Sept brèves leçons de physique – Carlo Rovelli

Thoughts: I read Sept brèves leçons de physique as part of my effort to improve my French reading abilities. I found the book to be a bit dry at times, but somewhat more engaging than the similar-in-topic-and-scope Six Easy Pieces (of which, to be fair to Mr. Feynman, I had read much hype before picking up the book). I learned a few things about physics and got a little closer to fluency in French - overall, worthwhile.

(The notes below are not a summary of the book, but rather raw notes - whatever I thought, at the time, might be worth remembering.)

Rovelli, Carlo, tr. Patrick Vighetti. 2015. Sept brèves leçons de physique. Odile Jacob.

Première leçon: La plus belle des théories

Deuxième leçon: Les quanta

Troisième leçon: L’architecture du cosmos

Quatrième leçon: Particules

Cinquième leçon: Grains d’espace

Sixième leçon: La probabilité, le temps, et la chaleur des trous noirs

• 65: “La probabilité ne concerne pas l’évolution des corps en soi. Elle concerne l’évolution des valeurs de sous-classes de propriétés des corps lorsque ceux-ci interagissent avec d’autres corps.” i.e. the probabilistic nature of heat flow / entropy / etc. doesn’t act on the particles that make up an object themselves, but rather act on emergent properties that humans care to invent/define and measure, such as temperature, entropy, etc.

En conclusion: Nous