Driving Force Paperback by James D. Livingston

Product Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press (1997-04-25)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 334 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780674216457
• Item Weight: 368.55 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

Driving Force unfolds the long and colorful history of magnets: how they guided (or misguided) Columbus; mesmerized eighteenth-century Paris but failed to fool Benjamin Franklin; lifted AC power over its rival, DC, despite all the animals, one human among them, executed along the way; led Einstein to the theory of relativity; helped defeat Hitler's U-boats; inspired writers from Plato to Dave Barry. In a way that will delight and instruct even the nonmathematical among us, James Livingston shows us how scientists today are creating magnets and superconductors that can levitate high-speed trains, produce images of our internal organs, steer high-energy particles in giant accelerators, and--last but not least--heat our morning coffee.

From the "new" science of materials to everyday technology, Driving Force makes the workings of magnets a matter of practical wonder. The book will inform and entertain technical and nontechnical readers alike and will give them a clearer sense of the force behind so much of the working world.

About the Author

James D. Livingston is a former physicist at General Electric and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.