The Physics Behind...

Everyone has a good book inside them goes the old adage. Well, Russ Swan certainly does, but getting it out of him was no easy task…

The only copy in captivity is currently in my hands, and the emotions it raises are a combination of pride, terror, and – puzzlingly – introversion. My book was officially published at the end of August and, as I write, this first advance copy has just arrived through the letterbox. If I'd have known it was coming, I'd have put some fizz in the fridge.

Getting to this point has been an eye opening experience, not just in the way the book publishing business works but also in terms of my own development – what a psychologist might call personal growth.

The task was pretty clear: identify a few dozen interesting topics in everyday life, and describe the physics behind them (hence the book's title, The Physics Behind). Make it edgy, topical, funny, and readable. Compile it into appropriate chapters, send it off to the publisher, then sit back and wait for the glory of becoming a published author.

You are ahead of me already, I can tell. The actual experience was not quite so streamlined or lubricated, and certainly a lot less glamorous.

The first wake-up moment was when I began to realise that I might not be as clever as I thought I was

Wakey. wakey… The first wake-up moment was when I began to realise that I might not be as clever as I thought I was. Expecting to ease myself into the project with a simple topic, I chose to write on the physics behind riding a bicycle. It's something we take for granted, but I still think it is quite miraculous that this contraption can balance and be propelled so effectively. Here would be an opportunity to discuss the gyroscopic effect and introduce other areas of modern life where it is used.

Bicycles don’t work the way I thought they did. The gyroscopic effect comes into play, but only at speed, and the real trick is the ability of the human body to rapidly sense and correct balance. That's no good; this is a book about the physics behind, not the physiology behind.

What followed was a whirlwind of research and more research, in a bid to get my head around a raft of topics from microelectronics to the heat death of the universe. This is the sort of thing I like to do anyway, and more than once I had the feeling that I had finally found my true purpose. A life collecting and mentally filing away thousands of curious facts, blessed by a memory that suits that sort of thing, and at last the project that needs precisely that. Even if some of the things I thought I knew weren't strictly accurate.

The added spice, though, was the time pressure. It is one thing to idly drift through life casually collecting knowledge, and quite another to order that information into coherent essays, at the rate of one or two per day, every day, for week upon week.

Finally the day came when it was written. Early feedback from the publisher and editor was reassuring, the final words were written, and your humble scribe sat back to relish the feeling.

Yeah, that's another thing that didn’t go according to the script. First came the paranoia about what I'd actually put down – the last few weeks were a bit of a blur of surfing and scribbling and surfing and sleeping.

The real surprise was the amount of work left to do. I'd written the thing, and I naively thought this meant that, bar some routine corrections from the editing process, the writing was done. Oh, no. This being an illustrated book, the illustrator needed to be briefed. I had of course collected and sent over visual references and my own sketches – but in a few cases I realised that what I had assumed was obvious was certainly not obvious to the artist. I began to fret that, if I couldn’t make the ideas clear to her, I probably hadn't made them clear to the future reader of the book.

…Just stop! Let me tell you about imposter syndrome. I mentioned earlier that the arrival of the first copy led me to an unexpected sense of introversion. Who do I think I am, to set myself up as expert enough to actually write a book on something? What will happen when somebody finds the inevitable mistake that made it through the writing, editing, rewriting, and fact-checking processes? We caught the silly gluon/muon mix-up early on, but what did we miss?

But perhaps the most bizarre sensation was hoping for the world to just stop for a little while. I routinely scan a broad range of scientific publications in a bid to keep abreast of developments, and tried where possible to include the most up-to-date knowledge in the book. I found myself hoping that no new breakthroughs would be announced, which might make the volume obsolete before it even hits the shelves.

A science writer, praying for an interruption in scientific progress – now that is something I really didn’t anticipate.

Author: Russ Swan

 

To be in with a chance of winning a copy of Russ’ excellent book just send your name, address and organization to phil.prime@laboratorynews.co.uk. by September 30^th. First out of hat wins!