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Antoinette Carvajal

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Can a Childrens Book be written to explain String/M Theories, that is friendly and relatable?

Awe inspiring and thought provoking for children. My hope is build curiosity and beauty. Perhaps developing characters being Protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, bosons, fermions. Any ideas on a story line to introduce youngsters to this theory?

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    Budimir Zdravkovic 20+

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    Sep 8 2012: You are talking about highly abstract and mathematical entities. Relating them to common experience may reduce the conceptual validity of the book.

    • Antoinette Carvajal

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      Sep 8 2012: I have alot of homework to do but in that aspect of relating abstract and mathematical entities, math would be the key using a character to express an idea of an mathematical equation and making a relatabe fit. The concept of the theory would be validated by the theory itself in using these entities. I will do more research by other authors on how to introduce these, authors such as Steven Hawkins books for kids and kid friendly introductions from either Lawrence Hall of Science or Lawrence Berkeley Lab as suggested by Fritzie Reisner. What are your thoughts or suggestions on this?
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        Budimir Zdravkovic 20+

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        Sep 8 2012: I think it could work, if you do a lot of research and brainstormed the ideas, if you review the concepts several times and you do careful editing. Also consulting with people who work in the field could also be useful.

        If you manage to pull it off it would be a good idea. For instance I'm glad that I first got introduced into quantum mechanics through organic chemistry, it gave me a conceptual insight into the subject which I would've otherwise struggled with, if I were directly introduced to the math. Organic chemistry has a very neat way to illustrate the delocalization of electrons through illustrated molecular structures we call resonance structures. Here I learned that an electron is not 100% localized in space, instead you can have a fraction of a localized electron or a fraction of localized "chemical bond energy" in a given unit of space. Then when I got introduced to the math it was so much easier to understand what was going on.

        So from my experience, illustrations help a lot.

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