Books : SYNC: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
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by: Steven H. Strogatz
List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 572
EAN: 9780786887217
ISBN: 0786887214
Label: Hyperion
Manufacturer: Hyperion
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: April 14, 2004
Publisher: Hyperion
Release Date: April 14, 2004
Sales Rank: 12554
Studio: Hyperion
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The tendency to synchronize may be the most mysterious and pervasive drive in all of nature. It has intrigued some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Norbert Wiener, Brian Josephson, and Arthur Winfree.
At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great read
Nutshell review - This is a great read, eloquently written and provides a very exciting, layman's overview of the fascinating world of order, chaos and synchronization - where it comes from and how it plays a role in our life and our world. Strogatz is one of the original researchers into this interesting field and gives us lots of food for thought! Excellent.
Rating:  - not great...
It covers a lot of topics and some of them are entertaining. But seems unfocused and hard to get a big picture.
Rating: - A disappointment
Author Steve Strogatz's book "Sync" ostensibly concerns the spontaneous synchronization of oscillators, where an "oscillator" is anything that exhibits periodic behavior -- be it a clock, a flashing firefly, or an electron in a superconductor.
The book is clearly modeled on James Gleick's book "Chaos": both books follow various researchers who originally work in isolation but who gradually recognize that they are investigating different aspects of the same phenomenon. As Gleick did ... Read More
Rating: - Resonance
What I found most interesting about Strogatz's sync theory was the position that it did not require an extensive measure of complexity in order to achieve synchronization. It merely required a critical mass or critical repetition in order to effectuate a phase transformation. The phenomenon of resonance performs similarly. Synchronization may be a form of resonance which has been overlooked, thus far, in our reality (biosphere).
Rating:  - Heavy Science for Light Readers
What a fun book. Strogatz has managed to talk about the leading edge of mathematical modeling without a single equation! He uses a comfortable prose and never strays too far from the story of his research. The reader is treated to a view of the way that the world network of scientists organizes itself within areas of research and finds unions where research from one speciality can contribute to another. Who would have thought that the western power grid, the Internet Movie Database and the nervous ... Read More
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