Orem Library

Everything around us is made of 'stuff', from planets, to books, to our own bodies. Whatever it is, we call it matter or material substance. It is solid; it has mass. But what is matter, exactly? We are taught in school that matter is not continuous, but discrete. As a few of the philosophers of ancient Greece once speculated, nearly two and a half thousand years ago, matter comes in 'lumps', and science has relentlessly peeled away successive layers...

"By an experimental physicist who works on the Large Hadron Collider, a mind-altering look at the foundational questions bedeviling modern physics, among them: Where does matter come from? Carl Sagan famously said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." But what fundamental matter is the universe made of? What banged in the Big Bang? And how did that matter arise from nothing into the world we now know?...

"Before you finish reading this sentence, trillions upon trillions of neutrinos will have passed through your body. Not sure what a neutrino is? Get an up-close-and-personal introduction in this dazzling picture book from MIT Kids Press, told in lilting rhyme from the neutrino's point of view and filled with illustrations that swirl and splash the cosmos to life. Some of the smallest bits of matter known to exist--and they exist everywhere--neutrinos...

"Cuestionarse cómo y por qué pasan las cosas, de las más comunes y sencillas, como por qué vuela un avión de papel o por qué se nos pega la cortina de la ducha la las piernas cuando abrimos el grifo, a las más rebuscadas y complejas, como por qué llamamos estrellas a las estrellas si sabemos que son esféricas, o si podrían los fantasmas atravesar las paredes, es un hecho propio de la especie humana. No hay preguntas estúpidas, quizás puedan...

Nye explores how the universe operates and why things move and work the way they do. He explains the second law of hermodynamics, electromagnetism, and the speed of light.

Compare proof for the reality of atoms with evidence for the existence of Santa Claus. Both are problematic hypotheses! Trace the history of atomic theory and the philosophical resistance to it. End with Bas van Fraassen’s idea of “constructive empiricism,” which holds that successful theories ought only to be empirically adequate since we can never know with certainty what is real.