For sophomore-level courses in modern physics. This comprehensive text provides a clear, correct, and up-to-date introduction and survey of the topics of importance to tomorrow's engineers and scientists. The presentation includes the description of the history of the topics, to show students how we got to where we are; it stresses the importance of observation and experiment; and it emphasizes numbers, so that students develop a feel for the magnitudes involved and for when different principles become important.

An introduction to computers giving a brief history of the machines in addition to the author's personal experiences while learning to work with them

Hans Bethe, the German American physicist, was one of the world's leading scientific authority on energy. He spent a lifetime on energy-related questions and was a source of information about alternative sources of energy. This work provides a discussion of what the real options are in the energy field are. How much energy will we need, what it will cost, and what are its available sources? How does the process of energy conversion, whether nuclear, solar, or conventional oil and coal, actually work?

When plutonium was first manufactured at Berkeley in the spring of 1941, there was so little of it that it was not visible to the naked eye. It took a year to accumulate enough so that one could actually see it. Now there is so much that we don’t know what to do to get rid of it. We have created a monster. The history of plutonium is as strange as the element itself. When scientists began looking for it, they did so simply in the spirit of inquiry, not certain whether there were still spots to fill on the periodic table. But the discovery of fission made it clear that this still-hypothetical element would be more than just a scientific curiosityâ€"it could be a powerful nuclear weapon. As it turned out, it is good for almost nothing else. Plutonium’s nuclear potential put it at the heart of the World War II arms raceâ€"the Russians found out about it through espionage, the Germans through independent research, and everybody wanted some. Now, nearly everyone has someâ€"the United States alone has about 47 metric tonsâ€"but it has almost no uses besides warmongering. How did the product of scientific curiosity become such a dangerous burden? In his new history of this complex and dangerous element, noted physicist Jeremy Bernstein describes the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki. This is the first book to weave together the many strands of plutonium’s story, explaining not only the science but the people involved.

Looks at the history of elementary particle physics, and explains what these particles have revealed to scientists about the creation of the universe

In 1953, reflecting on early ventures in quantum theory, J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke of terror and exaltation, of history happening in a realm so remote from common experience that it was "unlikely to be known to any poet or historian." Yet now, anyone can Google "quantum theory" and find more than 34 million entries--from poets and historians, certainly, as well as film critics and Buddhist monks. How--and how pervasively--quantum mechanics has entered the general culture is the subject of this book, an engaging, eclectic, and thought-provoking look at the curious, boundlessly fertile intersection of scientific thought and everyday life. Including recollections of encounters with the theory and the people responsible for it, Jeremy Bernstein's account ranges from the cross-pollination of quantum mechanics with Marxist ideology and Christian and Buddhist mysticism to its influence on theater, film, and fiction. Along the way, Bernstein focuses on those--such as Niels Bohr, the Dalai Lama, W. H. Auden, and Tom Stoppard--who have made quantum physics; who have argued over it, pondered it, or taken literary inspiration from it, and who have misunderstood, misconstrued, or misapplied it. One person in particular supplies a narrative thread: John Bell, a notable yet underappreciated physicist who did groundbreaking research in quantum physics. In Bell's story, Bernstein provides a uniquely readable account of what physicists call the "measurement problem." Quantum Leaps is a lively, erudite book on a subject that Bernstein has lived with for most of its history. His experience and deep understanding are apparent on every page.