How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the… (2024)

All educated people know chemistry is the foundation of modern science. But what if, like me, your grasp of high school and college chemistry was weak and maybe has even faded with time? Or maybe never really took root in the first place? Cliff takes the reader through modern chemistry from its earliest beginnings in the dreams of the alchemists to the modern intersections of chemistry and physics and our newest insights into how the world holds together. Without condescending, he weaves a narrative history that never skims the important scientific detail while including enough of the personal stories behind the science to help even the less scientifically minded engage with the material and remember it. A gem of a book.

Lately I've found myself skimming, barely finishing, or indeed, not finishing most of the popular science books I read, especially those predominantly devoted to breaking the universe down in a predictable pattern, starting with Newton or sometimes Galileo or sometimes Democritus and building - or should I say, deconstructing - the universe up - down - into its most constituent parts. Even with those books released in the last year or two, I just keep swipe-swipe-swiping, internally shouting, "YES YES WE KNOW. GET TO THE GOOD STUFF, YOU KNOW, THE WEIRD STUFF. C'MON MAN, I NEED A HIT OF THOSE QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS."

...

Just me?

Anyway, yes, I often find myself doing that.

I did not do this this time.

It completely baffles me that this is Harry Cliff's (file under names that are also common nouns, which is in the same document organizer as the list of names that are declarative phrases a la Harry Styles and Jeremy Irons) first book. His writing is so fluid, so familiar, so...

So goddamn funny.

Yes, reader, this was one of those books where I would try to read a passage aloud to my partner because it was one of the funniest goddamned things I'd ever read, and to my dismay he would not even crack a smile, and I would say, "Well first let me tell you about sphalerons. So, you know about wave-particle duality?" and he would invariably say no, and I would exclaim my indignity at his lack of understanding or even knowledge of the double slit experiment, and I would demand to know just how on earth I could tell him about one of the funniest goddamn things I'd ever read if he didn't even know how electrons worked.

And he, invariably, would not care.

But I, reader, I cared. Because it was one of the funniest god damned things I'd ever read.

I sure hope Harry Cliff writes more books, because his utterly unique retelling of that oft-told tale of how we all got here, for the first time in a long time, made me care again. Made me want to learn again. Made me want to reexamine the things I maybe hadn't really understood the first time around so that I could better understand whatever it might be that comes next - or maybe just so that I could better tell my partner utterly hilarious sphaleron anecdotes. Mr. Cliff, sir, you do Carl Sagan proud.

And, spoilers:

It ends with an actual apple pie recipe. And a recipe for the universe.

I distinctly remember the feeling of solving the tunneling probability of a quantum particle approaching a potential barrier. Non-zero!! It felt like magic. It opened up my mind to exploring the possibilities of subatomic particles and how it can explain atomic chemistry (my discipline). Harry Cliff's telling of the story of the atom and the universe made me fall in love with quantum particle physics all over again. Even with knowing the answer to the questions he posed, it was thrilling to follow the leading minds of the time down the road that led us to where we are today.

Woe betide the Martha Stewart acolyte who fails to read the subtitle of this cozy-sounding tome—i.e., “In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang.” While British particle physicist Harry Cliff does indeed include a recipe for apple pie here—the title is inspired by cosmologist Carl Sagan’s quote, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”—this is a nuts-and-bolts (or quarks and bosons, if you will) history of the development of the “standard model” of the physical makeup of the universe, along with the numerous holes (including black) that still require explanation.

I confess that I have struggled to the end of numerous similarly-themed guides, starting with the late Stephen Hawking’s famous 1988 coffee-table book “A Brief History of Time” (which few actually read, and fewer understood), and all of them start out with an avuncular voice promising a wondrous journey through the mysteries of the universe, but at some point (let’s say muon antineutrinos, for instance), one starts to feel like Wile E. Coyote, frantically foot-pedaling over decidedly non-firma terra. Which is not to say I don’t take something away from these books—I do, every time, but I must concede that I will never have more than a layman’s faint grasp of particle physics.

“How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch” starts off with an excellent history of the basic ingredients that make up everything that exists, highlighting the most relevant of the 92 elements that comprise the periodic table, while detailing how early scientists were able to accurately predict the appearance of missing elements based on the emerging laws of physics. That story is both scientifically impressive and comforting in a God-does-not-play-dice-with-the-universe kind of way, but once quantum mechanics enters the picture, all bets are off.

