I found this device far too distracting and cheesy for my tastes, and it adds very little to Orzel’s explanations. My only problem with Emmy (the dog) was that she's clearly smarter than my dog, who really didn't get a thing out of this book. I learned quite a lot from the stories and explanation and can recommend this to anyone with a popular scientific interest in (quantum) physics.

I know that dog of yours is a brain-box, but I must confess I liked your book despite its unique selling point, rather than because of it. If you ever wanted to get a glimpse at what it like to be as smart as a rocket scientist, or have any curiosity about particles and waves, give this book a try. Before reading the book, I was a little concerned about it being just another “cutesy” approach to a very difficult topic. Orzel frames each chapter within a conversation with his dog, Emmy, grounded in the context of something a dog would do, like hunt bunnies or eat treats. The thing I really liked about this book is that Orzel actually goes into detail about how the experiments were designed that proved various aspects of quantum theory.Somehow I had the expectation that this would be dumbed down a lot, but the latter half of each chapter proved to be quite informative. The last chapter is a curious kind of addendum, in which Orzel debunks some of the abuses of the word “quantum” to promote healing scams or free energy scams. I am aware that in my own review, I have done the same, and introduced the metaphors of 'fog' and 'schizophrenic' to capture the behaviour of particles. Especially the first chapters were very good, after 50% the book focussed more on the weird universe of quantum teleportation and the measurements done in quantum optics, in line with the professional interest of Chad Orzel.

The unique concept behind the book is both its charm and the reason for me to doubt whether or not to give it a slightly lower rating. Anybody who was forced by their physics teacher at school to comment on the way that iron filings orientate when brought into proximity with a magnet knows what the classical interpretation of a field is. Accessible to the point that I actually understood big chunks with varying degrees of uncertainty (that was a quantum joke, right there). This technique, I think, is supposed to explain quantum physics in such simple words that even a dog could understand.The conversations that Chad Orzel has with his "very good dog" Emmy are mostly cute and original, but the trick eventually did start to wear me down a little bit. Later on, the infant learns to refer to this bundle of properties by using a shortcut phonetic code.