for lending me this book. After reading a few fiction books, especially a couple of  'trashy' ones, I thought it was time for another non-fiction selection. Here's something that not everyone knows about me. Despite having a Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics and a Masters degree in Statistics, I never really liked or did well in Physics. I blame it on my grade 12 physics teacher who made us construct a trebuchet to hurl a raw egg nested in a homemade protective device through the air and land safely (see image below). Never in my life has a project caused me such stress and anxiety. So much so, upon entering university I was so traumatized I deferred my required first year physics course until final semester of a four year degree.

So needless to say I approached this book with a little bit of hestitation.

In all honesty, I was very surprised with how much physics I learned in that first year university course. I remembered Newtons simple and elegant Law of Gravity, but didn't realize it has been replaced with Einstein s relativity equations. Did you know that Newtonian gravity describes the motion of the solar system almost perfectly, but not quite? Relativity actually describes it perfectly. More importantly without relativity, my GPS would be about 1000 times less accurate (if I had a GPS). Given my math background, I was actually itching to see some formulas and numbers, but there weren't any -- this book is readable for the non-scientist. I also finally understood Star Trek and the "Space-time continuum", in that time passes at different rates for different observers and it's not linear. That's why physicists refer to it as "space-time".....Whoa! It was making sense.

Toward the end of the book, where Hawking discusses the theories that scientists are currently trying to prove, such as string theory, it started getting to be a bit above my head and I lost interest. I stuck with it though and now I won't feel so guilty going back to my fiction books for a while.

I thought this book was well worth reading, but I did have to slog through parts. A bit like working out at the gym....hard work while you're there, but worth the effort once you're done! That reminds me, I better go pack my gym bag for tomorrow.