Many of us have a basic understanding of how light can act like both a wave and a particle and are acquainted with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Schrödinger’s famous cat (all duly touched on by Cliff). But eventually the narrative must wade into the particle soup and though the author makes a gallant effort to explain right-handed and left-handed particle spin, the “colors” of quarks, and the ability of sphalerons to convert “excess antileptons into ordinary matter particles,” a fair amount of this is reach-for-the-Excedrin stuff.

Somewhat ironically, the more Cliff tries to explain the symmetrical beauty underlying the universe, the more one senses that we are living in a total Rube Goldberg clusterf*ck, a jury-rigged contraption in which every new discovery seems to usher in a host of fresh conceptual and logistical problems—including the holy grail Higgs boson.

To Cliff’s credit, he does offer a tempered view of the prospect of ever fully understanding the origins of the universe (no Ted Lasso-level hope), while still rightfully celebrating those enquiring minds who contributed so much to what we know and offering some inspiration for the current crop of would-be physicists.

Other reviewers have heavily praised Cliff’s book and I partially concur, but would add a note of caution—regardless of claims otherwise, particle physics simply does not completely translate into popular science.

That being said, I still learned a lot and I appreciated Cliff’s amiable persona of cool nerd, even if some of his Brit slang will be lost on stateside readers (“whacked off its tit*” will likely conjure up a very different mental image for Americans than for Brits, who will instantly understand the phrase to mean “drunk” and/or “high”).

Despite being a book on particle physics, the way it is written made it so easy to understand (not at all to imply that particle physics is easy, just that given the level of details, author has done an excellent job in explaining them in layman's terms).

Simply an outstanding book that makes some of today's most complex scientific research actually understandable for the interested reader. I've read numerous books on this and similar topics over the years and they always seem to get to a point where I've been following along quite well -- or so I assumed -- and then the author takes some leap that leaves me in the dust. That was not the case with this book.

For the first time, I came away with much more of an understanding about things like quantum fields, wave-particle duality, etc. than I have ever previously managed. And I was totally blown away by the descriptions of things that happened "a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang" in addition to what happens at unimaginably small scales, and the experiments carried out in the LHC and other particle accelerators to discover and verify new theories.

The "apple pie" analogy does wear a bit thin by the end of the book, but then he caps it all off with an epilogue containing a full recipe for creating an apple pie from "nothing", starting with the origin of the universe and ending with a mouth-watering apple pie. Of course, the prep time for the recipe is a bit daunting at 13.8 billion years! :-)

I'm a biology and chemistry teacher, which definitely does NOT make me an expert on particle physics. I really enjoyed this book. The beginning, which covered science history that I already know pretty well, kept me interested and didn't leave out the contributions of women scientists. As the book continued and delved deeper and deeper into particle physics I was on new-to-me ground, science-wise, but Cliff is an excellent (and funny!) teacher. I really think I kind of understand particle physics now. (Please don't ask me to explain it to you.) I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the author, and he is an amazing narrator, even doing the voices for some of the scientists (his Carl Sagan impression isn't half bad!).

I can hardly begin to tell you how much i enjoyed this book. Harry Cliff is an awesome story teller, a man of obviously high intelligence, and a teacher par excellence. I have read many, many books about physics, quantum physics, string theory, and the multiverse - many of which are very dry, although informative. This book taught me more about the Standard Model of particle physics than all of the numerous books combined.

Harry Cliff has an exceptional gift at explaining this highly complex subject with amazing whit and humor that truly allowed me to feel i can finally understand things about quantum physics that have been way over my head for what feels like a very long time.

One of those books everyone should read. Gives a funny and easy to grasp story of what makes up the universe and a history of how we figured those things out.

