How to Teach Physics to Your Dog

Chad Orzel is a physics professor who one day decided that the best way to explain quantum mechanics to a general audience was to have a dialogue with his dog, Emmy. This is either a sign of pedagogical genius or advanced cabin fever, but the result — regardless of diagnosis — is genuinely one of the better popular science books on quantum physics.

Emmy, as rendered on the page, is appropriately dog-brained: she wants to know if quantum tunneling means she can walk through the fence to chase squirrels, whether she could use the uncertainty principle to sneak extra treats, and whether superposition means she could be in multiple locations simultaneously to maximize nap coverage. These are, remarkably, excellent entry points into actual physics concepts.

What Orzel figured out is that the best questions about quantum mechanics sound childish because the subject is genuinely counterintuitive at every level. A dog asking why a particle can be in two places at once is functionally the same as a student asking the same thing, but with the social pressure removed. Emmy’s cheerful bafflement mirrors the reader’s own, which makes the explanations feel collaborative rather than condescending.

The physics is real, current, and carefully explained without becoming a textbook. If you’ve always bounced off quantum mechanics but never quite understood why it’s weird, start here. Your dog can read it too, probably.