| Zusammenfassung: | Of all the fundamental questions that have fascinated civilization, one of the most persistent concerns the nature and behavior of matter - the basic stuff of which things are made. This book reports on what science has learned to date about matter in its three familar forms - solid, liquid and gas - and in its more recently recognized "fourth state," plasma. It chronicles the most portentous discovery of our age, the fact that matter can be converted into energy, and describes the dramatic and continuing pursuit of the inmost secret of matter, the atomic nucleus. The text chapters of this volume alternate with picture essays. Each can be read independently of the other, but in the main the essays supplement the text. For example, Chapter 7, on the study of the nucleus, is followed by an essay showing the giant new tools used to probe it.
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