Uitdagend boek over de elementaire deeltjesfysica: waar kom je uit als je de appeltaart steeds verder uit elkaar haalt: van ingrediënten, naar moleculen en atomen. Tot zover begrepen de Grieken het ook al... Dan komen we in de subatomaire wereld zoals die vanaf het begin van de 20ste eeuw is ontdekt, door Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg. Geleidelijk ontstaat een hele 'dierentuin' van subatomaire deeltjes, die 'het standaardmodel van de deeltjesfysica' is gaan heten, Dit model verklaart veel, maar mist een belangrijk element: hoe komen deeltjes aan hun massa? Vanaf de tweede helft van de twintigste eeuw worden de theorieën steeds moeilijker voor te stellen, als het gaat over het higgsveld en andere kwantumvelden, de snaartheorie en andere producten van de theoretische fysici. Ik wordt door de auteur steeds gerustgesteld dat het niet gek is dat ik me er niets bij voor kan stellen, want dat kunnen de fysici zelf vaak ook niet. Alleen: zij begrijpen de complexe wiskunde die erbij komt kijken en ik niet... De auteur probeert het niet eens uit te leggen en ik denk dat hij daar gelijk in heeft. Fascinerend is vooral de beschrijving van de zoektocht naar bewijzen voor de theoretisch hypotheses van de theoretisch fysici, met een bezoek aan vele laboratoria in de wereld en het beschrijven van de zoektocht naar bewijzen, hetgeen gepaard gaat met veel vallen en steeds weer opstaan.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting romp through the history of chemistry and physics, with a delightful focus on the last 50-100 years of increasingly bizarre and hard-to-fathom particle physics. I am constantly amazed and humbled by the extent of human intelligence, curiosity, innovation, and cleverness. Even if our understanding of the world is still incomplete, the fact that humans have discovered so much about the tiniest-of-tiny things as well as the vastest-of-vast things is incredible. Also, this book taught me that physicists are both very silly and a little punk rock. My personal favorite labels: truth quarks, beauty quarks, and charm quarks; plus the WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). I also have a soft spot for the Higgs-Boson, since that was the name of my college boyfriend’s cat (I still miss you, Mr. Higgs!)

To be honest, the only thing I didn’t like about this book was the gimmick of the apple pie itself - I didn’t begin this book expecting that to be anything more than a reference to the famous quote - and I could have done without all the discussion of the pie. However, the tongue-in-cheek recipe at the end made up for it. I can’t wait to see what new discoveries about the universe and how it functions are made in my lifetime!

If I could give 6 stars I would. Probably my favorite non-fiction book ever. This is a bit of a masterpiece in my opinion. Captures the history of science and physics in such an interesting way. The focus on experimentation and different techniques to validate theories through the ages is so different from the theoretical physics books I’ve read. This is an amazing book.

I don’t believe I’ve ever read a more beautiful book. I highly recommend this if you love Astronomy and Astrophysics, or even if you’ve never understood how the cosmos became what it is.

I didn't know much about this book when I started reading it. It was one of those random bookstore finds that peaked my interest. After checking how recently it was published (August 2021) and the credentials of the author (a PhD working at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN), I felt good about the freshness and credibility of the information and dove right in.

In short, this book is about particle physics and what we know about the stuff that we're made up of. The book is sort of broken up into two halves. The first half gives an overview about everything you probably learned in high school physics and chemistry: elements, atoms, protons, electrons, and neutrons. What is really fascinating about this part is that the author walks through a history of how these things were discovered. This might not sound interesting at face value, but take for example the discovery of elements. This started with 19th century scientists discovering that "air" is actually made up of a bunch of different types of "air": "non-breathable air", "flammable air", etc. They then came up with the theory of elements to describe these different types of air, which were actually CO2, O2, H2, etc. This whole historical journey makes you realize how much we take for granted about our understanding of atoms. It also helps you appreciate why it took so long for humans to actually discover these building blocks of matter.

The second half of the book gives an overview of what we know about subatomic world: bosons, fermions, gluons, quarks, etc. This was stuff I really had never learned in high school or college. Dr. Cliff discusses how these subatomic particles were theorized, and then later discovered/experimentally verified. He talks about the role that the Large Hadron Collider played in the discovery of these particles, including the 2012 verification of the existence Higgs Boson (the fundamental particle that gives everything else mass). As interesting as this second half of the book was, it's also where I think the author lost me. Part of me knows that is to be expected when learning about new physics, but another part of me feels as though the author ran out of steam towards the end of the book (or maybe I did lol).

There are so many interesting learnings in this book that have stuck with me. Something that amazed me is learning how stars synthesize atoms heavier than helium (carbon, oxygen, gold, iron). Ultimately, the atoms we are made of were synthesized by stars billions of years ago, before being ejected and eventually finding their way into a new clump of atoms called Earth. I also loved learning about quantum field theory–the understanding that particles result from the vibrations of defined quantum fields that act as the fabric of our universe. And speaking of fabric, I loved learning about the LIGO observatories in the final chapters of the book. The LIGO observatories are arguably the coolest things ever built and some of the most technically-impressive. These observatories use lasers to measure distortions in space-time (a consequence of Einstein's Theory of Relativity). I don't know what is harder to fathom: that these distortions actually exist or that the LIGO can detect these distortions with a precision smaller than a proton.

