The author uses the literary devise of explaining physics to his dog to make the topic accessible and interesting.

She's not so enthralled with the Copenhagen interpretation: "I don't think I like this interpretation, it's awfully solipsistic, isn't it? This book makes some serious science concepts easier to grasp and makes me laugh (per conversations with dog).I can totally see there being a sweet spot, though, an audience for this book both dog-happy and math-friendly—but I just don’t belong to that, and I have plenty of other physics books I still need to read. stars, but given how much fun I've had while also learning new things have pushed it to 4 stars on Goodreads. I don’t think How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is going to make it onto my list of recommended physics reads, though. The former scenario makes for better reading, but it also introduces the potential for more misconceptions.

Taking Emmy’s anarchic behaviour as a starting point, Orzel explains the key theories of quantum physics. I’m a humanities creative type, and so I struggle to understand the science behind quantum mechanics. He makes the point that dogs (and nonscientists) have an advantage in learning quantum physics because they have fewer preconceived notions of how the world works, so they can more easily accept some of the basic concepts. The conversations that Chad Orzel has with his "very good dog" Emmy are mostly cute and original, but the trick eventually did start to wear me down a little bit.The "teaching to your dog" gimmick is cute at first but gets kind of old eventually, even though I'm sure that Orzel's dog is, as she reports, a VERY good dog.

In a baffling feat, 'particles' exist in all their allowed states simultaneously, like a schizophrenic who manages to act out all his different personalities at once. Quantum mechanics is never an easy topic for me, and I had to re-read pages occasionally and work my way through the concepts. I was less enamoured whenever he started talking about photons as waves and interference patterns … the way he was explaining it ended up confusing me and doubting my knowledge of quantum physics rather than honing it! In between, it explains Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the quantum Zeno effect, and even quantum teleportation. We'll see how they compare - and whether repetition and a different way of presenting the weirdness continue to nudge me along a wee bit in my attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible.If they were bor­ing lit­tle holes through the bar­rier, they would lose some en­ergy in the process, and we’d be able to de­tect that. That is to say, if you’re reading this because you like physics talk involving dogs, you might not be so happy with the equations and symbols Orzel occasionally throws your way. Here you will find the most fundamental concepts related to quantum physics explained: Uncertainty principle, particle-wave duality, many worlds theory and quantum entanglement.