The Isaac Newton School of Driving: Physics and Your Car

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Math For Me, But Still a Good Informative Book
Review: Barry Parker has written a book that gets down to the nitty gritty of how a car actually works. All the way down to the physics of it. There is actually alot to be learned from his book even if you're not a physics buff. For example, I now understand the difference between a 2 and a 4 stroke engine. I still can't explain the physics behind any of this stuff, but then again, I don't really want to. If you have an interest in understanding cars, or an interest in physics, this book will keep you interested with Barry's down-to-earth writing style. But if you don't like physics or math, it's not a total loss. Those parts are easily skimmed or even skipped entirely.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Math For Me, But Still a Good Informative Book
Review: Barry Parker has written a book that gets down to the nitty gritty of how a car actually works. All the way down to the physics of it. There is actually alot to be learned from his book even if you're not a physics buff. For example, I now understand the difference between a 2 and a 4 stroke engine. I still can't explain the physics behind any of this stuff, but then again, I don't really want to. If you have an interest in understanding cars, or an interest in physics, this book will keep you interested with Barry's down-to-earth writing style. But if you don't like physics or math, it's not a total loss. Those parts are easily skimmed or even skipped entirely.

Rating:
Summary: A Century's great Inventions
Review: Barry Parker's book The Isaac Newton School of Driving is one of the few whose underlying message transcends the scope of the subject matter. Like the tale of the sorcerer's apprentice who remembers the charm for hauling water from a nearby river into his master's bathtub, but has forgotten the magic words to timely stem the flood, so could Parker's writings be taken as the reminder of not to make the road of technological achievements into a one way street.
In the fairy tale, only the timely interfering of his master saves the apprentice from drowning in the waters he himself has conjured, and us from missing out on his story altogether. Likewise, Parker shows us the way to upgrade our consumer knowledge into solid know how.
Sorcerers haven't made it into our times, but we, their apprentices, are blooming. We know all the charms that transmute our former hand-tools into vacuum cleaners, television sets, and self-propelled vehicles, to name only a few. But did we follow up in learning the "undo" commands?
The abundance and sophistication of technological contraptions within reach of our pocket books calls for an understanding of not alone what they do, but principally how they do it, and reading instruction sheets alone will not help.
The Isaac Newton School of Driving opens up with a crash course on the physical principles of maneuvering animated objects, vulgo automobiles. We recall the basics of the four-stroke engine, the machine some of us remember as the light-weight primary mover which made aviation possible.
While the Carnot Cycle is introduced as the thermodynamic principle behind it all, a glimpse at the Wankel rotary engine and the Volkswagen W engine conclude the introductory chapters. What follows are easily understandable presentations of a car's electrical, mechanical, and hydraulic elements. Of special interest are the author's applications of probability calculus, Mandelbrot's theory of chaos, and the Complexity Theory, on the flow of traffic and the preconditions on traffic congestion.
We cannot thank authors like Barry Parker enough for their efforts to open peoples' eyes to the underlying principles of those engineering wonders we take for granted, and in particular the ones we operate on our daily trips to the office.

Rating:
Summary: Good but could be better
Review: In short, the idea of writing this book was an excellent one. The book's potential is tremendous. However, rating it fairly is a more difficult matter. On the positive side, the writing style is very friendly, engaging and clear; a few of the author's personal experiences are peppered throughout - a big plus. The topics include: driving, most if not all of the various systems in cars, as well as the road-tire interface. It even covers car racing and theories of traffic congestion. A lot of interesting, indeed fascinating, information is presented. On the negative side, however, although some items are discussed clearly and as thoroughly as one might expect in such a book, other items are briefly glossed over while some seem to come to an abrupt end. The physics in each case is discussed to correspondingly varying degrees. Some equations are incorrect due to errors in subscripts and some graphs' axes are mislabeled, i.e., editorial mistakes requiring more careful editing. Some equations are magically presented out of thin air, while the derivations of others are are briefly discussed before presenting them. I would hope that, in the future, a second edition of this book would appear in which the various shortcomings would be corrected and additional material added to even out the physics, the various explanations and include a few formula derivations (or recommend references if the derivations are too involved). In other words, perhaps 50 to 100 additional pages may be appropriate. Should such a second edition of this book appear, I would be among the first to get a copy. As it stands, it is valuable reading for any driver; however, a revised edition, as discussed above, could satisfy the needs of the more scientifically curious as well. I am giving the book as much as four stars mainly because of its concept, its tremendous potential, its excellent writing style and the interesting information that it contains. An appropriate second edition would earn an easy five stars.