This book changes how you think about matter and everything around you. It also changes how you think about science and scientific discovery. I'd highly recommend it to anyone that is remotely interested in science and learning something new.

This book was on my local library shelf and attracted my eye - clever title. I didn't know much about particle physics and figured the author, who is a practicing physicist, would be good at explaining the subject. Excellent treatment of the subject, although you probably need a good science background to understand more than the first few chapters.
He begins with a story from his childhood to introduce the apple pie experiment. His dad was an amateur chemist back in the days when one could buy almost anything. He quickly moves into the history of chemistry, with John Dalton, Lavoisier, Priestley, and the theory of the atom (JJ Thompson, Niels Bohr) followed by early quantum physics (discovery of the proton, electron and neutron, radioactivity, etc). Most of this I remembered from my chemistry studies. Then the subject gets more complicated, with the introduction of the PP, CNO and triple alpha cycles in stars (thermonuclear reactions), as he discusses how the elements are made in stars. Then he moves on to elementary particle accelerators and detectors. The last two or three chapters I found difficult as the subjects (symmetry, Higgs field, electroweak phase transition, sphalerons, CPT symmetry, Planck distance, and various theories about the standard model's problems. The author does his best to explain these complex topics, but these are hard topics!

The author is talented and interviewed many others outside of his particular specialty to produce this book. It will give a good understanding of what physicists do and what some of the latest theories are in the subject. As he discusses in the last chapter, the age of new accelerators may be waning, as they are terribly expensive. The questions have become successively harder to answer using experiments as you get closer to the "start" of the big bang. Politicians may not be willing to part with a 100 km tunnel, three times longer than the LHC and 7 times more energetic (up to 100 TeV), with current estimates at 26 billion Euros, either near Geneva or in China. There are arguments about spin-offs of these technologies. He brings up the WWW, developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN as a way to share information. He also cites them as inspiration to current students in physics. There aren't any military applications of this esoteric knowledge for the most part.
But the author mostly stays away from politics except in the last few pages, and does an excellent job of introducing the subject. Read this if you enjoy a good science detective story.

You start with an electron...
How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch gets its title from Carl Sagan, who once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In this book, author Harry Cliff tells the stories of the many talented scientists and thinkers who have searched to answer the question of just what ARE the ingredients that make up our universe and that apple pie you plan to bake for dinner.
Cliff refers to Sagan many times, and the two have in common a contagious enthusiasm for science. Sagan’s enthusiasm is for the science itself, though, whereas Cliff’s interest shines brightest when he talks about the paths scientists follow as they try to learn more about the building blocks of our world and how our universe came into being.
Harry Cliff is a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge who works on the Large Hadron Collider, so he knows intimately how science is done and does a wonderful job of showing how the work of one scientist leads to the success of the other. After a short acknowledgment to the ancients like the early Greeks, he picks up the story with eighteenth-century chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier , brings us up to date through projects like the Large Hadron Collider, and foresees work continuing into the future in a closing chapter that takes place in 843 million CE. Oh, he also gives us that recipe for apple pie!
Even those who were wrong get credit for their accomplishments; it was fun to learn that, although Joseph Priestley never abandoned the theory that “phlogiston” is a substance to be found in all combustible bodies , we can thank him the next time we sip our favorite soft drink.
If your goal is to learn what is the current-day thinking about the nature of matter and the universe, there are probably better books for you. If , however, you are interested in how scientists have worked in the past to get us where we are and how they are continuing to try to expand our understanding, I think this book is one you will definitely enjoy.
I received an Advance Review copy of this book from Edelweiss and the publisher.

5 Stars

accessible, fun, informative

I am grateful to Doubleday Books for sending me a copy of this book for review.

This is the book I will be recommending to people now who are interested in particle physics but have a limited scientific background. I think it accomplished everything it set out to do.

The strength of this book is its structure. The book reads like an interesting narrative that presents the information and concepts in a very digestible way. I bet you wouldn't expect me to describe a non-fiction physics book as a "multiple timeline story" or to talk about the writing style of the author, but here we are. Cliff presents us with two timelines: one where he chronicles his journey through his scientific career, and another where he takes us chronologically through the history of the field. We are introduced to the big name movers and shakers of physics, but him connecting this history to his own experiences makes it read more like a novel than a textbook.

