2 comments about Why the Sky Is Blue: Discovering the Color of Life.

1. This book could as easily have been titled "Is the Sky Blue?" And the answer to that is yes and no.
   Gotz Hoeppe, a German science journalist, points out that the sky near the horizon, if clear, is whitish not blue.
   So when a child asks her father, "Daddy, why is the sky blue?" one answer could be: Take a closer look.
   A longer, yet still incomplete, answer would be: Light from the sun hits viruses and molecules of gas in the atmosphere and is reflected as blue light. The sky itself -- mostly nitrogen and oxygen -- is colorless.
   Figuring this out took a long time. The Greeks about 2,500 years ago were the first to become dissatisfied with mythical answers, but although they put a lot of effort into proposing reasons, they did not know how to test them.
   Hoeppe traces the thinking of prescientific physicists through 2,000 years before getting to the period when real answers started to be found.
   "Why is the sky blue?" is a childish question but answering it was not child's play. The first clues began to be teased out 400 years ago, and the big breakthrough came with Isaac Newton's experiments showing that white light is composed of colors, including, of course, sky blue. Newton published "Opticks" in 1704.
   Some of his ideas were wrong, which began to be recognized about 50 years later. It took another hundred years to straighten most things out, but another 50 after that for Albert Einstein (and others) to explain the weird qualities of light.
   One of the interesting things about "Why the Sky is Blue" is that as a German, Hoeppe spreads credit for the development of physics farther east than most popular scientific histories in English do.
   He also presents a number of phenomena that readers can try out in their backyards.
   For example, the "blue hour." When the sun goes down, the sky stays blue for a while. The hue is almost, but not quite, the same in the blue hour as during bright daylight, but the mechanism for producing it is entirely unrelated.
   A careful look at the sky, with Hoeppe's guidance, will reveal a number of other curiosities that we tend to overlook.
   Unfortunately, Hoeppe's guidance goes awry in his summation, when he raises the alarm about what increased carbon dioxide is likely to mean for the blue sky.
   The answer, very likely, is nothing, thanks to clouds and other buffering effects, but -- astonishingly -- Hoeppe manages to write about greenhouse gases for two chapters without mentioning the most important one -- water vapor.
   It wouldn't hurt to skip Chapter 10.



2. If you have any penchant for physics and enjoy the human adventure that goes with it, then you will enjoy this book, perhaps as much as I have. The author takes us back in time, and places us in the minds of those early Greeks who could only speculate as to the cause behind the beautiful blue in the sky. It is remarkable just how far and to what great heights, literally, mankind has tried to tackle this topic. Hoeppe carries the reader along this marvelous adventure, and does so with a cogent style that makes even the more complicated points easy to grasp.
   
   Many other related subjects are addressed throughout the book that are handled in-depth and give us a view we are unlikely to find elsewhere. John W. Strutt's, Lord Rayleigh, original mechanical treatment for scattering is nicely explained, followed by a close look at his modern electromagnetic modification to it once Maxwell revealed light is an electromagnetic wave.
   
   I especially enjoyed learning of the Chappuis Effect - it might explain the purple color of our Moon during a lunar eclipse when volcanic activity has altered our atmosphere.
   
   With over 250 exoplanets discovered, and thousands more to come, this book will help us understand what we may someday behold when we actually obtain visible images of them. It already helps us understand what we see for the atmospheres of our neighboring planets. For instance, why the Martian sky is not blue and why the cloudless regions on Saturn are a rich sky blue color.

No comments about Optics and Lasers: Including Fibers and Optical Waveguides (Advanced Texts in Physics).

2 comments about Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting.

1. A reader might anticipate from its title that ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF ARTIFICIAL NIGHT LIGHTING holds a in-depth technical focus on night lighting's impact on nature - but it goes beyond chronicling science to consider how human activities from lighting affects animals and plants in a variety of ways. 'Photopollution' exists nearly everywhere thanks to mankind's activities: here are examples not only of effects on plants, insects and animals but how to mitigate them. Sections seek a readable approach by pairing vignettes of events and experiences of nighttime creatures with plenty of science and analysis of the physiological and behavioral effects of light pollution. It's these vignettes which make this book accessible not only to college-level students of science, nature and ecology but the general non-scientist public library browser, as well.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



2. This book is fantastic! Any person whom (professionally or by amateur interest) considers themselves an advocate for the environment, nature and/or planet Earth needs to know what is in this book. This is a CRITICALLY overlooked subject, effecting everything that lives on this planet.

5 comments about Color: A Natural History of the Palette.

1. Color: A Natural History of the Palette
   
   This book was highly recommended by a potter on an online listserve for potters. I found this book very interesting because of the travels by the author to find the areas that the materials used in color originated. It told me of the history of the area/country where the materials came from, as well as the methods used to develop the colors, and the people who used the colors. She talked about people continuing to use a color (the painter Turner) even though he knew the color would not last, as well a people continuing to use a color that would affect their health (lead as part of the process) because that's the only way to get that color, which continues to this day.



2. Part travelogue, part history and part study of the origins and source of pigments, "Color" is always informative and engaging. There is no book quite like this. For the painter, amateur or professional, the book will provide inspiration and a new way to look at and think about color. For the non-artist, it is an eye-opening essay into this exciting world. You'll want to rush out and buy a paint set afterwards.



3. I use some of the fun facts from this book in the oil painting class I teach. A very entertaining and educational travelogue. I really enjoyed how the author tied different narrative threads together.



