The Matter of Everything
Suzie Sheehy

The Matter of Everything
Suzie Sheehy
For millennia, people have asked questions about the nature of matter. In the twentieth century, this curiosity led to an unprecedented outburst of scientific discovery that changed the course of history.
Review
by Pierre Sutcliffe
Despite being inpossession of so little scientific knowledge that the mysteries of the internal combustion engine still elude me, I found myself absorbed by this fascinating book. Suzie Sheehy is a physicist, academic and science communicator and in The Matter of Everything she explains in exhaustive detail the 12 experiments that changed the world. Her book is a deeply fascinating and illuminating study of the history of modern physics.
Sheehy begins with the discovery of x-rays – which were named ‘X something’ like all new discoveries, and no one ever tinkered with this nomenclature. She takes us inside the lab as early scientists, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr pursue splitting the atom, chasing neutrons, quarks and building particle accelerators. Even though I probably understood less than half of Sheehy’s explanations and descriptions she recounts these epic stories in fascinating and thrilling ways; the reader will feel like they are close by, watching the researchers following their hunches and intuitions. The early chapters almost read like a steampunk thriller, as Sheehy details the excitement and trepidation of making experiments into the complete unknown. For instance, in the earliest attempts to split the atom, scientists proceeded nervously, believing that their experiments might tamper with the building blocks of the universe and potentially cause the end the world.
I emerged from my reading of The Matter of Everything with a new understanding of how carbon dating works and some idea of the research that created MRI and CT scanners, microwaves, radar and of course, everybody’s favourite machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which gave us the God particle and also gave Nick Cave the song, ‘Higgs Boson Blues’.
Pierre Sutcliffe is from Readings St Kilda
This item is in-stock and will ship in 2-3 business days
Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.

The School That Escaped the Nazis
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Future Superhuman
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Indelible City: Dispossesion and Defiance in Hong Kong
$34.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic
$55.00Buy now
Finding stock availability...

A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

How to Lose Friends and Influence White People
$34.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Astronomy: Sky Country
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Matter of Everything
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Six Days in Rome
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Seamstress of Sardinia
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Indelible City: Dispossesion and Defiance in Hong Kong
$34.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Book of Night: The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Love That Story: Observations from a Gorgeously Queer Life
$34.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Unknown: A Refugee’s Story
$34.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

All the Lovers in the Night
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Dance Tree
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...