The second thing that stands out is the overall tone of the writing. The light conversational tone made the information here feel very accessible and almost casual. I did NOT feel like a text book in any way. The author maintained two consistent themes throughout; referencing Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and the whole apple pie recipe concept. The recipe format really served to simplify the explanations, and the cohesiveness of it made the reading experience fun.

Let's talk about the information itself. I think the strength of this book is in how accessible it makes these topics. Of course the information here is nothing new and there are numerous books that cover these topics, but I think this book is one of the most balanced and well constructed I've come across.

I think this is a great popular science book, and I recommend this to anyone with an interest in learning about particle physics, chemistry, or quantum mechanics regardless of your level of science knowledge.

Once again, I was forced to read this book for chemistry class. Honestly if your into physics then this is the perfect book for you, but if you're like me you will HATE this book. Every time I read it I ended up with a headache. It couldn't keep my attention for more than a page. Why would you write a book about making an apple pie from scratch when at the end you find out YOU CAN'T! I'm sorry I just hated this book.

I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone trying to cement their lay person's understanding of particle physics. The author starts with the basics which you've likely read elsewhere, but quickly moves into a detailed account of the groundbreaking experiments and theories which have led to a deeper understanding of the nature of matter and reality. The book is both basic (math free for instance) and very complex - talking through the relationships of multiple types of particles, bosons, neutrinos, and the like at a level I haven't found detailed in other popular science books.

The author adds plenty of humor and wit - my favorite coming from his summary of quantum fields being singular, meaning all matter is part of the same collection of fields... "You and I, dear listener, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other and with all of creation. At the risk of getting a bit too Neil deGrasse Tyson, that also means we are all one with all sorts of unpleasant stuff; the Ebola virus, dog sh*t, and Piers Morgan, for instance."

The book is worth a second time through, I think.

This book was everything I wanted it to be and more. The storytelling along with fascinating facts about so many different layers of our understanding of the world was absolutely perfect. My appreciation of physics and interest in abstract math have been reignited. Despite the immense challenge it is to understand all of these intricate scientific ideas, the author did an amazing job making it easy to follow along and appreciate the beauty and difficulties of scientific exploration. Highly recommend.

Amazing book. It was the first time I understood what was important about the Higgs Boson, to say nothing about the family of particles known in physics. The author avoided technical description and math and included humor very appropriately. I have long been interested in the quantum world, but found all previous books lacking. The avoidance of quantum entanglement in this book helped immensely. Nice history lesson as well on early physics as it relates to atoms and particles. An entirely satisfying read!

I'm torn on how to rate and write a review of this book. There are essentially two halves to the book. The first half deserves brightly shining five stars; the second half of the deserves a star is a dim white dwarf at brightest and a ravenous black hole at worst. The idea of the book expands on a quote from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos", "To make an apple pie, you first have to create the universe."

The first half, maybe a little bit more, focuses on the development of the atomic model, all of the famous experience that went into discovering a fundamental particles, and then begins to get into the standard model of physics. I was delighted to hear details about, and have questions answered about, famous experiments that I teach about every year. The general story of those experiments and discoveries they made are, not surprisingly, oversimplified. Often the experiment showed something that wasn't understood until much later. Although I knew a lot of the basics, getting the details was great. Admittedly as it started getting away from the early the mid 1900s, the material got more difficult and less familiar. I could mostly follow the lines of reasoning behind the different theories that were proposed, even if I don't understand them themselves. The book was hard to put down in that first half to two-thirds. The author openly admitted at that point that we were getting into things that we did understand who is going to explain some of the different theories that existed. He admitted when he didn't know the details, or felt like he was oversimplifying them because they were outside of his realm of expertise. He didn't quite come clean with his bias towards his own experiments, but it was obvious and understandable. Nonetheless, I reminded of how much I don't like theoretical physics. I understand that it's necessary, and I'm all for people trying to come up with theories and experiments. Some of them are impossible to test, which becomes not science, and I think they are a waste of time. I've always reminded of the joke from the show The Big Bang Theory, "The physics is theoretical, but the fun [phun] is real." I love the joke, but I do not find real fun in it at all. In addition to that, and maybe it's just because I'm listening to it (and doing so at a fast pace while doing chores), but a lot of it really goes over my head. Some of that is down to how complicated theories are. But some of it comes down to either the theory is not being easy to explain in a popular science format at minimum to him not being great at explaining it at worst. His goal in doing that was to justify the experimenting and the funding which needs public support. Nonetheless I think the thing that illustrates this the best is a fictional story he told within the last chapter. He imagines the time millennia in the future where humans and aliens from multiple galaxies are working together on a high energy particle physics experiment. After the 12 tentacled alien announces they start of the experiment, they fire it up in create a black hole that destroys them all. To me that fictional experiment was as realistic as most of the theoretical physics in the second half of the book. Although he was willing to hold out that they might be wrong, a book that showed all the different theories that had been pursued and abandoned in the past, seemed a little blind to how many of the current theories will probably go the same way. Lastly, it's always amusing to me how frequently physicist (and related scientists) get to an idea that smacks of a creator, and baulk at the idea of God, and so try to find ways to write it off. By no means do I believe in a God-of-the-gaps solution to all of the open questions in science, but at the same time seen the adversion and squirming in action is always interesting.

