Cosmic Numbers

by Stein, James D.

• ISBN13: 9780465021987
• ISBN10: 0465021980
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-09-06
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

Our fascination with numbers begins when we are children and continues throughout our lives. We start counting our fingers and toes and end up balancing checkbooks and calculating risk. So powerful is the appeal of numbers that many people ascribe to them a mystical significance. Other numbers go beyond the supernatural, working to explain our universe and how it behaves. In Cosmic Numbers, mathematics professor James D. Stein traces the discovery, evolution, and interrelationships of the numbers that define our world. Everyone knows about the speed of light and absolute zero, but numbers like Boltzmann's constant and the Chandrasekhar limit are not as well known, and they do far more than one might imagine: They tell us how this world began and what the future holds. Much more than a gee-whiz collection of facts and figures, Cosmic Numbersilluminates why particular numbers are so important--both to the scientist and to the rest of us.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
The Gravitational Constant	p. 1
The Speed Of Light	p. 15
The Ideal Gas Constant	p. 29
Absolute Zero	p. 43
Avogadro's Number	p. 57
Electricity And The Proportionality Constant	p. 71
The Boltzmann Constant	p. 85
The Planck Constant	p. 103
The Schwarzschild Radius	p. 117
The Efficiency Of Hydrogen Fusion	p. 133
The Chandrasekhar Limit	p. 149
The Hubble Constant	p. 167
Omega	p. 185
Codata Note	p. 203
Notes	p. 207
Index	p. 219
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