Car crash physics: Tiger Woods’ edition

A six-year-old book on physics shot from 396,224th place on the Amazon sales list to 2,268th after Florida Highway patrol photos revealed a copy lying among the glass shards in the golfer’s battered Cadillac Escalade. Get a Grip on Physics by veteran science writer John Gribbin is “one of my older and lesser known books—a guide to new physics for non-scientists,” says the writer. “I can only guess that Tiger has been interested in the various stories about the Large Hadron Collider, and wanted to learn more. Several of my books have been doing better than usual this year." The book deals with the basics of physics, from its earliest developments to cosmology, and might be of interest to a detail-obsessive golfer, although it contains no discussion of what happens when a heavy SUV collides with a stationary fire hydrant.

The Independent