The New World of Mr Tompkins: George Gamow's Classic Mr Tompkins in Paperback

by George Gamow , Edited by Russell Stannard , Illustrated by Michael Edwards , Translated by Wu Bozhe

• ISBN13: 9780521630092
• ISBN10: 0521630096
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-09-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Mr Tompkins is back! The mild-mannered bank clerk with the short attention span and vivid imagination has inspired, charmed and informed young and old alike since the publication of the hugely successful Mr Tompkins in Paperback (by George Gamow) in 1965. He is now back in a new set of adventures exploring the extreme edges of the universe - the smallest, the largest, the fastest, the farthest. Through his experiences and his dreams, you are there at Mr Tompkins' shoulder watching and taking part in the merry dance of cosmic mysteries: Einstein's relativity, bizarre effects near light-speed, the birth and death of the universe, black holes, quarks, space warps and antimatter, the fuzzy world of the quantum, and that ultimate cosmic mystery of all ... love. This new text is revised, updated and expanded by best-selling popular-science author Russell Stannard (who wrote the much-acclaimed Uncle Albert series of books for children).

Table of Contents

Reviser's Foreword	vii
Gamow's Preface to Mr Tompkins in Paperback	xi
City Speed Limit	1	(9)
The Professor's Lecture on Relativity which Caused Mr Tompkins's Dream	10	(14)
Mr Tompkins takes a Holiday	24	(21)
The Notes of the Professor's Lecture on Curved Space	45	(14)
Mr Tompkins Visits a Closed Universe	59	(10)
Cosmic Opera	69	(12)
Black Holes, Heat Death, and Blow Torch	81	(10)
Quantum Snooker	91	(22)
The Quantum Safari	113	(10)
Maxwell's Demon	123	(17)
The Merry Tribe of Electrons	140	(15)
The Remainder of the Previous Lecture through which Mr Tompkins Dozed	155	(9)
Inside the Nucleus	164	(11)
The Woodcarver	175	(12)
Holes in Nothing	187	(9)
Visiting the `Atom Smasher'	196	(33)
The Professor's Last Lecture	229	(15)
Epilogue	244	(5)
Glossary	249