Abrazol Publishing Newsletter, January 2023

Happy New Year Everyone. Here's what's going on.

The Crookes radiometer video is finished. It gives a very short history of the radiometer and a description of how it works.

The Enigma of the Crookes Radiometer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyhuSnaVS24

Here's our bestseller list for the entire year of 2022. The list is in order of sales with the highest first. The percent of total sales is at the end of each title.

  1. Max and Moritz: a Dual Language German-English Children's Story (20.1%)
  2. Information Theory: A Concise Introduction (15.6%)
  3. Creating Rhythms (7.6%)
  4. Signals from the Subatomic World: How to Build a Proton Precession Magnetometer (6.8%)
  5. Combinatorics Problems and Solutions (6.0)
  6. Struwwelpeter: Dual Language German-English Children's Stories (5.3%)
  7. Finite Automata and Regular Expressions: Problems and Solutions (5.2%)
  8. Probability Problems and Solutions (4.0%)
  9. Creating Melodies (3.7%)
  10. Recursive Digital Filters: A Concise Guide (3.5%)
  11. Bet Smart: The Kelly System for Gambling and Investing (3.4%)
  12. Combinatorics II Problems and Solutions: Counting Patterns (2.9%)
  13. Nell: An SVG Drawing Language (2.7%)
  14. Pattern Generation for Computational Art (2.6%)
  15. Pairs Trading: A Bayesian Example (2.4%)
  16. Coin Tossing: The Hydrogen Atom of Probability (2.4%)
  17. Art of the Golden Ratio (1.8%)
  18. The Enigma of the Crookes Radiometer (new in 2022) (1.3%)
  19. Passive Butterworth Filter Cookbook (1.0%)
  20. Creating Noise (0.6%)
  21. Art of Pi (0.3%)
  22. Engineer's Notebook on Inductor and Transformer Circuits: problems, solutions and simulations(new in 2022) (0.3%)
  23. Hexagonal Tilings and Patterns (0.3%)
  24. Polar Coordinate Graph Paper (0.2%)

Here is a book we recently read: A Mind Over Matter : Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many by Andrew Zangwill

This is a great biography of the most creative and influential condensed matter physicist of the second half of the twentieth century. The author is a condensed matter physicist himself so the book is clear on background explanations and professional achievements of the subject. This biography has just the right mix of technical details and personal information. I found it hard to put down, as the author is a superb writer with an engaging style, who has done his homework with this book. I will be reading any future works he puts out in the history of physics category. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the history of physics.

If you're interested in an information theory approach to aesthetics this paper may interest you: On the Mathematics of Beauty: Beautiful Images (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08244.pdf), A.M. Khalili

A couple good quality videos we've come across recently:

  1. Why Do Things Spin? - with Hugh Hunt, The Royal Institution
  2. The Anti-Smartphone Revolution, ColdFusion

We're giving away one paperback copy of our book The Enigma of the Crookes Radiometer. Just send an email to xxxxxxx@yyyyyyy.com with "Crookes Radiometer" in the subject and your name and address in the email body. We'll collect responses until the end of the day (US Mountain Time) Sunday January 15 and then randomly select one person to mail the book to free of charge.

We thank everyone who has bought our books and will buy our books.

Adios amigos,
Richard and Stefan Hollos

Send comments to: Richard Hollos (richard[AT]abrazol DOT com).