In this new edition of the standard undergraduate textbook on electricity and magnetism, David Griffiths provides expanded discussions on topics such as the nature of field lines, the crystal ambiguity, eddy currents, and the Thomson kink model. Ideal for junior and senior undergraduate students from physics and electrical engineering, the book now includes many new examples and problems, including numerical applications (in Mathematica) to reflect the increasing importance of computational techniques in contemporary physics. Many figures have been redrawn, while updated references to recent research articles not only emphasize that new discoveries are constantly made in this field, but also help to expand readers' understanding of the topic and of its importance in current physics research. Read more

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The plain-English guide to understanding quantum physicsMastering quantum physics is no easy feat, but with the help of Quantum Physics For Dummies you can work at your own pace to unlock key concepts and fascinating facts. Packed with invaluable explanations, equations, and step-by-step instructions, this book makes a challenging subject much more accessible. Great for college students taking a quantum physics course, Quantum Physics For Dummies offers complete coverage of the subject, along with numerous examples to help you tackle the tough stuff. The Schrodinger Equation, the foundations of quantum physics, vector notation, scattering theory, angular momentum―it’s all in here. This handy guide helps you prepare for exams and succeed at learning quantum physics. Get clear explanations of the core concepts in quantum physics Review the math principles needed for quantum physics equationsLearn the latest breakthroughs and research in the fieldClarify difficult subjects and equations from your college courseQuantum Physics For Dummies is great a resource for students who need a supplement to the textbook to help them tackle this challenging subject. Read more

The Physics GRE plays a significant role in deciding admissions to nearly all US physics Ph.D. programs, yet few exam-prep books focus on the test's actual content and unique structure. Recognized as one of the best student resources available, this tailored guide has been thoroughly updated for the current Physics GRE. It contains carefully selected review material matched to all of the topics covered, as well as tips and tricks to help solve problems under time pressure. It features three full-length practice exams, revised to accurately reflect the difficulty of the current test, with fully worked solutions so that students can simulate taking the test, review their preparedness, and identify areas in which further study is needed. Written by working physicists who took the Physics GRE for their own graduate admissions to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this self-contained reference guide will help students achieve their best score. Read more

For many decades, the proponents of `artificial intelligence' have maintained that computers will soon be able to do everything that a human can do. In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating tour through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think. Read more

Richard P. Feynman shared the story of discovering the Path Integral in his Nobel Lecture. He had learned of a paper by Paul Dirac at a beer party from a gentleman named Jehle. Pouring over the same together at a library the day next, to Jehle’s utter astonishment, Feynman derived Schrodinger’s equation in real-time based on an idea from that paper. The key concept in that derivation was the “propagator”, which gave birth to the field of “Feynman’s Path Integral.” You will learn exactly how Feynman did it, in this book.The Path Integral is a formulation of quantum mechanics describing both non-relativistic (low speed) and relativistic (high speed) quantum phenomena, including quantum electrodynamics, and other quantum field theories. It is usually considered an advanced topic reserved for graduate-level courses. This book presents Path Integrals for non-relativistic particles from first principles with no more than basic Calculus. With minimal prerequisites, the presentation in this book hopes to make Path Integrals accessible without advanced training.What this book will do for you…Learn how Path Integrals appear in Quantum Mechanics via Propagators.Learn how the classical trajectory of a particle is connected to the “quantum” propagator.Calculate the Propagator for a Free Particle à Use it to Derive:de Broglie’s Wavelength.Einstein’s Energy-Frequency Relationship.Calculate the Propagator for a Particle with Potential and Kinetic Energy.Derive Schrodinger’s Equation using the Propagator.Inside the Book:Learn Feynman’s Path Integral technique with basic Calculus.7 chapters, starting from a review of Mathematical Prerequisites.Presentation interspersed with Exercises and Worked-out Solutions to consolidate your learning.About the author:Swapnonil Banerjee has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Davis, and many years of teaching experience from K12 to university physics courses. He is passionate about simplifying complex ideas, which served as a primary motivation for writing this book.Swapnonil has extensive research experience in theoretical physics. He made important contributions to the study of a new material called semi-Dirac, in which electrons behave as non-relativistic, massive particles or effectively relativistic, massless particles depending on the direction of their movement. In one direction, the electron’s energy-momentum relationship is indicative of the electron’s having a definitive mass; in the orthogonal direction, the electron’s energy-momentum relationship indicates a surprising absence of mass.Swapnonil has also contributed to biotechnology, co-developing the Poisson Plus algorithm used for estimating the concentration of biomolecules via the digital PCR technique, and holds a patent for this work.Swapnonil has published in reputed journals including Nature Scientific Reports and Physical Review Letters.Swapnonil’s interests besides research and teaching include people and culture. He co-authored the historical fiction Deflected, a fast-paced, wartime romance based on the life of the nineteenth-century mathematician who calculated the height of Mount Everest and established it as the highest point on Earth.Email [email protected]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swapnonil-banerjee-phd-5597553b/ Read more

