Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

[Phys-l] Summer Reading List



Has anybody out there read "Applications of Classical Physics" by Roger
D. Blandford and Kip S. Thorne? Looks like a good book to me. It is
based on a one-year course for beginning graduate students. Some quotes
from the book itself follow:

From the preface:
"This book is an introduction to the fundamentals and 21st-century
applications of all the major branches of classical physics except
classical mechanics, electromagnetic theory, and elementary
thermodynamics (which we assume the reader has already learned
elsewhere)."

Also from the preface:
"In this book, we also seek to teach the reader how to apply classical
physics ideas. We do so by presenting contemporary applications from a
variety of fields, such as
 fundamental physics, experimental physics and applied physics;
 astrophysics and cosmology;
 geophysics, oceanography and meteorology;
 engineering, optical science & technology, radio science & technology,
and information science & technology."

From Chapter 1:
"By contrast, in this book, we shall express all physical quantities and
laws in a geometric form that is independent of any coordinate system.
For example, in Newtonian physics, momenta and electric fields will be
vectors described as arrows that live in the 3-dimensional, flat
Euclidean space of everyday experience. They require no coordinate
system at all for their existence or description-though sometimes
coordinates will be useful. We shall state physical laws, e.g. the
Lorentz force law, as geometric, coordinate-free relationships between
these geometric, coordinate free quantities."

The book is available on-line at:
<http://www.pma.caltech.edu/Courses/ph136/yr2006/text.html>

Jeff Schnick