The List: Five Physics Lessons for Obama

Everyone expects the U.S. president to know the difference between Sunni and Shiite, or understand the causes of the financial meltdown. But in today’s high-tech world, many critical issues have more to do with electrons than economics. Here are five short physics lessons for President-elect Obama from the author of Physics for Future Presidents.

BY RICHARD MULLER | NOVEMBER 14, 2008

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Terrorism

Conventional wisdom: A nuclear attack is the biggest terrorist threat we face.

The hard science: Making a nuclear bomb is excruciatingly difficult. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il spent billions making onestarving his people in the processand even his bomb fizzled. When it was tested in 2006, it released the energy equivalent of about half the jet fuel of...

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