The Art of Electronics: The x Chapters expands on topics introduced in the best selling third edition of The Art of Electronics, completing the broad discussions begun in the latter. In addition to covering more advanced materials relevant to its companion, The x Chapters also includes extensive treatment of many topics in electronics that are particularly novel, important, or just exotic and intriguing. Think of The x Chapters as the missing pieces of The Art of Electronics, to be used either as its complement, or as a direct route to exploring some of the most exciting and oft overlooked topics in advanced electronic engineering. This enticing spread of electronics wisdom and expertise will be an invaluable addition to the library of any student, researcher, or practitioner with even a passing interest in the design and analysis of electronic circuits and instruments. You'll find here techniques and circuits that are available nowhere else! – 524 large-format pages – 50 high-resolution photographs – 24 tables, including MOSFETs, op-amps, drivers, and more – more than 300 circuits, 300 graphs, 100 ‘scope screenshots, and dozens of drawings. Read more

Frank Close delves into fundamental particles and forces to find clues to a deep unsolved mystery of physics: why is matter neutral?Human beings have long been aware of the electric and magnetic forces around us, from the electrostatic charge built up by rubbing amber with fur, to the pull of the lodestone, and scientific investigation showed that the two are intimately connected, as electromagnetism. Lightning shows how devastating electricity can be in nature, while humans learned to exploit the flow of negatively charged electrons that make up an electric current. In the early part of the 20th century, the experiments of Ernest Rutherford showed that at the heart of atoms lies a positively charged nucleus. The positive charge comes from protons. Atoms are neutral because the charges of the electron and proton cancel out. And that enables the much weaker force of gravity - always attractive - to dominate at large scales, building planets, stars, and galaxies. Things would have been very different, had the charges not cancelled.As far as we know, the charges of the proton and electron are opposite and exactly equal, even though the proton is far bigger, and composed of three quarks tightly bound within it, while the electron is a fundamental particle. But why are they equal? This is one of the deepest unresolved puzzles of fundamental physics, and forms the driving force of this book. To explore the clues we have, Frank Close takes us on a journey into the quantum subatomic world of particles. He describes the strong and weak forces that operate alongside electromagnetism at these short ranges, and the colour and flavour charges that drive them, as well as the parallels between them, giving tantalizing hints of a deeper unity of all forces that is the dream of grand unification theories. Seeking an answer to why matter is neutral brings us to fundamental forces and particles, the Standard Model, the recently discovered Higgs boson, and the implications of grand unification for the stability of matter. Within this compact volume, Close packs in an extraordinarily rich account of our current understanding and the efforts of the latest ambitious experiments to probe further, and test theoretical possibilities such as the decay of protons. Read more

Quantum Theory is the most revolutionary discovery in physics since Newton. This book gives a lucid, exciting, and accessible account of the surprising and counterintuitive ideas that shape our understanding of the sub-atomic world. It does not disguise the problems of interpretation that still remain unsettled 75 years after the initial discoveries. The main text makes no use of equations, but there is a Mathematical Appendix for those desiring stronger fare. Uncertainty, probabilistic physics, complementarity, the problematic character of measurement, and decoherence are among the many topics discussed. This volume offers the reader access to one of the greatest discoveries in the history of physics and one of the outstanding intellectual achievements of the twentieth century.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam. Read more

There are four forces in our universe. Two act only at the very smallest scales and one only at the very biggest. For everything inbetween, there is electromagnetism. The theory of electromagnetism is described by four gloriously simple and beautiful vector calculus equations known as the Maxwell equations. These are the first genuinely fundamental equations that we meet in our physics education and they survive, essentially unchanged, in our best modern theories of physics. They also serve as a blueprint for what subsequent laws of physics look like. This textbook takes us on a tour of the Maxwell equations and their many solutions. It starts with the basics of electric and magnetic phenomena and explains how their unification results in waves that we call light. It then describes more advanced topics such as superconductors, monopoles, radiation, and electromagnetism in matter. The book concludes with a detailed review of the mathematics of vector calculus. Read more

A complete introduction to the field of computational physics, with examples and exercises in the Python programming language. Computers play a central role in virtually every major physics discovery today, from astrophysics and particle physics to biophysics and condensed matter. This book explains the fundamentals of computational physics and describes in simple terms the techniques that every physicist should know, such as finite difference methods, numerical quadrature, and the fast Fourier transform. The book offers a complete introduction to the topic at the undergraduate level, and is also suitable for the advanced student or researcher who wants to learn the foundational elements of this important field. Read more

Any education in theoretical physics begins with the laws of classical mechanics. The basics of the subject were laid down long ago by Galileo and Newton and are enshrined in the famous equation F=ma that we all learn in school. But there is much more to the subject and, in the intervening centuries, the laws of classical mechanics were reformulated to emphasis deeper concepts such as energy, symmetry, and action. This textbook describes these different approaches to classical mechanics, starting with Newton's laws before turning to subsequent developments such as the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian approaches. The book emphasises Noether's profound insights into symmetries and conservation laws, as well as Einstein's vision of spacetime, encapsulated in the theory of special relativity. Classical mechanics is not the last word on theoretical physics. But it is the foundation for all that follows. The purpose of this book is to provide this foundation. Read more

