Quantum Physics for Babies

About five years ago, I was asked to give a presentation as part of our distinguished speaker series giving an introduction to EDA. I called it EDA 101 (now called Semiconductor 101). It was pretty basic, and I worried it was so simplistic it would be patronizing. But I didn't need to worry. Everyone loved it, and it was the most viewed presentation of the series that year. People from our legal and HR departments came up to me and said it was the first time they had a clue what the company they worked for actually did. Surprisingly, people from engineering said similar things. If you have a Ph.D. in placement algorithms and you work on Innovus, you don't get to lift your head up and see what is outside the trench very often.

Ladybird Books

In my post, The Ladybird Book of Quantum Mechanics, I talked about being what Americans would call a TA (we said tutor) in first-year computer science at the University of Edinburgh. I recommended everyone bought and read what I think of as The Ladybird Book of the Computer but which is actually called How It Works...The Computer, A Ladybird Book. Since this is a book written for children, the students thought I was joking. But I wasn't. It is the best introduction (at the time) to what a computer was and how it worked. Of course, it is dated somewhat today, but a lot less than you think. If you read the post I referenced earlier, there is a link to an online scan of the book from over forty years ago. One thing I learned from both creating EDA101 and reading Ladybird books is that it is never patronizing to explain things simply but completely accurately.

For Babies Books

I recently came across a series of books by Chris Ferrie that do just that. Chris is described on the back of the books as:

A physicist, mathematician, and father of four budding young scientists. He believes it is never too early to introduce children to big ideas!

The books are called:

• Newtonian Physics for Babies (starting out gently)
• Rocket Science for Babies (getting a bit harder)
• General Relativity for Babies (wow, not even special relativity to break us in)
• Quantum Physics for Babies (well, babies are small too)

These four books are available as a set from Amazon. There are other books in the series on Neural Networks, Organic Chemistry, and more.

The famous Caltech physicist Richard Feynman thought that if someone was explaining something with lots of jargon and complexity, they didn't really understand it. He came up with the Feynman Technique (I doubt he named it himself):

1. Choose a concept you want to learn about
2. Explain it like I'm a 5 year old (there's even an acronym for this ELI5)
3. Reflect, Refine, and Simplify
4. Organize and Review

One particular focus of Feynman was that there was a big difference between knowing the name of something and understanding it. His father obviously realized this too. I've seen a video of Feynman talking about being a kid with one of those red wagons. It had a ball in it. When he pulled the wagon, the ball rolled to the back. He asked his father why:

Nobody knows why, but it is called "inertia"

As I said in my earlier post about Ladybird Books, writing books like this at the ultimate level of simplicity requires the deepest of understanding. Anyone can make a topic complicated but only someone who understands can make it simple.

Here are a couple of videos I found of two of these books being read aloud.

So if you want a very gentle introduction to these difficult topics for your child (or for yourself, we won't tell), then these are good places to consider, along with the Ladybird books that I wrote about earlier.

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