Critical Mass by Phillip Ball

Wow. What an interesting book. After what seemed at the time to be a slow start, it turned into a ripping read about how social science can learn from the laws that are usually applied to statistical physics.

Indeed.

This wasn't any part of my coursework for my social science studies, but it fitted in with them perfectly and I'm sure that I'll be referring to it in future.

Highly and thoroughly recommended.

We Need to Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown

Now. Don't be confused with this one and think it's We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver*. This one isn't a novel, it's about physics. The subtitle of the Kelving book is everyday things tell us about the universe' and it consists of eleven chapters, each of which explains how an every day thing - your reflection on a pane of glass (apparently that shows us that light isn't made of waves but particles) or a teacup falling and breaking, but not unbreaking (this shows us that the universe started with a big bang).

Got that?