This superb text by David Bohm, formerly Princeton University and Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, provides a formulation of the quantum theory in terms of qualitative and imaginative concepts that have evolved outside and beyond classical theory. Although it presents the main ideas of quantum theory essentially in nonmathematical terms, it follows these with a broad range of specific applications that are worked out in considerable mathematical detail. Addressed primarily to advanced undergraduate students, the text begins with a study of the physical formulation of the quantum theory, from its origin and early development through an analysis of wave vs. particle properties of matter. In Part II, Professor Bohm addresses the mathematical formulation of the quantum theory, examining wave functions, operators, Schrödinger's equation, fluctuations, correlations, and eigenfunctions.Part III takes up applications to simple systems and further extensions of quantum theory formulation, including matrix formulation and spin and angular momentum. Parts IV and V explore the methods of approximate solution of Schrödinger's equation and the theory of scattering. In Part VI, the process of measurement is examined along with the relationship between quantum and classical concepts.Throughout the text, Professor Bohm places strong emphasis on showing how the quantum theory can be developed in a natural way, starting from the previously existing classical theory and going step by step through the experimental facts and theoretical lines of reasoning which led to replacement of the classical theory by the quantum theory. Read more

Well known for its accessibility to graduate students and experimental physicists, this volume emphasizes physical arguments and minimizes theoretical formalism. The second edition of this classic text features revisions by the author that improve its user-friendly qualities, and an introductory survey of latter-day developments in classic superconductivity enhances the volume’s value as a reference for researchers. Starting with a historical overview, the text proceeds with an introduction to the electrodynamics of superconductors and presents expositions of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory and the Ginzburg-Landau theory. Additional subjects include magnetic properties of classic type II superconductors; the Josephson effect (both in terms of basic phenomena and applications and of the phenomena unique to small junctions); fluctuation effects in classic superconductors; the high-temperature superconductors; special topics (such as the Bogoliubov method, magnetic perturbations and gapless superconductivity, and time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory); and nonequilibrium superconductivity. 1996 edition. Read more

What is time? What does it mean for time to pass? Is it possible to travel in time? What is the difference between the past and future? Until the work of Newton, these questions were purely topics of philosophical speculation. Since then we've learned a great deal about time, and its study has moved from a subject of philosophical reflection to instead became part of the subject matter of physics. This Very Short Introduction introduces readers to the current physical understanding of the direction of time, from the Second Law of Thermodynamics to the emergence of complexity and life. Jenann Ismael charts the line of development in physical theory from Newton, via Einstein's Theory of Relativity, to the current day. Einstein's innovations led to a vision of time very different from the familiar time of everyday sense. In this new vision, time is one of the dimensions in which the universe is extended alongside the spatial dimensions. The universe appears as a static block of events, in which there is no more a difference between past and future than there is between east and west. Discussing the controversy and philosophical confusion which surrounded the reception of this new vision, Ismael also covers the contemporary mixture of statistical mechanics, cognitive science, and phenomenology that point the way to reconciling the familiar time of everyday sense with the vision of time presented in Einstein's theories. bVery Short Introductionsb: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring /bABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. Read more

Featuring a wealth of engaging content, this concept-based Course Book has been developed in cooperation with the IB to provide the most comprehensive support for the DP Physics specification, for first teaching from September 2023. It is packed full of questions, clear explanations and worked examples, plus extensive assessment preparation support.Use this print Course Book alongside the digital course on Oxford's Kerboodle platform for the best teaching and learning experience. Oxford's DP Science offer brings together the IB curriculum and future-facing functionality, enabling success in DP and beyond. Read more

Written for the non-science major, this text emphasizes modern physics and the scientific process―and engages students by drawing connections between physics and everyday experience. Hobson takes a conceptual approach, with an appropriate focus on quantitative skills. The Fifth Edition increases coverage of key environmental topics such as global warming and energy, and adds new topics such as momentum. Hobson’s text remains the least expensive textbook available for students taking nonmajors physics. Read more

​This book deals with the rise of mathematics in physical sciences, beginning with Galileo and Newton and extending to the present day. The book is divided into two parts. The first part gives a brief history of how mathematics was introduced into physics―despite its "unreasonable effectiveness" as famously pointed out by a distinguished physicist―and the criticisms it received from earlier thinkers. The second part takes a more philosophical approach and is intended to shed some light on that mysterious effectiveness. For this purpose, the author reviews the debate between classical philosophers on the existence of innate ideas that allow us to understand the world and also the philosophically based arguments for and against the use of mathematics in physical sciences. In this context, Schopenhauer’s conceptions of causality and matter are very pertinent, and their validity is revisited in light of modern physics. The final question addressed is whether the effectiveness of mathematics can be explained by its “existence” in an independent platonic realm, as Gödel believed.The book aims at readers interested in the history and philosophy of physics. It is accessible to those with only a very basic (not professional) knowledge of physics. Read more