Review: It’s (Just) Rocket Scienceby Jeff Foust
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| Most readers of this publication are familiar with the physics concepts discussed in the book but might appreciate the vignettes about the missions discussed in it. |
Whatever “story physics” might be, it did plant the seed for what would become this book. Muro, who says she was inspired by spaceflight as a student to study math and physics in school, now uses spaceflight to teach basic physics, while providing insights—stories, if you will—into missions and programs.
Each chapter of the book takes up a topic, ranging from angular momentum to the electromagnetic spectrum, coupled with missions and programs. A discussion of momentum and collisions is paired, logically, with NASA’s DART mission that collided with an asteroid’s small moon, altering its orbit. A chapter on how photons have momentum despite not having mass is discussed along with The Planetary Society’s Lightsail program that tested solar sails in orbit.
Most readers of this publication are familiar with the physics concepts discussed in the book, including topics such as the rocket equation and the difference between orbital velocity and escape velocity, but might appreciate the vignettes about the missions discussed in it. Who will appreciate it, though, are those people who are interested in space but either don’t understand some of the basic physics or believed it was too difficult or too math-intensive to grasp. (There are equations and some algebra in the book, but Muro limits the most math-heavy discussions to some optional “interludes” between sections of the book.)
It’s (Just) Rocket Science might not be the “story physics” that high school student of Muro’s was seeking, but it does tell a good story about physics and spaceflight that’s accessible to readers curious about those topics.
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