Gravity

This scientific book, written by George Gamow and translated by Hussein Husseini, is one of Xazalnus’s Publications.

Gravity is the closest and most perceptible force known to us. However, what’s interesting is the fact that this force is the most unknown force in the world of science. Classical and modern theories have yet to tell us exactly what this force originates from and how it relates to other forces of nature, such as electromagnetic force and nuclear force.

In this book, the great American-Russian scientist and author, George Gamow, takes us on a journey into the history of scientific studies done on this force and presents both the classical and modern perspectives.

The classical views, including both Newton’s and Einstein’s, remain the same and are unlikely to ever change. However, the modern perspective has somewhat been through changes since the time this book was written in.

The author states that gravity rules the world, it holds 100 billion stars of our galaxy together, it makes it possible for earth to orbit around the sun and the moon, apples stay on trees long enough to ripen because of gravity, it also prevents planes from falling onto the ground.

The history of human’s understanding of gravity, include three big names: Galileo was the first to study dependent and independent falling of objects, Isaac Newton, who first described gravity as a cosmic force, and Albert Einstein, who said gravity was nothing but the bending of four-dimensional spacetime.

This book discusses these three periods, a section on Galileo’s work, another section on Newton’s theories and his progress, and yet another section for Einstein, and lastly, another section for post-Einsteinian hypotheses about the relationship between gravity and other physical phenomena.

This book doesn’t cover only a historical perspective, but it also includes a discussion on the principle of calculus. The readers who are able to concentrate on the third chapter of the book where calculus is discussed, can use it as a basis for studying physics.

On the other hand, those who are not interested in mathematics can skip this chapter without any troubles in understanding the subsequent topics. But if you are interested in learning the science of physics, try to comprehend the third chapter as well.