If you've ever wondered what elements are responsible for forming the universe we live in, or which ingredients are required to create matter, preserve energy, enforce gravity, making life as we know it possible, then this book needs to make a speed of light descent into your hands. And I mean soon.

What's inside is a story. A recipe. An accessible yet comprehensive history, really, where the author details how scientists have slowly uncovered the fundamental components of matter over the last couple of centuries and have traced their origins back billions of years, to the violent spectacle of The Big Bang and beyond.

With a wooden spoon in hand, the author, Harry Cliff, swirls readers into a scientifically cooked and still cooking quest for understanding about the cosmos.

Where does matter come from? Which parts of the atom are divisible? How many different kinds of forces are there? What are they?

How did quantum fields come to be considered the building blocks of all matter? Does supersymmetry exist in nature? Where? How?

Why are neutrinos called "ghostly" particles?

What is the ultimate origin of everything? Are we closer to having the answer or will it continue to remain out of reach, impossible to explain?

These are the kinds of questions Cliff ladles into readers' purview, straining them into easily digestible curdles of information which highlight both how far we've come in being able to find, know, and predict the building blocks of the universe and how much farther we still have to go.

Step by step, ingredient after ingredient, he sprinkles in summaries of some of science's greatest discoveries, from the atom to relativity to the Higgs boson. He stirs in explanations of complicated concepts like up and down quarks, cosmic microwave backgrounds, and quantum and Higgs fields, underlining their significance with relatable metaphor and analogy so the layperson can wrap their head around what they are.

He also sifts through the major hurdles or roadblocks scientists still face in the road ahead. Like the idea that reductionism could be false. Like how there are no particles or quantum fields in the standard model that could be dark matter or energy. Like the fact that no one understands why the Higgs field settled at the perfect Goldilocks value that has made the existence of atoms possible. Like how, on their own, quantum mechanics and general relativity both fail the closer they approach the moment of The Big Bang.

For someone who has only a perfunctory grasp of particle physics, chemistry, and cosmology, I came out of this book feeling full. I wasn't stuffed with so much technical knowledge I was intimidated by it. Rather, I felt satisfied to be enlightened with a more well-rounded understanding of what elements make the universe...the universe.

An engaging, electron banging read all around!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC.

BOOK BLOG

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” - Carl Sagan

We all know about what it takes to make an Apple Pie. You start with the apples, the flour, and the sugar. But let’s break that down further. What makes up the apples, the carbohydrates, the protons and neutrons? In order to know what the universe is made of, we have to find it.

This book dives into the fundamental building blocks of the world as we know it, by taking you on a journey of where we are and where we have left to go. As a particle physicist at the CERN collider, Harry Cliff gives an insider's view on the creation and troubleshooting of this machine and what it has done for science.

Review:

From the very beginning, Cliff draws on the analogy Carl Sagan posed. It is the focal point of the book and he circles back to it, keeping this book grounded with a clear goal.

We start off with a history of what we know. He breaks down the notable figures in science and chemistry who lead us to the atomic structure we know today. He goes into the rocky subjects we are studying now, like quarks and leptons and then keeps going into what we definitely do not know. He takes you through the theories that were incorrect and also currently opposing theories being debated.

Overall, I was IN LOVE with this book. Cliff doesn’t write this like a college lesson, he writes it like a story. I have heard a breakdown of the Gold Foil Experiment more times than I can count, but I still learned something new in Cliff’s version. He gave you the facts but spins the narrative to include fun information you might not know. Also, I am fascinated by CERN. I think it is one of the best modern machines we have made and is bordering on science fiction. To hear Cliff tell you how it works, how it is assembled, the liquid nitrogen used with the magnets, I couldn’t get enough.

