"The science-fiction genre known as steampunk juxtaposes futuristic technologies with Victorian settings. This fantasy is becoming reality at the intersection of two scientific fields-twenty-first-century quantum physics and nineteenth-century thermodynamics, or the study of energy-in a discipline known as quantum steampunk"--

The Industrial Revolution meets the quantum-technology revolution! A steampunk adventure guide to how mind-blowing quantum physics is transforming our understanding of information and energy. Victorian era steam engines and particle physics may seem worlds (as well as centuries) apart, yet a new branch of science, quantum thermodynamics, reenvisions the scientific underpinnings of the Industrial Revolution through the lens of today's roaring quantum information revolution. Classical thermodynamics, understood as the study of engines, energy, and efficiency, needs reimagining to take advantage of quantum mechanics, the basic framework that explores the nature of reality by peering at minute matters, down to the momentum of a single particle. In her exciting new book, intrepid Harvard-trained physicist Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern introduces these concepts to the uninitiated with what she calls "quantum steampunk," after the fantastical genre that pairs futuristic technologies with Victorian sensibilities. While readers follow the adventures of a rag-tag steampunk crew on trains, dirigibles, and automobiles, they explore questions such as, "Can quantum physics revolutionize engines?" and "What deeper secrets can quantum information reveal about the trajectory of time?" Yunger Halpern also describes her own adventures in the quantum universe and provides an insider's look at the work of the scientists obsessed with its technological promise. Moving from fundamental physics to cutting-edge experimental applications, Quantum Steampunk explores the field's aesthetic, shares its whimsy, and gazes into the potential of a quantum future. The result is a blast for fans of science, science fiction, and fantasy.

Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman's dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once — setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Caspian arrived late to the tea party, and was greeted by Audrey, who had a discovery to make about time and quantum physics. She explained that her brother was developing a superior version of the fly that could extract energy from a certain type of light. #2 I’m a theoretical physicist who works at the intersection of quantum physics, information processing, and thermodynamics. I intersect the futuristic technology of quantum computers with the Victorian setting of thermodynamics, after the fashion of steampunk. #3 The field of thermodynamics is the oldest, and it studies systems that can be manipulated and observed. It studies steam, metal, water, and the like. Classical systems behave in a manner that can be predicted using physics codified before the 1920s. #4 The promise of quantum technologies is that they will be able to solve certain problems that would take classical computers many years. They could break part of the encryption that protects web transactions from hackers.

Read Katie MacAlister's posts on the Penguin Blog. View our feature on Katie MacAlister’s Steamed. Katie MacAlister takes on Steampunk-and romance gets hotter than ever... When one of Jack Fletcher's nanoelectromechanical system experiments is jostled in his lab, the resulting explosion sends him into the world of his favorite novel-a seemingly Victorian-era world of steampower, aether guns, corsets, and goggles. A world where the lovely and intrepid Octavia Pye captains her airship straight into his heart...

Weird Scientists is a sequel to Men of Manhattan. As I wrote the latter about the nuclear physicists who brought in the era of nuclear power, quantum mechanics (or quantum physics) was unavoidable. Many of the contributors to the science of splitting the atom were also contributors to quantum mechanics. Atomic physics, particle physics, quantum physics, and even relativity are all interrelated. This book is about the men and women who established the science that shook the foundations of classical physics, removed determinism from measurement, and created alternative worlds of reality. The book introduces fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics, roughly in the order they were discovered, as a launching point for describing the scientist and the work that brought forth the concepts.

Publisher description

Does a glass of ice water filled to the brim overflow when the ice melts? Does the energy inside a sauna increase when you heat it up? What's the best way to cool your coffee—adding the creamer first or last? These and other challenging puzzlers provide a fresh—and fun—approach to learning real physics. Presenting both classic and new problems, Brainteaser Physics challenges readers to use imagination and basic physics principles to find the answers. Göran Grimvall provides detailed and accessible explanations of the solutions, sometimes correcting the standard explanations, sometimes putting a new twist on them. He provides diagrams and equations where appropriate and ends each problem by discussing a specific concept or offering an extra challenge. With Brainteaser Physics, students and veteran physicists alike can sharpen their critical and creative thinking—and have fun at the same time.

Get ready to follow dazzling young writer George Mann to a London unlike any you've ever seen and into an adventure you will never forget, in The Affinity Bridge. Welcome to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by unfamiliar inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, while ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen, and journalists. But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side. Queen Victoria is kept alive by a primitive life-support system, while her agents, Sir Maurice Newbury and his delectable assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes, do battle with enemies of the crown, physical and supernatural. This time Newbury and Hobbes are called to investigate the wreckage of a crashed airship and its missing automaton pilot, while attempting to solve a string of strangulations attributed to a mysterious glowing policeman, and dealing with a zombie plague that is ravaging the slums of the capital. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This book presents winning and shortlisted stories from past editions of the international Quantum Shorts competition. Inspired by the weird and wonderful world of quantum physics, the shorts range from bold imaginings of a quantum future to contemplations rooted in the everyday. They feature characters of all sorts: lovers beginning their lives together, an atom having an existential crisis, and, of course, cats. These Quantum Shorts will unleash in your mind a multiverse of ideas.