How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog

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Each chapter starts with a conversation between the author and his dog Emmy about a particular topic.

The author uses the literary devise of explaining physics to his dog to make the topic accessible and interesting. It’s hard for me to approach books like this from the eyes of a first timer, because I’ve read so many—I don’t pretend that means I know a lot about quantum mechanics, but you do start to hear the same stories over and over. This technique, I think, is supposed to explain quantum physics in such simple words that even a dog could understand. The material is presented in a way that the reader can get the general idea, and continue on without getting bogged down.Quantum fields are non-local, and their quantities are not assigned to any specific points in space-time.

The unique concept behind the book is both its charm and the reason for me to doubt whether or not to give it a slightly lower rating. Well, the elec­trons show up on the far side of the bar­rier with ex­actly the same en­ergy as be­fore they hit it.But the insights of quantum physics tell a story that is simply irreconcilable with this mental picture. Orzel has a tendency to state a proposition, then use it later as a proof, which is bad science but probably good science-writing—actually demonstrating the proof would lose a lot of readers. I like to look over the new fiction and nonfiction sections, as well as just wandering the stacks pulling down and scanning all kinds of books.