[X] My Assistant

[jrdahlman]

This is not about spaceflight per se, but I think it would be of interest to members of this forum.

Christoph Schiller has updated his free physics textbook, "Motion Mountain," to the 19th edition. This is a book that tries to explain physics by answering the question, "What is motion?" It covers the progress from Galilean and Newtonian physics through relativity and quantum mechanics and at least mention of string theory. As a work in progress, there are sections not finished yet. (Quantum gravity and unification--which no one's finished yet!) While fairly advanced in material--I'd say more at college level than high-school--the author makes quite an effort to keep it readable and interesting. I don't how well it would work as a REAL textbook in a class, but as an amateur I find it a fascinating read.

It can be downloaded as big PDF or in individual chapters at:

www.motionmountain.net

and free for anybody's use. (In fact Schiller forbids any commercial use.)

The whole thing is over 1300 pages long, so it's not something you'd read in an afternoon. (Bruce Moomaw has already mentioned how much reading he'd like to catch up on. Presumably this would put him out of action for weeks!) Mr. Schiller would love to hear feedback, especially from professionals.

(Full disclosure: since I sent him feedback on earlier editions on typos and grammar errors, my name is mentioned in the "Thank you" list in the preface. I am certainly not qualified as an "expert" reviewer!)

John D.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Interesting. I downloaded it and have been looking it over for a while. I'm not sure I would recommend this book for trying to learn physics though, it seems very superficial for such a big investment in reading time.

If you really want to teach yourself physics, the Feynman Lectures on Physics are excellent. There is no substitute for a master physicist telling you what is important to know and how it works. The drawback of these books are that they predate recent work in nuclear and electroweak field theories.

Another good book, which is more dense but very complete, is Robert Lindsay's Foundations of Physics. If you are comfortable with math, this is a great way to see classical mechancis, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and general relativity, clearly explained but not "dumbed down".

Not so mathematical, but very deep and carefully researched is The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics by Max Jammer. Hard to find, but vastly superior to a lot of new-age junk that's been written on this subject.

A good intro text book, is Paul Tipler's Physics for Scientists and Engineers and also his college text Modern Physics which is a follow-on course on quantum theory and other topics. We looked at a lot of texts years ago, at the University of Minnesota, and Tipler was our favorite, well done and fun to read.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Oh, and another extremely good series of books on physics are the volumes of Course on Theoretical Physics by Lev Davidovich Landau and various co-authors.

Landau was "The Man They Wouldn't Let Die", the Soviet Union's foremost physics genius who was almost killed in a car accident. They put him back together like the woman in "The Menagerie" on star trek. Kind of a grim story.