Physics Without Blinders is a revolutionary book that re-writes the simplest laws in physics. The Scientific Method forms the basis of the book meaning that no one is required to accept the book’s conclusions on faith. To that end the book provides numerous experiments, two of which, anyone can do. To quote a line from the book, ”The profound is not complicated and hard to understand; it is always simple and easy to grasp.”
The book’s title, “Physics Without Blinders”, was well chosen as the following quote implies. “… the author posed the questions no one ever thought to ask. This resulted in answers that conflict with a physicist’s education. Consequently, the blinders physicists wear will be an issue. They will tell physicists to put more faith in the lessons they learned in high school than the overwhelming evidence the author provides.”
Physics Without Blinders is a revolutionary book that re-writes the simplest laws in physics. The Scientific Method forms the basis of the book meaning that no one is required to accept the book’s conclusions on faith. To that end the book provides numerous experiments, two of which, anyone can do. To quote a line from the book, ”The profound is not complicated and hard to understand; it is always simple and easy to grasp.”
The book’s title, “Physics Without Blinders”, was well chosen as the following quote implies. “… the author posed the questions no one ever thought to ask. This resulted in answers that conflict with a physicist’s education. Consequently, the blinders physicists wear will be an issue. They will tell physicists to put more faith in the lessons they learned in high school than the overwhelming evidence the author provides.”
This chapter illustrates, both analytically and experimentally, why momentum is not a conserved quantity. This should not be necessary given the fact physics professors already teach students that momentum is not conserved. This occurs during one of the more advanced lessons. At the risk of short handing that lesson too much, the Laws of Thermodynamics describe a concept called entropy. It describes how much disorder exists within a system. And with every event, such as an elastic collision, the amount of entropy increases. In other words, there are no perfect interactions (collisions) and yet, Newton’s Three Laws of Motion predict perfection does exist. This is an obvious conflict students never recognize due to how poorly physics instructors were taught to teach the subject. They begin with Newton’s Laws of Motion, ideal objects, and elastic collisions. In later semesters, they cover the Laws of Thermodynamics that deal with real objects. No one does the math that adds Newton’s Laws to the Laws of Thermodynamics.
As revealing as the car example is, Scenario 2 has a simpler version and one that can easily be verified experimentally. Consider an ordinary dart-board hanging on a wall. Obviously, it has no momentum since it is not moving. Now add someone throwing a dart at the target. After the dart leaves their hand, it has momentum; it has mass and moves at a measurable velocity. Once the dart hits the dart-board, it stops moving; it no longer has any momentum. We begin with two objects, one that has momentum and the other that does not. We end with a situation in which nothing moves other than those air molecules affected by the dart before it reached the target. In short, most of the dart’s original momentum has vanished from the universe. Therefore, momentum cannot be a conserved quantity.
Anyone who believes the dart can affect the Earth’s rotation should do the following. Find an ordinary pickup truck and attach the dart-board to its rear bumper. Attach a mirror to the front bumper and shine a laser so that the light reflects onto a surface nearby. Make sure that vehicle sits on a level surface, is not in gear, and that the brakes are not set. Now throw the same dart again. If the truck does not move as evidenced by the laser continuing to focus on the same spot, a dart thrown into a wall-mounted dart-board has absolutely no chance of affecting the Earth’s rotation.
Physics Without Blinders by Don Amplier is a book that challenges established physics by revealing some important discrepancies in it. The author posits that anything scientific we learned blindly is likely to contain flaws. Those flaws escaped our attention because we accepted what our teachers taught in good faith without questioning. Our teachers didn’t mean to deceive us, yet because they didn’t warn us about the discrepancies, exceptions, and some gray areas of physics that exist, they inadvertently “blinded” us to these unsettling possibilities.
Quite naturally, when physics lovers become aware of such flaws, they’re appalled. They begin to doubt the veracity, limitations, and completeness of whatever they ever learned and need to take a fresh look at the concerned area as though they were first-time students, learning without the blinders that teachers once put over their eyes (i.e., the assumptions made that aren't really valid). Hence, the title Physics Without Blinders.
The primary focus of this book is an extensive re-examination of Newton’s three famous laws of motion. It discusses certain flaws in these revered laws and their applications and boldly proposes some corrective changes, some of which may have a radical impact on physics e.g., unlike what we learned, the law of conservation of momentum may not be universally applicable—it’s valid only for elastic collisions. Another example is that physics hasn't understood energy correctly, and a new explanation/hypothesis may be needed to correct the flaw.
Turning to some salient aspects of this book,
—First, the cover looks good, but we could improve it somewhat
—Second, it’s roughly 140 pages long. However, that shouldn’t fool you into thinking it’s either an easy or a quick read! Its deceptive brevity is because:
(1) The content is scientific and given that it’s a re-examination of an area of physics, we often encounter in the text new hypotheses, questions, changed relationships/equations (between entities), descriptions of the defect(s), proofs of changes suggested, etc. The heavy content compels you to read it slowly and carefully, ensuring you clearly understand what you read, the conclusions drawn, and so on.
(2) There's no space between lines, and within the lines, text is squeezed.
Both (1) and (2) above lead to a staggering rise in the reading effort.
—Third, while it’s nicely written and doubtlessly an enjoyable read, it contains a handful of English errors.
Using the positive and negative points from the above discussion to form a rating, I award it 4 out of 5 stars.
I recommend this thought-provoking book to all physics fans, particularly those who, from a love of the subject, seek to enhance it through research/independent investigations. That said, since it’s on a very advanced level, I limit my recommendation only to the physics/math communities, and that too, to those who have attained a minimum high school/college level of education on the subject.
NOTE: While I have formed a positive/favorable opinion of this book after reviewing it, that should not be construed as an endorsement of any of the author’s views/opinions/claims it contains. Such an elevation would rightly follow testing/validation and approval by the international physics community—a matter which is outside the scope of a book review like this one.