Product Description

In a wonderful synthesis of science, history, and imagination, Gino Segrè, an internationally renowned theoretical physicist, embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of how the fundamental scientific concept of temperature is bound up with the very essence of both life and matter. Why is the internal temperature of most mammals fixed near 98.6š? How do geologists use temperature to track the history of our planet? Why is the quest for absolute zero and its quantum mechanical significance the key to understanding superconductivity? And what can we learn from neutrinos, the subatomic "messages from the sun" that may hold the key to understanding the birth-and death-of our solar system? In answering these and hundreds of other temperature-sensitive questions, Segrè presents an uncanny view of the world around us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311483 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-01
• Released on: 2003-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780142002780
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Length and mass are measurements we understand intuitively, but temperature is fleeting and elusive. Why is it so hard to measure compared with other fundamentals? Why do living things require such a narrow range of temperatures to go about their business? How cold is deep space, anyway? Physicist Gino Segre knows how to keep interest flowing along; even when he's explaining the intricacies of small-scale physics, he takes time to ground it in real life. His scope is wide--from the beginning (and ending) of the universe to the history of life on Earth, little falls outside his purview. Yet the book touches on so many subjects of immediate interest to 21st-century humans (high fevers, sports medicine, and the next scheduled Ice Age, to name a few) that it's compelling even to those who don't care about the Big Questions. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Segre, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, begins this far-ranging survey of the history of science by explaining how living organisms maintain stable temperatures and showing how adaptations to hot or cold habitats influenced animal evolution. Subsequent chapters cover a wide range of topics such as the development of heat-measuring technologies; influences of temperature on earth's climate, including speculations on "snowball" and "slushball" earth scenarios and the greenhouse effect; survival mechanisms of thermophiles and psychrophiles (bacteria that tolerate extremely high and extremely low temperatures, respectively); and the role of neutrinos, tiny particles produced in the core of the sun, in explaining solar dynamics. Segre observes that the history of human civilization can be read as a story of the "ever-hotter fires humans made as they moved from hunter-gatherers to villagers to toolmakers," while the formation of the universe can be seen as a vast cooling, from one hundred billion degrees at one hundredth of a second after the big bang to the cooler temperatures at which neutrons and protons could bind together (one billion degrees) and some 300,000 years later hydrogen and helium atoms could form (3,000 degrees). While some of Segre's material will be a challenge to readers without knowledge of college-level physics, he brings humor and passion to his subject and excels in showing its relevance to both current policy and future research.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Popular science books are usually those that explain the latest breakthrough or tell a compelling story of the human quest for knowledge. True fans of the genre know, however, that the science behind ordinary phenomena can be just as fascinating. Take temperature, for example. Segre , a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania (and nephew of a Nobel prize winner), discusses the common experiences of feeling hot and cold, of measuring temperature, and of studying how variations of just a few degrees can make tremendous differences in our world. In doing so, he synthesizes several disciplines, from the biology of human thermoregulation to the physics of black holes. While this subject is probably not the stuff of New York Times best sellers, those fans will appreciate it for what it is an elegant, captivating exposition of one of the most basic yet remarkable principles of science. Highly recommended. Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY at Albany
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Degrees of Excellence
It is hard to say which is more compelling: A Matter of Degrees' strength as a book of science history or its strength as a work of literature. Segre writes with such elegance, clarity and charm that it is easy to forget that this is a work we read for self-improvement rather than self-indulgence.

In a step-by-logical-step fashion, Segre leads the reader first to appreciate the importance of temperature and its regulation in living things into an understanding of thermo dynamics generally. We see things from the standpoint of giants like Newton, Davey, Rumford, Carnot and Kelvin, through moderns like Einstein, Bohr, Heizenberg, et al.--all the way up to discoveries circa 2001. We also see how even the great ones have stumbled and struggled with their misapprehensions, and will doubtless continue to do so.

From the warmth of mammalian bodies to the warmth of the greehouse effect, from the shriek of the first steam engines to the flickering near-nothingness of the neutrino, Segre ties the first to the last to show how an understanding of temperature leads to an understanding of origin. And by that I do not mean the origin of life--I mean the origin of everything.

This book is for people who--
A) Did not take any science courses in college but wish they had;
B) Did take science courses in college but wish they hadn't;
C) Want to see how a master teacher teaches his area of mastery; or
D)Are even passingly curious about How It All Began and How It All Might End.

clear explanations of complex subjects
This book is subtitled 'What temperature reveals about the past and future of our species, planet, and universe' and when I picked it up I imagined it was going to be about global warming and all that terrible stuff. Fortunately, while he does mention that dire subject, it's far from the only thing Mr Segrè has to offer. Instead his book is a consideration of the effect of temperature in all sorts of things, from the human body--warm-bloodedness and fever--to quantum mechanics. In between it takes in black smoker ecosystems, the birth and death of stars and the big bang. Segrè divides his efforts between explaining the science itself and giving us the history behind its original discoveries and does both rather well, showing a brisk pace and an engaging sense of humor the whole time.

Obviously, given the amount of material covered, some things are described in rather less detail than one might wish, and the transitions sometimes left me wondering if the author was going to come back and say more about a subject; but all that does is encourage the reader to pursue one bit or other further in other books, which is a reasonable thing for a general-audience book like this is. There were also sections--most notably the bits about extra dimensions, conditions at the time of the big bang, and multiple universes interacting like sheets (something like that..)--that lost me pretty completely. But Segrè is a good enough writer that instead of giving up I plowed ahead, and soon enough I was back on firm ground. And the end of the book, about the effects of very low temperatures on the behavior of molecules, was one of the clearest explanations of quantum mechanics I've ever read.

A Journey of Discovery from the Birth of Aspirin to Hydrothermal Vents
An entertaining read about the discovery and history of temperature. Along with the usual suspects like Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and others, you are also introduced to many other somewhat less heralded scientific figures that have made great contributions to science. Some of the more interesting sections in this fascinating book were, the origin and discovery of aspirin, the invention of the thermometer, what hydrothermal vents tell us, to temperature shift extinctions. Overall, a very quick read with lasting anecdotal impressions.

Why read this book?

To quote Steven Weinberg "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." This book opens both new insights into and of the world we live in.