Universal Foam: From Cappuccino to the Cosmos - Hardcover

Perkowitz, Sidney; Perkowitz, S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802713572 ISBN 13: 9780802713575

Publisher: Walker & Co, 2000

Synopsis

Connects the ordinary properties of foam to its deeper scientific meanings as well as the doors it opens to human culture in food, art, and practical applications.

About this title

Review:

A poet might ask for a more exalted image of the cosmos, but physicist Sidney Perkowitz--evidently a committed java junkie as well as a patient explainer of difficult scientific concepts--is quite happy to suggest that the universe resembles a piping-hot cup of milk-laced coffee. It is, he writes, a mixture of solids, liquids, and gases, along with something that partakes of all these states of matter but is different from them as well--namely, foam.

"Foam," writes Perkowitz, "is a surprisingly intricate formation that has impact on astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics"--and that can be only partially explained within the bounds of any one of those fields, requiring a host of disciplines to describe it properly. The foam of the sea, for instance, has extraordinarily complex properties that influence, among other things, global weather systems--and that, if harnessed, may one day yield that magical source of inexhaustibly renewable, inexpensive energy that scientists have long sought. Foam permeates and underlies the cosmos, from subatomic bits of "quantum foam" that "stir up the fundamental shape of the world" to the air-riddled magma that bubbles below planetary surfaces and the foamlike cancellous bones that bear the weight of so many animals, humans included.

You've heard of chaos theory, of butterflies that flap their wings and produce hurricanes. Perkowitz provides an endlessly entertaining introduction to foam theory, a book of popular science to enjoy with an appropriately frothy beverage close at hand. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly:

In a book that travels from the earthly delights of cappuccino to the frothy structure of the universe, Emory University physics professor Perkowitz (Empire of Light) shares his "foamy obsession." Deftly blending theoretical discussion with real-world examples, Perkowitz introduces readers to foams, both liquid (shaving cream, whitecaps, beer) and solid (cork, pumice and a nearly insubstantial high-tech material called aerogel). The book is a something-for-everyone tour led by a guide who sees voids and bubbles wherever he looks. After introducing the basics of making and observing this surprising, common phenomenon, the book moves to a compendium of example-rich chapters on edible foams, practical foams, living foams, earthly foams and cosmic foams. Though Perkowitz wrote most of the book at a favorite cappuccino spot, he carries readers to volcanic eruptions and foaming seas, into scientific laboratories and on a comet-sampling mission. He ends by tying together the infinitesimal with the infinite. Cosmologists speculate that the Big Bang began as a bubble, a quantum fluctuation that emerged from the primordial vacuum and inflated, creating space and time. Billions of years later, the signature of that fluctuation remains in the structure of the universe, which was recently discovered to be foamlike: galaxies lie on a gossamer network of bubbles with great expanses of nothingness inside. Some readers may tire of Perkowitz's compulsion to see everything through foam-covered glasses. Most, however, will forgive his fixation on froth, for his idiosyncratic vision enables them to discover substance in the most tenuous forms that nature or humans can create. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker & Co
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0802713572
• ISBN 13: 9780802713575
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 194