Quark

Quarks are elementary particles and are the building blocks of protons and neutrons which atoms are made of. I learnt this from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. And no, I'm not bragging, the book isn't at all difficult to follow and makes you feel super intelligent since you're actually understanding it. Hawking writes so easily, as if he's having a conversation with you. The book is fascinating and covers scientific theories from The Big Bang to quantum mechanics and the very sought after Unified Theory.

There are many books that cover similar ground with a slightly different focus. E=mc2 is one of my favourites written by David Bodanis and not only explains Einstein's formulation of this famous theory, but also all the work done before him. But, my number one favourite is definitely the three Science of Discworld novels.

As seen in the picture, the wizards of the Unseen University accidentally create a world (most probably ours). This world is not flat, has no magic, contains something the wizards have named narrativium and has numerous physical laws like gravity. The books follow the start of this new world and cover many theories and what-if experiments. For example, what if Darwin had actually decided to carry on with his theological studies and not get on The Beagle? The books are divided into alternating chapters - one from the wizards perspective as they fiddle with the new world (Terry Pratchett) and the other are the more scientific chapters (Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen).

All of these books does make you wonder what the hell we're thinking. This is our one and only planet in our one and only life-sustaining (so far as we know) solar system - once we've polluted it to an uninhabitable state (which could be before, during or after we kill each other with weapons of mass destruction), we won't be able to simply fly to the next solar system and colonize Earth 2. Science and technology isn't progressing nearly fast enough for that to happen.

I don't want to be all doom and doom, but it does make me think that getting angry because your neighbour's praying to Buddha or because he wants to marry his boyfriend is such a waste of energy. We really need to start building a friggin' spaceship!