I asked my colleague, Ian Durham for input on the modern physics textbook question. Below is his response. The URL for the web site for the Six Ideas textbook that Ian mentions is: http://www.physics.pomona.edu/sixideas/
Jeff Schnick
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Durham
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 4:42 PM
To: Jeffrey Schnick
Subject: modern book for year-long course
Jeff,
Per your question regarding a year-long modern physics text, I'm not a big fan of most modern physics texts out there, as you know, particularly since they lack a discussion of space-time diagrams (I've never found one that contains them) and their bread-and-butter approach to quantum mechanics (the advances in quantum mechanics in the past decade or so have, arguably, been the most since the dawn of QED). In any case, in my one-semester course this fall I've adopted Moore's Six Ideas That Shaped Physics and used bits and pieces of it supplemented with some of my own writing. I do one chapter each from Units C and N, all of Unit R, then the last few chapters from E (12, 13, 15, and 16), all of unit Q, and essentially all but the last chapter of T. Like I said I add in my own chapters (each of Moore's chapters are designed to be the equivalent of one 50-minute class period) including two based on the first chapter of Sakurai (Modern Quantum Mechanics), one introducing quantum statistical mechanics (again based on some stuff in Sakurai's Ch. 3), one that derives the various quantum numbers from the Schrödinger equation (based on stuff in Serway, Moses, and Moyer), and one that introduces some of the recent advances in quantum mechanics (Bell's inequalities, etc.). To expand that into a full year course might include some extension of Moore's three chapters on nuclear physics, the addition of some cosmology perhaps, and an introduction to particle physics, all of which could be achieved through supplements.
Ian
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Ian T. Durham, PhD, FRAS
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Drive, Box 1759
Manchester, NH 03102-1310 USA
Phone: +1 603 222 4073
Fax: +1 603 222 4012
E-mail: idurham@anselm.edu