Mental Physics

Time and time again, great thinkers like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have credited their success to mental models: simple representations of how the world works that can be applied in a wide array of contexts. Mastering a small number of these concepts enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others don’t, and better anticipate outcomes.

For going on two decades, Scientific American’s “Ask the Experts” column has been answering reader questions on all fields of science. We’ve taken your questions from the basic to the esoteric and reached out to top scientists, professors, and researchers to find out why the sky is blue or whether we really only use 10 percent of our brains. Now, we’ve combed through our archives and have compiled some of the most interesting questions (and answers) into a series of books. 

शिव से श्रोडिंगर, त्रिक शैव दर्शन की शिक्षाओं और आधुनिक क्वांटम भौतिकी की खोजों के साथ उनके उल्लेखनीय समन्वय की...

Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about how the universe could work - from hidden extra dimensions in Interstellar to life as a mental projection in The Matrix. But these imaginings seem downright tame compared to the mind-bending science now coming out of physics and astronomy, and in this audiobook, we look at the strange and fascinating discoveries shaping (and reshaping) the field today. 

A young queer millennial physicist unveils some of the most mind-bending physics concepts in the universe—and uses them to illuminate their own fascinating life story “I see physics everywhere,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan writes. “It offers itself to me when I try to make sense of all the...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. You already know the feeling. One rushed email sours a whole team for a week. One kept promise starts to mend something you thought was broken for good. A small wrong turn at the start of a trip, and hours later you are in the wrong city entirely. The...

In The Smallest Lights in the Universe, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager interweaves the story of her search for meaning and solace after losing her first husband to cancer, her unflagging search for an Earth-like exoplanet and her unexpected discovery of new love. Sara Seager has made it her...

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science-writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is that a revolution is now under way...

What do quantum physics and love have in common? Fifteen years ago, preeminent psychologist and philosopher Henry Grayson made a remarkable observation: that in the wildly different realms of atoms and intimate relationships, our thoughts alone can create undeniably real effects. In quantum...