Why So Many Books About Quanta?

I’m re-instituting the quota system for the moment– no blogging until I make some substantive progress on the current work-in-progress– but I’ll throw out a quick post here to note a media appearance: Physics World has a podcast about books on quantum physics up today:

Since its inception in the early part of the 20th century, the theory of quantum mechanics has consistently baffled many of the great physicists of our time. But while the ideas of quantum physics are challenging and notoriously weird, they seem to capture the public imagination and hold an enduring appeal. Evidence of this comes in part from the numerous popular-science books that have been written on the topic over the years. This episode in the Physics World books podcast series looks at the popularity of quantum mechanics in science writing.

This features some comments from a telephone interview I did with them, about why I thought it was worth writing yet another book about quantum physics. They also talked with Marcus Chown and Robert Crease, and go a little bit into the great Brian Cox argument.

So, if you’ve got 20 minutes to kill, check it out.