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Some physicists may not be aware of the FREE online book "Sustainable
Energy - Without the Hot Air" [MacKay (2009)].
MacKay's book has been reviewed by John Roeder (2009) in the Fall
2009 issue of the "Teachers Clearinghouse for Science and Society
Education Newsletter" <http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~lindenf/pse/>,
and by David Hafemeister (2010) in the February 2010 issue of the
"American Journal of Physics."
Roeder wrote:
". . . .a road map . . . [to sustainability]. . . has been
provided, at least for citizens of the United Kingdom, by David J. D.
MacKay, Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge, in his
"free book," "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air." It's free in
the sense that you can read it and download it from the Internet at
<http://www.withouthotair.com>. You can also download a 10-page
synopsis. But the book is so handsomely produced and depends so
strongly on its use of color that you might find it really worth
springing for $49.95 to purchase a softbound copy."
Hafemeister wrote [bracketed by lines "HHHHH. . . . ."]:
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
"Sustainable Energy-Without the Hot Air" is an excellent text on
energy matters. I would choose it as text for a general education
energy course. In this review I will nit-pick what it doesn't do, but
I would adopt it because its competitors, in my view, are too wordy
or not numeric enough. Energy is a serious topic that is affected by
the many branches of the physics tree. Make no mistake about energy's
importance.
Would the United States have invaded Iraq in 1991 (the first time)
to save the sanctity of a small nation-Kuwait- without the presence
of oil in the Middle East? I believe not, so energy is actually a
national security issue. Does the high use of fossil fuels endanger
the environment? Yes it does, in many ways. Can we do better? Of
course, we can.
And MacKay, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge,
offers this book for FREE (good for him) to those who will go to
<http://www.withouthotair.com> or at a reasonable price for a
printed version from online booksellers.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Three other FREE online books that might be of interest are:
a. "Teaching Physics With the Physics Suite" [Redish (2003)],
b. "Science Teaching as a Profession: Why It Isn't How It Could Be"
[Tobias & Baffert (2009)] and (for those soft on psychology),
c. "Educational Psychology" [Seifert & Sutton (2009)].
Please pardon three tangential BTW's:
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1. For some commentary on publishing trends see "The Amazon-Macmillan
book saga heralds publishing's progress" [Pearlstein (2010)].
Pearlstein wrote:
"My guess is that in the not-so-distant future, best-selling authors
such as John Grisham and Malcolm Gladwell -- along with unknown
authors peddling their first books -- will publish their own works,
contracting with independent editors and marketers and selling
directly to consumers as much as possible. Other authors will turn to
smaller, more specialized publishing houses that will offer smaller
advances but bigger royalties and will be built, as they once were,
around great editors."
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2. For a nice analysis of the escalating price of college textbooks
see "An Economic Analysis of Textbook Pricing and Textbook Markets."
Koch wrote [see his article for the references]:
"Between 1986 and 2004, textbook prices rose 186 percent in the
United States, or slightly more than six percent per year (GAO,
2005). Meanwhile, other prices rose only about three percent per year
(GAO, 2005). . . . . . The textbook market is remarkable because the
primary individuals who choose college textbooks (faculty) are not
the people that pay for those textbooks (students). Only a few other
organized markets in the United States are similar in this regard. A
comparable situation exists in medicine where doctors prescribe drugs
for their patients, but do not pay for those drugs. Analogous to the
market for prescription drugs where prices have risen rapidly, in the
market for textbooks the separation of textbook choice and textbook
payment profoundly influences pricing. Albeit for primarily good
purpose, students end up being coerced to pay for someone else's
choices. This tends to make their textbook purchases less responsive
to price increases than their purchases of items such as
cheeseburgers and jeans."
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3. For over 100 general citations to OPEN ACCESS, internet usage, the
Academic Discussion List Sphere ADLsphere [pronounced "Addlesphere"
(no pun intended)], and the Blogosphere see "Over Two-Hundred
Education & Science Blogs" [Hake (2009b)].
"The concept of sustainability addresses the fundamental question of
the survival of society. Education for sustainability must start in
our classrooms. We have the obligation to work with the large numbers
of students in our introductory classes, to lead them to explore the
meaning of sustainability, even though sustainability is not now in
our textbooks or curricula. . . . It may be that no other academic
discipline is seriously or realistically concerned with education for
sustainability. In which case, it's up to us."
A.A. Bartlett (1997)
REFERENCES [Tiny URL's courtesy <http://tinyurl.com/create.php>.]
Bartlett, A.A. 1997. "Environmental Sustainability," invited paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Association Of
Physics Teachers meeting in Denver, Colorado, August 16, 1997; online
at <http://www.oilcrisis.com/Bartlett/envSustain.htm>.
Hake, R.R. 2009a. "Second Edition of Seifert/Sutton 'Educational
Psychology' Available Online and Open-Source" online on the OPEN!
AERA-L archives at <http://tinyurl.com/ykffbrp>. Post of 20 Dec 2009
15:21:31-0800 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, & PhysLrnR. The abstract only was
sent to various discussion lists and is online at
<http://hakesedstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/Kelvin%20Seifert> with
a provision for comments.
Koch, J.V. 2006. "An Economic Analysis of Textbook Pricing and
Textbook Markets," ACSFA College Textbook Cost Study Plan Proposal
[ACSFA = (evidently) "Advisory Committee on Student Financial
Assistance"]; online at
<http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/kochreport.pdf> (144 kB).
Pearlstein, S. 2010. "The Amazon-Macmillan book saga heralds
publishing's progress," Washington poat, 3 February; online at
<http://tinyurl.com/y8agpwl>.
Redish, E.F. 2003. "Teaching Physics With the Physics Suite" (TPWPS),
John Wiley, TPWPS is online at
<http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~redish/Book/>. [Grievous errors
involving Fig. 5.2 on page 100 at
<http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~redish/Book/05.pdf>: "A plot of class
average pre-test and post-test FCI scores for a collection of classes
in high school, college, and university physics classes using a
variety of instructional methods" have been corrected in the online
version. Of course, few people will ever see the online version - one
reason being that even physicists generally fail to take advantage of
hot-linking, that precious gift of
physicist-turned-computer-scientist Tim Berners-Lee
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee> that allows material
to be brought to the reader's screen with the click of a mouse.]
Roeder, J.L. 2009. "MacKay lays out plans for sustainable energy,"
Teachers Clearinghouse for Science and Society Education Newsletter
XXVIII (2), Fall 2009; online at
<http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~lindenf/pse/tcn/f2009.pdf> (380 kB);
pages 5, 15-16.