Reddit mentions of Mr. Tompkins in Paperback

It would look quite different indeed. For the best overview I've ever encountered, you should read Mr. Tompkins by noted (now dead) physicist George Gamow. The first chapter concerns moving through a town where the speed of light is about 15 mph. Each chapter takes some physical constant or other and renders it macroscopic, to highlight the effects for the edification of you ( the reader), and the main character, Mr. Tompkins (a somewhat bemused British banker).

>I'm not entirely sure if this is a general comment or directed at me. If directed at me, I'm not sure how you can garner regressive political leanings as I've never made my political orientation clear anywhere. I'm also not sure what is meant by regressive.

I was joking, mostly.

>I think this probably at the core of our discussion. I'm a trained natural scientist, which bleeds into other areas of life. Gravity is the same no matter what you believe for example. You jump off a bridge, you're not going to fly even if you believe so, you're going to go splat. So I struggle with the idea of moral relativism because I believe there are some things that universally apply and are universal truths so to say no matter what your values or what you choose to believe. It isn't necessarily politically or religiously motivated(for some people it is) It is just how I observe the world.

And didn't you ever read Mr. Tompkins in paper back?

I could swear there was something in the natural sciences relating to gravity and things being relative to the perspective of the observer... what was that again... the Heisenberg uncertainty principal... no no that's not it... planck's constant.... the second law of thermodynamic... never mind... I'm sure it will come to me...

>Is there an objective standard when it comes to the human condition? I do think there is, but it may be far more complicated than either of us can understand. I'm guessing that you would say there isn't an objective standard beyond what you've outlined due to your stance as a moral relativist.

Well the moral relativism was the product of a logical inquiry in to various differences in the ethical systems I observed in the world around me.

People have thought about all of these things before, Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith, David Hume, John Locke, Plato. These are not new thoughts.

Basically the best we've come up with for a personal ethical standard is to not harm other unless they consent to be harmed. But not everyone is aware of that standard so it's difficult to impose it upon others.

Theory of Continuous Groups by Loewner. This book is based on lecture notes which Loewner was planning to turn into a larger book. Unfortunately he passed away before getting much done so some of his colleagues edited and compiled the notes into this book. I'm only quarter of the way in but so far it's given me a really unique perspective into group actions. I'm loving it but it doesn't hold my attention for long spans of time.

Geometry of Polynomials by Marden. Marden is my idol, and I plan to devote my life to studying the zeros of functions. That said, this book is the hardest goddamn book I have ever read. Hell, some of the exercises he gives were actual topics of published research 60 years ago. That seems a little mean to me. Anyway I still love this shit.

Mr. Tompkins in Paperback by Gamow. Alternates between stories about a character transplanted into hypothetical worlds where particular laws of physics are exaggerated and semi-rigorous lectures about the physics itself. The section on gravity as curvature of space was especially enlightening. The author uses the idea of a merry-go-round spinning at relativistic speed, so that straight lines on the surface (i.e. geodesics) are in fact curved to outside observers. You can then imagine that the merry-go-round is walled off from the outside, so that on the inside the centrifugal force can be thought of as gravity toward the edge. This is the concept of acceleration of reference frame being equivalent to gravity. For a non-physicist this kind of explanation is AWESOME.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. My first Heinlein, just started it but I'm enjoying it so far. I honestly confused him with Haldeman... I loved The Forever War and I wanted to get another book by the author. Oh well.

Yeah so what I'm a nerd.

Mr. Thompkins in Paperback
this is the only reason I understand anything about physics.

As other comments here have made clear, the math that describes speeds of objects is different than what you would intuitively think it would be from your everyday life. Here is a nice illustration from Wikipedia as to how space transforms when you speed up.

Also, Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland is a great book about what the world would be like if the speed of light was much slower (5 km/hr) and how we would perceive it.

George Gamow's Mr. Tompkins books, I particularly recommend the Mr. Tompkins in Paperback collection, which puts together "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" and "Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom." It's my absolute favorite popular exposition of concepts in relativity and quantum theory.

I think I found it.