Thank you so much to Doubleday for this review copy!

I learned SO much from this book (I actually understand plasma and quark-gluon plasma now). This is science at its best and leaves you with hope for what is to come. Highly Recommend.

"How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch" by Harry Cliff is a fascinating and engaging book that takes readers on a journey through the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy, exploring the origins of our universe and the awe-inspiring fact that it exists at all.

As a particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider at the University of Cambridge, Cliff is well-equipped to guide readers through the complex and often perplexing world of modern physics. He takes readers on a tour of the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists use the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino, to gaze into the heart of the Sun.

Cliff expertly constructs an up-to-date picture of our modern understanding of the cosmos, weaving together the latest scientific discoveries with the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. He illuminates the misunderstandings and misconceptions that have plagued our understanding of the universe, and offers readers a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic intellectual journeys human beings have ever embarked on.

One of the strengths of "How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch" is Cliff's ability to make complex scientific concepts accessible to a general audience. He uses clear and concise language, and provides helpful analogies and examples to illustrate his points. The book is also well-structured, with each chapter building on the previous one to create a cohesive and compelling narrative.

Overall, "How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch" is a must-read for anyone interested in the origins of our universe and the latest developments in modern physics. Cliff's passion for his subject is evident on every page, and his ability to communicate complex scientific concepts in an engaging and accessible way is truly impressive. Highly recommended.

In search of meaning of life, I attempted again from the perspective of science.

Reductionism feels like a mechanical approach to the subject but this book attempts to relate as mundune as a topic of apple pie recipe to many different grand theories of existence centering around the Standard Model of particle physics. I adopted a similar approach and over-simplistically relate life to biology to cells to molecules to atoms and to sub-atomic particules.

This book is full of excitements and details to understand quarks, quantum fields and realisation that particiles are not particules but passing disturbances in the quantum fields.
The four fundamental forces of nature electromagnetic, strong, weak and gravity. Their force-carrier particles photon, gluon, W+/W-/Z and the hypothesised graviton.
The confirmation of Higgs field with recent decade discovery of Higgs boson. This gives mass to all matter.

There are however many mysteries remained. To name just a few: gravity not fitting into the Standard Model, dark matter, the trigger of matter-vs-anti-matter imbalance and tracing closer to the trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth second after the Big Bang where light was certainly trapped.

With current knowledge and technologies, there are mysteries we might never be able to solve. There are hopes and optimisim with new discoveries, methods and technologies. Gravitional wave, LIGO and the ambitious LISA project. Last but not least where I cannot agree more with the Author and ending remarks that we will depend on the scientific curiosity, passion of our descendants generations to come. I, for one, would like to plant the seed of scientific curosity in my offspring.

No kto nie lubi szarlotki? Chyba nie ma takiego, z wyjątkiem ewentualnie uczulanych, ale i oni by kochali, gdyby mogli. Dobra szarlotka, to poprawiacz humoru i wyzwalacz uśmiechu... ale jak ją zrobić OD PODSTAW? Otóż Harry Cliff udowadnia, że nie da się, nie jesteśmy w stanie zrobić szarlotki od podstaw, więc gdy następnym razem będziecie się nią zajadać wiedzcie - że jecie cud.
JAK ZROBIĆ SZARLOTKĘ OD PODSTAW, to przekorny tytuł i świetny punkt wyjścia dla rozważań o kosmosie, o atomach, o tym co tworzy Wszechświat i nas. Piękna metafora, którą autor zaczerpnął od Carla Sagana i jego słynnego zdania "Aby zrobić szarlotkę od podstaw, trzeba najpierw wymyślić Wszechświat". Zagadkowe i fascynujące słowa, które rozkłada na czynniki pierwsze Cliff.
Ta książka nie należy do najłatwiejszych, ale jest mądrze napisana. Autor pisząc o naprawdę trudnych tematach dla laika zastosował ciekawy zabieg - mianowicie mamy wrażenie, ��e Cliff opowiada o swoim życiu, a przy okazji o atomach, kosmicznych piekarnikach, bozonie Higgsa itp. Uwielbiam taki właśnie sposób edukowania, takie pokazywanie swych własnych doświadczeń, często potknięć, ale też i uporu, by robić to, co cię interesuje.
W tej książce dostajemy sporą dawkę wiedzy o tym... powiedzmy mikrokosmosie. Spoglądamy w głąb, do najmniejszych cząsteczek, by odpowiedzieć sobie na pytanie - jak zrobić szarlotkę od podstaw? Nie ukrywam, nadal czytam, podczytuję i cieszę się, bo przy tak intensywnej lekturze nie mam wyjścia - muszę odłożyć problemy dnia codziennego i oddać się w całości sprawą wagi kosmicznej.

