Taming the Atom: The Emergence of the Visible Microworld - Softcover

Baeyer, Hans Christian Von

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679765344 ISBN 13: 9780679765349

Publisher: Random House Inc, 1995

Synopsis

The atomic hypothesis - that the universe consists of innumerable tiny particles in ceaseless motion - traces its roots to Greek antiquity, but until recently individual atoms remained theoretical conceptions far removed from the senses. Now technology has reached down into the abstract realm of the atom, and made it accessible to our eyes and fingertips. We have learned to catch, photograph, touch, and even modify atoms one by one. Thus, for the first time since the philosopher Democritus imagined it more than two thousand years ago, the atomic landscape has been revealed in lavish beauty, as in the cover illustration from the scanning tunneling micrograph shown below, which depicts a baker's dozen of iodine atoms bonded together in six-fold symmetry, with a gaping hole glowing yellow where one of their number is missing.

About this title

About the Author:

Hans Christian von Baeyer is Chancellor Professor of Physics at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. His essays in Discover, The Sciences, Reader¿s Digest and The Gettysburg Review have won him several awards, including the 1990 Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a 1991 National Magazine Award. He has also written over seventy technical and popular articles.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0679765344
• ISBN 13: 9780679765349
• Binding: Paperback
• Editor: Disesa Susan