College of Science and Letters Book Award Program
We are pleased to announce the annual College of Science and Letters Book Award for the 2009-10 academic year which is intended to celebrate the efforts of teachers and students. The book award will be presented to an outstanding rising 11th or 12th grade student with an interest in the field of math, the sciences, technology, engineering or the humanities.
Information about this program has been included in this letter (PDF), which was mailed to science faculty.
This year, the faculty of the College of Science and Letters has picked The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces by Frank Wilczek:
| In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he's writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing's belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against "the Grid," Wilczek's term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections. —Gilbert Taylor |
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Once you have selected a recipient of the book award, please fully complete and submit the form below.