jak zjeść Wszechświat
Wydawnictwo Zysk i S-ka
egzemplarz recenzencki

No kto nie lubi szarlotki? Chyba nie ma takiego, z wyjątkiem ewentualnie uczulanych, ale i oni by kochali, gdyby mogli. Dobra szarlotka, to poprawiacz humoru i wyzwalacz uśmiechu... ale jak ją zrobić OD PODSTAW? Otóż Harry Cliff udowadnia, że nie da się, nie jesteśmy w stanie zrobić szarlotki od podstaw, więc gdy następnym razem będziecie się nią zajadać wiedzcie - że jecie cud.
JAK ZROBIĆ SZARLOTKĘ OD PODSTAW, to przekorny tytuł i świetny punkt wyjścia dla rozważań o kosmosie, o atomach, o tym co tworzy Wszechświat i nas. Piękna metafora, którą autor zaczerpnął od Carla Sagana i jego słynnego zdania "Aby zrobić szarlotkę od podstaw, trzeba najpierw wymyślić Wszechświat". Zagadkowe i fascynujące słowa, które rozkłada na czynniki pierwsze Cliff.
Ta książka nie należy do najłatwiejszych, ale jest mądrze napisana. Autor pisząc o naprawdę trudnych tematach dla laika zastosował ciekawy zabieg - mianowicie mamy wrażenie, że Cliff opowiada o swoim życiu, a przy okazji o atomach, kosmicznych piekarnikach, bozonie Higgsa itp. Uwielbiam taki właśnie sposób edukowania, takie pokazywanie swych własnych doświadczeń, często potknięć, ale też i uporu, by robić to, co cię interesuje.
W tej książce dostajemy sporą dawkę wiedzy o tym... powiedzmy mikrokosmosie. Spoglądamy w głąb, do najmniejszych cząsteczek, by odpowiedzieć sobie na pytanie - jak zrobić szarlotkę od podstaw? Nie ukrywam, nadal czytam, podczytuję i cieszę się, bo przy tak intensywnej lekturze nie mam wyjścia - muszę odłożyć problemy dnia codziennego i oddać się w całości sprawą wagi kosmicznej.

jak zjeść Wszechświat
Wydawnictwo Zysk i S-ka
egzemplarz recenzencki

Particle physics has never been my bag but I decided to give it another shot by picking up "How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch". Throughout the book I kept thinking "Okay, particle physics *still* isn't for me so why am I continuing to read this?" Then, toward the very end of the book, there was a quote from Nima Arkani-Hamed talking about how the "particle" part of particle physics was not the attraction for him.

"It made it feel a bit like chemistry, and I sucked very badly at chemistry. And you know, all these particles, all these funny names, were actually a barrier to me that I had to overcome. But of course, what got me into it is you get this most amazing view of the deep workings of the laws of nature. That's what it's really about!"

"За да направите ябълков пай от нулата, първо трябва да създадете Вселената."
- Карл Сейгън, КОСМОС (еп. 9 - "Животът на звездите")

С издирването на продуктите за тази екзотична рецепта, се е заел английският физик Хари Клиф. За кухня, където да провежда космо-кулинарните си екперименти, му служи LHCb-детекторът на ЦЕРН. На всеки е ясно обаче, че самият Клиф, както и хилядите му колеги, стоят на раменете на гиганти. " How to Make an Apple Pie From Scratch" разказва тяхната история и тази на физиката на елементарните частици. Читателите могат да очакват челен сблъсък с глуони, мюони, бозони и други обитатели от менажерията на Стандартния модел. На моменти съзнанието им може да бъде пришпорено като снопове лъчи в колайдер, но няма място за притеснение - др. Клиф поднася информацията достъпно и забавно, в духа на най-добрите научнопопулярни книги. А на последните страници може да откриете и обещаната рецепта: ако не тази за Вселената, по която все още има много работа, то поне за един вкусен ябълков пай.