Well, I got an email from my dear friend and collaborator Nick Evans on Tuesday, and in all the craziness of my work week, I forgot to do this post. In the email, he says:
We talked on a few occasions about the need for physics to meet popular culture… sooo.. over the last 2 years I’ve put together a novel about particle physics… it’s quite high level – aimed at A-level science students really… but hopefully it’s fun… I was really playing with mixing a novel and popular science… it’s mainly LHC science …[…] … we’ve done it as a web book Outreach project. [link here]
If it intrigues have a read…
So I’m passing it on to you. I’ve not found the time to read it, but I trust Nick enough to know that it is certainly worth a look. (To resolve a possible transatlantic confusion, I should mention that “A-level science students” in what he said does not refer to “grade A science students”. It refers to a specific subject level in the UK school system.)
Enjoy! (Come back and let us know what you think…)
-cvj
(See also blog comments by Nick’s former student, Jonathan Shock.)
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For the further benefit of Americans and others not familiar with the UK educational system, the ‘A Levels’ are courses taken in your last two years of school. Whether their standard is improving or declining is the subject of much debate in the UK (I was a physics teacher and an ‘assistant examiner’, a fancy term for ‘marker’, for A Levels and in my opinion, there have been some good improvements in the courses but, overall, the standard of the examinations is doooooooown, with grade inflation and an avoidance of harder topics). For their last two years of highschool, British students take A Levels; currently this means that they start 4 or 5 in their penultimate year (these courses are about 40% of a full ‘A Level’ and are called ‘AS levels’) and then specialise down to 3 or 4 for the last year. Passing grades are A-E. they used to be settled by final exams (as was the case in my day, and Clifford’s) but now students can take modular exams throughout the course. The best A Level course by a country mile, in my opinion, is the IOP’s ‘Advancing Physics’ course, which follows in the steps of the excellent, and now sadly defunct, Nuffield Physics course.
As everyone in the UK now takes physics, biology and chemistry from the age of 5 (‘which ones sank’) to age 16 (at which point they will, if they have paid attention, understand dc electricity including voltage, newtonian motion, basic (qualitative) electromagnetism, etc), the physics that they study at A Level would generally be, I think, above the AP level that US students might take at high school. What I have seen of physics courses in US universities would put the more advanced A Level material somewhere in a typical 200 level course. However, nowadays, calculus is not required in physics A Level (although it makes it much easier; some schools used to split the maths-takers and non maths-takers into different sets), which constrains how material can be taught.
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Amara – That is how we British do emotion. He’s actually pretty ecstatic there. 😉
-cvj
But why does Nick Evans look so unhappy? His book is supposed to be _fun_ ….
I can tell just by looking at the picture of the book itself I am going to enjoy the read.
Thanks to Nick Evans for making this “aspect as the writer” available in relation to the science. Mathematics can be dry at times, and sometimes by adding another perspective to it one can make a “deep impression” so that one does not forget.
Hi Clifford,
I was up late last night reading the book. It’s a lot of fun, with enjoyable discussions about physics and some of the personalities in the world of academia, besides being a great page-turner of a mystery. I’ll write a full review on my site when I have a few spare moments.
All the best,
J