physics

My Brief History

My Brief History is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand My Brief History rather than just read about it. In short: My Brief History is a memoir published in 2013 by the English physicist Stephen Hawking. The book recounts Hawking's journey from his post-war London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity.

Key takeaways

My Brief History belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect My Brief History to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of My Brief History from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

My Brief History is a memoir published in 2013 by the English physicist Stephen Hawking. The book recounts Hawking's journey from his post-war London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity.

Reception My Brief History has received modest praise from critics. Ian Sample of The Guardian wrote, "Hawking's memoir, My Brief History, is a skip across the surface of the Cambridge cosmologist's life, from his quirky upbringing in London and St Albans to his latest work on the beginning of time and the evolution of the universe. The details are sketched, but the brevity makes for a bold picture. Hawking's intellectual activity soars as his illness takes hold and eventually puts an intolerable burden on his marriages." Chuck Leddy of The Boston Globe similarly observed, "It's clear, though, that Hawking is more comfortable looking up at the universe than into himself, more concerned with detailing the evolution of a career than the twists and turns of a life, though he does reveal some interesting details about his beginnings as a scientist. In clean, direct prose, Hawking leads us from his birth in Oxford in 1942 to the present."

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with My Brief History

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what My Brief History claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to My Brief History before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about My Brief History ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of My Brief History

In research: My Brief History appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses My Brief History in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: My Brief History is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2013 English-language non-fiction books, 2013 non-fiction books, Bantam Books books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for My Brief History outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study My Brief History in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what My Brief History means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain My Brief History out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is My Brief History in simple terms?

Why does My Brief History matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study My Brief History?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on My Brief History.