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Re: History of Physics Books





On Tue, 27 Oct 1998 16:17:28 -0500 "G. Nicholas Park" <gnpark@JUNO.COM>
writes:
Can anyone recommend an inexpensive book which I could issue to my
students which covers the stories behind the great names and
discoveries in classical physics: free fall, Newton's First, Universal
Gravitation, Kepler, etc., etc.?

I STRONGLY recommend "Great Experiments in Physics" edited by Professor
Morris Shamos of New York University. This excellent book was originally
published in 1959 by the Henry Holt Company and it is currently available
as a paperback from Dover Publishers, 185 Varick Street, New York, NY.
(Phone 212 255 6399).
.
The book contains background materials on the life and work of each
scientist and translations of the original reports by the scientists
themselves with marginal comments by Dr. Shamos.

It starts off with Galileo's accelerated motion, Boyle's experiments with
gas pressures and Newton's Laws of motion. Than it continues with
Coulomb's electric and magnetic experiments;Cavendish's gravity
experiments; Young and Fresnel's experiments with light waves; Oersted,
Faraday, and Lenz experiments with electricity and magnetism; etc. etc.
etc. etc. etc. and finally concludes with background and experiments by
Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Compton.

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where we have more universities, libraries, and book stores than shows
on Broadway)