Quantum Physics for Babies
About five years ago, I?was asked to give?a presentation as part of our distinguished speaker series giving an introduction to EDA. I called it EDA 101 (now called Semiconductor 101). It was pretty basic, and I worried it was so simplistic it would be patronizing. But I didn't need to worry. Everyone loved it, and it was the most viewed presentation of the series that year. People from our legal and HR departments came up to me and said it was the first time they had a clue what the company they worked for actually did. Surprisingly, people from engineering said similar things. If you have a Ph.D. in placement algorithms and you work on Innovus, you don't get to lift your head up and see what is?outside the trench very often.
Ladybird Books
In my post,?The Ladybird Book of Quantum Mechanics, I talked about being what Americans would call a TA (we said tutor) in first-year computer science at the University of Edinburgh. I recommended everyone bought and read what I think of as?The Ladybird Book of the Computer?but which is actually called?How It Works...The Computer, A Ladybird Book. Since this is a book written for children, the students thought I was joking. But I wasn't. It is the best introduction (at the time) to what a computer was and how it worked. Of course, it is dated somewhat today, but a lot less than you think. If you read the post I referenced earlier, there is a link to an online scan of the book from over forty years ago. One thing I learned from both creating EDA101 and reading Ladybird books is that it is never patronizing to explain things simply but completely accurately.
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For Babies Books
I recently came across a series of books by Chris Ferrie that do just that. Chris is described on the back of the books as:
A physicist, mathematician, and father of four budding young scientists. He believes it is never too early to introduce children to big ideas!
Group Director at Cadence | Former GTM leader & GM at COMSOL, OnScale (now ANSYS), Rescale, SimScale | Technology executive specialized in multiphysics, digital twins, AI/ML, CFD, nuclear engineering
2 年My kids love those books!
Back in the 70s I worked as he librarian for what was then one of the UK's biggest software companies. There was a large graduate recruitment programme with some computing graduates but mostly from outside the field. The Ladybird book was required reading