Thinking Physics

Epstein wrote a book of physics questions in multiple-choice form, each followed by an explanation. There are several hundred, covering mechanics, fluids, heat, vibrations, light, electricity, relativity and quantum ideas. The questions require no calculation and almost no algebra.

The pedagogical claim is that most physics teaching produces students who can manipulate equations but hold incorrect intuitions about physical situations, and that the fastest way to correct this is to force a commitment to an answer before receiving an explanation. The questions are constructed so that the plausible wrong answer corresponds to a common misconception. A typical example asks what happens to the water level when ice floating in a glass melts, or which of two identical bullets fired horizontally and dropped hits the ground first.

The explanations are qualitative and use physical reasoning rather than formulas, often with hand-drawn diagrams. Epstein consistently reduces problems to symmetry, conservation, limiting cases and dimensional reasoning.

The book is aimed at people learning physics rather than at practitioners, and its subject is physics rather than business, so its use to an investor or operator is indirect: it trains the habit of committing to a prediction and then checking it, and of testing an argument at its extremes. Some readers find the deliberately informal style irritating and the absence of mathematics limiting for anyone who needs to calculate rather than reason. The physics is standard and correct; the edition history is long and later printings expand the coverage.