500 years ago Richard D. Feynman was Leonardo Da Vinci. I have 2 of his 3 volume set of lectures, more there than in a 100 physics texts. He tells the story of once, after getting the Nobel Prize in Sweden, he was on his way to visit collegues at CERN. He was invited to this big party featuring european royalty. So this elderly lady, all covered with jewelry and too much makeup, approaches him and asks : And what is it you do young man?
He launches into explaining his Nobel Prize...and about 2 sentences later the most amazing thing happened : her whole face just GLAZED over...and she turned to talk to someone else. Funny how QM has that effect on 99.99% of the population, start explaining quantum weirdness and their face just GLAZES over...as they go mumbling away.
Feynman’s last service was on the challenger commission, explaining with pliers and ice cubes in water how the solid rocket booster seals failed. Too bad Morton Thiokol didn’t have him on board as an advisor earlier...
Thiokol had plenty of good engineers and scientists, and it made the right call by advising NASA to not launch that day.
http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/archives/87////870128.html
Thiokol didn’t fail to know that their o-rings wouldn’t seal at low temperatures, nor did they fail to communicate that information to NASA.
The failure was organizational, not technical.
Get whichever volume you are missing. The material is scattered all over and you will be missing something important no matter what you look up.