Errata in "Understanding the Universe"
These errors exist in the first printing, but are removed from the second printing and should not exist in the Scientific American Book Club printing.
Page 281, Tab 6.3. In the SSC line, "20,000" should be "40,000"
Page 484, Fig 9.8. Caption should include "Figure courtesy of CERN"
These errors exist in the first and second printing, as well as the Scientific American Book Club edition
Page 372, line 2, "property of the weak." should be "property of the weak
force."
page 502, para. 3, line 3. "the time nor space" should be "the time or
space"
page 521, para 2, line 3. The second <-> should be a comma. So "nu_e <->
nu_mu <-> nu_mu <-> nu_tau" should be "nu_e <-> nu_mu, nu_mu <-> nu_tau"
Page 563, "particle" entry, remove "-" from "- naming convention"
These errors exist in the first hardcover printing, the Scientific American Book Club printing, as well as the first three World Scientific softcover printings.
In the index, the following names are wrong:
Cockcroft (not Cockroft)
Klein, Oskar (not Oscar)
Pastore, Senator (not Pastor)
Rutherford, Ernest (not George)
Schroedinger, Erwin (not Ernest)
(with appreciation to Istvan Hargittai for pointing these out.)
These errors exist in the first hardcover printing, the Scientific American Book Club printing, as well as the first three World Scientific softcover printings.
Page 483, para 1, last line. "Holmden" should be "Holmdel"
(thanks to Rick Swanson for pointing these out).
These errors exist in the first hardcover printing, the Scientific American Book Club printing, as well as the first three World Scientific softcover printings.
Pages 366-369. Very embarassing. On the bottom of page 366, Wu's experiment is stated as using the decay of Co60 -> Ni60 + e+ + nue (the electron neutrino). However, since the charge of the nucleus of Nickel is one more than the charge of Cobalt, this can only occur if Cobalt emits an electron and not a positron. Thus the entire text must change all mentions of positron to electron and all mentions of neutrinos to antineutrinos. This in addition requires figure 7.19 and 7.21 to be changed. The sense and fundamental message of the text is unchanged throughout, but these changes are critical.
Note: this error occurs in many places in the literature. I can actually identify from which source this error entered my text. But it definitely reminds authors to take nothing for granted while writing and the danger of referencing texts other than the original literature.
(with considerable gratitude to Mike Dubbeld for this observation.)
Donald Lincoln
Last modified: Mon Mar 20 18:00:34 CST 2006