The New World of Mr Tompkins
George Gamow's Classic Mr Tompkins in Paperback

An inspirational introduction to the physics of the twenty-first century.

George Gamow (Author), Russell Stannard (Edited by), Michael Edwards (Illustrated by), Wu Bozhe (Translated by)

9780521639927, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 August 2001

272 pages, 53 b/w illus. 2 tables
21.4 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm, 0.37 kg

'Modern physics has never been explained in such an entertaining way.' School Science Review (Association for Science Education)

Mr Tompkins is back! The mild-mannered bank clerk with the short attention span and vivid imagination has inspired, charmed and informed young and old alike since the publication of the hugely successful Mr Tompkins in Paperback (by George Gamow) in 1965. In this 1999 book, he returns in a new set of adventures exploring the extreme edges of the universe - the smallest, the largest, the fastest, the farthest. Through his experiences and his dreams, you are there at Mr Tompkins' shoulder watching and taking part in the merry dance of cosmic mysteries: Einstein's relativity, bizarre effects near light-speed, the birth and death of the universe, black holes, quarks, space warps and antimatter, the fuzzy world of the quantum, and that ultimate cosmic mystery of all … love. This text is revised, updated and expanded by best-selling popular-science author Russell Stannard (who wrote the much-acclaimed Uncle Albert series of books for children).

Revisor's foreword
Gamow's preface
1. City speed limit
2. The professor's lecture on relativity which caused Mr Tompkins' dream
3. Mr Tompkins takes a holiday
4. Notes of the professor's lecture on curved space
5. Mr Tompkins visits a closed universe
6. Cosmic opera
7. Black holes, heat death and blow torch
8. Quantum snooker
9. The quantum safari
10. Maxwell's demon
11. The merry tribe of electrons
11.1/2. The remainder of the previous lecture through which Mr Tompkins dozed
12. Inside the nucleus
13. The woodcarver
14. Holes in nothing
15. Visiting the 'atom smasher'
16. The professor's last lecture
17. Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Physics [PH], Popular science [PDZ]