The Trojan Carousel

The Nobel prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, said that he didn't know if there was really a problem with quantum mechanics but if there was, it was a big one. He also suggested that if children were taught quantum concepts early, they might not have any problems at all with the theory.

The Trojan Carousel, a novel, is the story of two schools, the Feynman Elementary School of Advanced Physics, and the affiliated Amdexter School, a traditional middle-grade boys boarding school. In particular, it is the story of Kip, a student at the Feynman school and his friend Alex, a student at Amdexter.

This novel is very hard to categorize: it has a lot of science, but it isn't exactly science-fiction. It is written for both middle-school age kids and also for theoretical physicists. It could perhaps be compared to Harry Potter with magic replaced by physics, but it perhaps has more in common with Lord of the Flies. I've tried to tell a compelling tale and also to describe, to the uninitiated, some of the wonderfully incomprehensible features of quantum mechanics.

Due to both the unusual nature of the novel and also the current state of publishing, I think it might take a long time for The Trojan Carousel to find a good home. I would however, like to have people be able to read it before the next ice age. So I've decided to put the first half of the book up on my site (below), with the offer to e-mail the rest of the novel to anyone who requests it. [Just send me an e-mail at darkzoo@darkzoo.net (with WELF somewhere in the subject line to bypass my spam trap)].

The GEEK CARD
Because the book is for (and about) science geeks, as a marketing tool, I created the Geek Card: a wallet sized card holding geekish data--pi to 60 places, the standard model of elementary particles, a functioning slide rule, chemical and astronomical information, physical constants, a geek joke (the punch line only understood by geeks) in Morse code, etc. Actually, one of the kid characters in the novel had created a very similar card and this geek card therefore seemed a natural tie-in. Since its creation though, the Geek Card has taken on a life of its own.
Click here to go to the GEEK CARD page.

The Trojan Carousel
Chapter 1: Kip and Co.
Chapter 2: Two schools of thought
Chapter 3: Alex
Chapter 4: Todd
Chapter 5: The map is not the territory
Chapter 6: Bucephalus
Chapter 7: Interference
Chapter 8: Alex the Great
Chapter 9: Paradox lost
Chapter 10: Belief in gods
Chapter 11: The Trojan Carousel
Chapter 12: The curved space-time carousel
Chapter 13: The dark carousel
Chapter 14: The Dark Riders
Chapter 15: Some ability with locks
Chapter 16: The Cat Paradox
Chapter 17: Games
Chapter 18: Signs of things to come
Chapter 19: Calling out the Dark Riders
Chapter 20: Eavesdropping
Chapter 21: The Trojan centrifuge
Chapter 22: The defiled shorts
Chapter 23: The cat, Paradox
Chapter 24: Friend or not friend
Chapter 25: The petition war
Chapter 26: Sehr schön
Chapter 27: Thwacked
Chapter 28: Fencing with the saber saw
Chapter 29: The tomato war
Chapter 30: Strategos Todd
Chapter 31: Waiting
Chapter 32: Scouting
Chapter 33: Scouting skills
Chapter 34: Arc of fire
Chapter 35: War
Chapter 36: Fear and courage
Chapter 37: Parallel worlds
Chapter 38: The cat speaks
Chapter 39: Alex is the cat
Chapter 40: A New paradigm

Chapter 1

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