Suzie Sheehy

This is subtitled "Twelve Experiments That Changed The World"... but it's nothing like that at all. It's a high-level discourse on the development of accelerator physics. And, since it eschews anything but the slightest mention of theory, it provides no real help to the layman in understanding the context of the experiments.

Perhaps just as annoying, at least in the early chapters it tries to suggest that certain technological advances were a direct result of particular experiments, thus continuing the myth propagated by the (admittedly otherwise excellent) James Burke "Connections" series: suggesting that A led to B led to C that resulted in D... whereas in fact D was was the result of a vast number of precursor discoveries and inventions. Here, the technological advances mentioned may have followed some particular experiment, but it in no way follows that the advance might not have come about through some other experiment, nor should it be taken to mean, as the book suggests, that the experiment described was the only relevant precursor: I found myself time and again thinking of, in particular, advances in computer technology without which the claimed technology could not have taken place.

Reaching the end of the book, I couldn't help wondering what the point of it was, other than possibly to advance the author's career. Little. if anything, in the book is not to be found in other physics-for-the-layman books, although this particular selection of described experiments is probably unique.… (meer)