Introductory text to atomic onto std. model

Question

My wife mentioned today that she would love to know more about 'how the world is made up'. She stopped learning science at a young age and finds most stuff meaningless or incomprehensible.

She is not a child - so the challenge is, how to introduce the history and development of atomic physics with minimal specialist vocabulary, in a manner that reliably explains how physics got to the standard model. Pictures are good, waffle is bad, mathematics and equations is a no, hand-waving or similar patronising (eg '...for idiots!') statements are a no.

Her wish is aspirational - so the presentation needs to be reasonably effortless...

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Answer 1

The New Quantum Universe, by Tony Hey & Patrick Walters; (Cambridge University Press)
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0521564571

appears to be at just the right level. By the way, earlier, unrevised versions thereof are not inferior. The saga is over a century old, by now. No math, just the right pictures, no "lies to children". The book I would have liked to read sixty years ago. A good instinct of avoiding the inessential (even if it were titillating or entertaining).

To normalize the above opinion, I hold the bulk of today's popular science reporting in the lowest of contempts, as they lack perspective and are more obsessed with impressing, rather than informing and organizing that information in a way meaningful to a thinking person; and thus succeed in conveying a boatload of baffling misimpressions, often remedied on this site. (Yes, I talk back at PBS pompous reports on the subject; most of the colleagues I respect do too.)

Answer 2

It may be about the "other" standard model. But one of my favourite books about science without equations is The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg. The main goal of the book is to make a century worth of science not look like magic. It shows how, with a lot of work and patience, seemingly tiny things like checking which light frequencies are coming from stars or trying to minimize radio interference can take us from a completely wrong model of the universe to the forefront of modern cosmology.