Books in the Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics series

Note from the prefaces in the first and second volumes: "This four-volume book grew from a four-semester general physics curriculum which I developed and taught for the past decade to undergraduate students at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee."

This book provides an in-depth and accessible description of special relativity and quantum mechanics which together form the foundation of 21st century physics.

Furthermore, it presents Galilean transformation and the principle of relativity, inadequacy of Galilean relativity and emergence of the spatial theory of relativity with an emphasis on physical understanding, as well as the debate over relative motion versus absolute motion and Mach's principle followed by the principle of equivalence.

This book presents a comprehensive course of quantum mechanics for undergraduate and graduate students.

In this book, a physicist and expert on the history of the Manhattan Project clearly explains the underlying science behind the development of the atomic bomb, including how atomic bombs work, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions, and the legacy of the Project.

This book offers a detailed and stimulating account of the Lagrangian, or variational, approach to general relativity and beyond. After an introduction to field theories and the variational approach, individual sections focus on the variational approach in relation to special relativity, general relativity, and alternative theories of gravity.

This textbook presents a basic undergraduate course in physics covering all essential aspects of mechanics, mechanical properties of matter, thermal properties of matter, elementary thermodynamics, electrodynamics, electricity, magnetism, light, optics and sound. It includes simple mathematical approaches to each physical principle, with carefully selected examples and exercises supporting each chapter.This second edition of a widely popular textbook ¿ boasting close to 6 million downloads ¿ adds many new exercises and solutions, a new summary for each chapter, boxed features separating the examples from the text, and highlights fundamental physical outcomes and rules. The appendices provide a quick and helpful point of reference for all fundamental conversion factors and basic formulas, as well as rules for differentiation and integration, helping students to understand the elementary mathematical steps used for solving the examples and exercises. Visually impressive and full of real-word examples with step-by-step solutions, this textbook is an indispensable tool for both instructors and students seeking direct access to a broad spectrum of physics.

This textbook is an introduction to the Brownian motion of colloids and nano-particles, and the diffusion of molecules. One very appealing aspect of Brownian motion, as this book illustrates, is that the subject connects a broad variety of topics, including thermal physics, hydrodynamics, reaction kinetics, fluctuation phenomena, statistical thermodynamics, osmosis and colloid science. The book is based on a set of lecture notes that the authors used for an undergraduate course at the University of Utrecht, Netherland. It aims to provide more than a simplified qualitative description of the subject, without getting bogged down in difficult mathematics.Each chapter contains exercises, ranging from straightforward ones to more involved problems, addressing instances from (thermal motion in) chemistry, physics and life sciences. Exercises also deal with derivations or calculations that are skipped in the main text.The book offers a treatment of Brownian motion on a level appropriate for bachelor/undergraduate students of physics, chemistry, soft matter and the life sciences. PhD students attending courses and doing research in colloid science or soft matter will also benefit from this book.

This book, the second in a two-volume set, provides an introduction to the basics of (mainly) non-relativistic quantum mechanics. While the first volume addresses the basic principles, this second volume discusses applications and extensions to more complex problems. In addition to topics dealt with in traditional quantum mechanics texts, such as symmetries or many-body problems, it also treats issues of current interest such as entanglement, Bell¿s inequality, decoherence and various aspects of quantum information in detail. Furthermore, questions concerning the basis of quantum mechanics and epistemological issues which are relevant e.g. to the realism debate are discussed explicitly. A chapter on the interpretations of quantum mechanics rounds out the book. Readers are introduced to the requisite mathematical tools step by step. In the appendix, the most relevant mathematics is compiled in compact form, and more advanced topics such as the Lenz vector, Hardy¿s experiment and Shor¿s algorithm are treated in more detail. As an essential aid to learning and teaching, 130 exercises are included, most of them with solutions.This revised second edition is expanded by an introduction into some ideas and problems of relativistic quantum mechanics. In this second volume, an overview of quantum field theory is given and basic conceptions of quantum electrodynamics are treated in some detail. Originally written as a course for students of science education, the book addresses all those science students and others who are looking for a reasonably simple, fresh and modern introduction to the field.

This textbook fills the gap between the very basic and the highly advanced volumes that are widely available on the subject.

This book offers a comprehensive, university-level introduction to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

This book offers an essential bridge between college-level introductions and advanced graduate-level books on special relativity. It begins at an elementary level, presenting and discussing the basic concepts normally covered in college-level works, including the Lorentz transformation.

This book presents astrophysics from basic principles without requiring any previous study of astronomy or astrophysics. This one-semester overview provides 15 lecture-sized chapters and 50 set-aside focus elements.

The book treats the two-electron atom as the simplest example of the many-electron atom-as opposed to using techniques that are not applicable to many-electron atoms-so that it is unnecessary to develop additional equations when turning to multielectron atoms, such as carbon.

This basic course in physics is aimed at scientists and engineers and, along with a wealth of helpful exercises and solutions, includes the mathematical basics for each topic. It covers everything from elementary thermodynamics to magnetism and optics.

Based on the celebrated lectures of the influential particle physicist Giorgio Giacomelli, this volume, now in a new edition, aims to provide the basic theoretical foundations, and phenomenological knowledge of, the structure of matter at the subatomic level.

This is a second edition of a textbook that provides the first comprehensive, easy-to-read, and up-to-date account of the fascinating discipline of archaeoastronomy, in which the relationship between ancient constructions and the sky is studied in order to gain a better understanding of the ideas of the architects of the past and of their religious and symbolic worlds. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which explores the past relations between astronomy and people, power, the afterworld, architecture, and landscape. The second part then discusses in detail the fundamentals of archaeoastronomy, including the celestial coordinates; the apparent motion of the sun, moon, stars, and planets; observation of celestial bodies at the horizon; the use of astronomical software in archaeoastronomy; and current methods for making and analyzing measurements. The final section reviews what archaeoastronomy can now tell us about the nature and purpose of such sites and structures as Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza, Chichen Itza, the Angkor Temples, the Campus Martius, and the Valley of the Temples of Agrigento. In addition, it provides a set of exercises that can be performed using non-commercial free software, e.g., Google Earth and Stellarium, and that will equip readers to conduct their own research. This new edition features a completely new chapter on archaeoastronomy in Asia and an ΓÇ£augmented realityΓÇ¥ framework, which on the one hand enhances the didactic value of the book using direct links to the relevant sections of the authorΓÇÖs MOOC (online) lessons and, on the other, allows readers to directly experience ΓÇô albeit virtually ΓÇômany of the spectacular archaeological sites described in the book. This is an ideal introduction to what has become a wide-ranging multidisciplinary science.

What's the point of calculating definite integrals since you can't possibly do them all?What makes doing the specific integrals in this book of value aren't the specific answers we'll obtain, but rather the methods we'll use in obtaining those answers;

Starting from the thermodynamics of the Sun-Earthsystem and biosphere, this book steps, via such subjects as the greenhouse effect and energetics of metabolism, into to the microscopic world (physics of bacteria and unicellular life, cells and tissues, biomolecules); and again to zoology and planetary ecology in a journey guided by Physics.

This book guides undergraduate students in the use of Maxima-a computer algebra system-in solving problems in classical mechanics. When it comes to problems that are too difficult to solve by hand, computer algebra systems that can perform symbolic mathematical manipulations are a valuable tool.