4. This book was recommended to me by a customer in my shop, following a discussion of art and textiles from Indonesia, Central Asia and the Middle East. I found it to be an informative read. It presented a lot of information on the history and anthropology of colors, providing perspectives that I found to be interesting. In some places the author's style was somewhat off-putting which detracted somewhat from the content. That aside, I recommend the book and have in fact suggested it to several artists who have visited my shop, Interesting Stuff.



5. I took for granted all the colors and dyes in our everyday lives -- yet these seemingly simple colors each have a history, a point of origin, a story: these tales are fascinating. (I will never be able look at blue jeans with the same complacence again.) And this is a great travelogue too: Finlay travels the world to search out the colors....

1 comments about Optical Physics.

1. This is a good book on optics. It is quite an advanced book and may not be suitable for beginners. It covers a broad range of topics on classical optics including geometrical optics, ray optics and physical optics. It can also be used as a reference. Another good book at about the same level is Optics by Hecht.

5 comments about Diode Lasers and Photonic Integrated Circuits.

1. This books have excellent science information. Especially, it's good for semiconductor laser part.



2. This book is a masterpiece. The book is a great tutor whether you are a novice or an expert in the field. Great attention has been paid to detail (which is illustrated in the fact that you will find almost no typos in the book). Many different topics such as gain calculation, reflectors, waveguides, etc. have been comprehensively treated at both a qualitative and quantitative level. This leaves the reader with not just the methodology for computing parameters for lasers using equations, but also an intuitive understanding of the physical phenomena involved in making the calculations (via the qualitative analysis). The authors provide a unique perspective to many a phenomena that have been routinely treated by other texts. This is definitely one book for the archives!!!



3. I found this book quite useful for training Electrical engineers in the high speed fiber optics industry. The discussion of device physics and device characteristics,their impact on device performance such as e.g.; turn-On delay ,relaxation oscillation frequency,etc. was really handy.I strongly recommend this book to all managers and senior design engineers who need to train new electrical engineers in the field of device physics.I look forward to 2nd and third edition of this book as the years go by.Good investment.



4. For some derivations, I will suggest "Principles and applications of optical communications" by Max Ming-Kang Liu. It is more complete and easier to read for beginners.



5. Coldren and Corzine have done a very good job, explaining very clearly many issues concerning the physics of laser diodes and photonic integrated circuits. It is also helpful that various appendices go more into detail on certain subjects, allowing the main text to be more easily readable.
   
   I was only a bit disappointed not to find more details on high-power laser diodes and on various semiconductor materials; the book focuses on InGaAs/GaAs-based low-power lasers. However, the covered topics are treated really well, and that is most important. The book is certainly very useful for my work, and can be recommended particularly to those who want to learn about the general physics of diode lasers, rather than on specific types of devices for various spectral regions.

No comments about Optical Interferometry, 2e.

1 comments about Sensor and Data Fusion: A Tool for Information Assessment and Decision Making (SPIE Press Monograph Vol. PM138).

1. The book is of great depth and still wide in the diverse areas of data fusion.
   
   Real world examples are picked up and related to data fusion technologies or methods.
   
   It is a good start to the solution of any problem that deals with fusing information, of all types and sorts.
   
   José Freitas - Madeira - Portugal

2 comments about Color And Its Reproduction: Fundamentals For The Digital Imaging And Printing Industry.

1. No way would I take COLOR AND ITS REPRODUCTION off my shelf of all-time excellent reading except for the next update. The author says the best printed image steers clear of dot gain, goes in for trapping and perfect register, and prints high-density neutral black. Color quality works best when the original has no image defects, fluorescent materials or nongamut colors; the ink film is glossy, thick and transparent; the paper is a glossy, opaque, smooth white, with little absorbency and internal light scattering; and the printing sequences black after yellow in a stably run press with properly-adjusted impression pressures.

   Gary G. Field refers electrophotographic, flexographic, gravure, letterpress, lithographic, and screen printing for such different short- to long-run color markets as high- or routine-quality and on-demand. His book stands on its own as a teach-yourself guide, with an elegantly straightforward style and with thick appendixes including bibliography, color equations, and glossary. But it also helps anyone reading Richard M. Adams II and Joshua Weisberg's THE GATF PRACTICAL GUIDE TO COLOR MANAGEMENT, Kelly Kordes Anton's USING QUARKXPRESS 4, Steve Bain's FUNDAMENTAL QUARKXPRESS 4, Hal Hinderliter's UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL IMPOSITION, Harold L. Peck's STRIPPING: THE ASSEMBLY OF FILM IMAGES, Z.A. Prust's GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION: THE PRINTED IMAGE, and Fred Wentzel's GRAPHIC ARTS PHOTOGRAPHY: COLOR.




2. Les meilleures images imprimees se font des points nonbaves, du noir a haute densite, et des couleurs superimposees dans les sequences correctes. Les meilleures couleurs se font des couleurs de la gamme, des images nondefectueuses, et des nonfluorescents. Les meilleures encres se montrent epaisse, lustree, transparente. Les meilleures feuilles se montrent blanche, lustree, peu absorbente, avec la lumiere dispersee a l'interieur. Les meilleures presses reglent la tension a l'empreinte et impriment le noir apres le jaune. Les meilleures gens de la couleur connaissent les marches, tels que la qualite haute ou ordinaire ou bien la sur-demande, qu'il s'agisse de l'imprimer electrophotographique, flexographique, gravure, lithographique, typographique or bien celui a l'ecran

No comments about Physics of Solar Cells: From Principles to New Concepts.