As heard on BBC Radio 4 Start The Week'Felix Flicker brilliantly reveals the secrets behind the modern-day magic we call physics' Marcus du SautoyImagine you had a crystal that lit upon your command: magic must be at work, and you must surely be a wizard. But what if you discovered that you routinely cast such spells? Are the spells no longer magic ... or are you a wizard?The modern term for wizardry is condensed matter phy...

'This is a book about wizardry. It will reveal the secrets of the wizard's art, and how you, too, can learn to follow them. It is a history of magic'Condensed matter physics is what happens when atoms cluster together to make something of a size we can understand - something like a car, say, rather than a galaxy. It's what makes things hover in mid-air (magnetic levitation) or crystals glow (thermoluminescence). It's also what we mean by magick.Join Felix F...

An award-winning Oxford physicist draws on classic sci-fi, fantasy fiction, and everyday phenomena to explain and celebrate the magical properties of condensed matter physics and the world around us.If you were to present the feats of modern science to someone from the past, those feats would surely be considered magic. Theoretical physicist Felix Flicker proves that they are indeed magic—just familiar magic. The name for this magic is “condensed matter physics.” M...

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