An insightful little book w/ clever thought experiments and a little math. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of how our perceptions can trick us when we do not take into account the very different speeds with which light and sound travels.

Quite simply, the most entertaining popular science book that I have ever read! I read it in college, and I go back to it again and again... ( )

Perelman's Physics for Entertainment -- this is a translation from the eighteenth Russian edition -- owes its wide popularity to the rare talent of its author who was able to single out and present in an entertaining form ordinary facts and phenomena of profound meaning from the angle of physics. Perelman had a very definite purpose in mind when he wrote this book. Describing established conceptions and long known laws, he introduces us to the fundamentals of modern physics and tries to get us ""think in physical categories"". No wonder there is nothing in this book about the latest achievements in electronics, nuclear physics and the like. Though he wrote the book almost fifty years ago, he continually revised and supplemented it up to its thirteenth edition in 1936. In 1942 he died in the Leningrad blockade and subsequent editions were published posthumously.
We have not attempted to rewrite the book in this present edition, but have merely endeavoured to bring it up to date.