Elementary Modern Physics

This is the most up-to-date, accessible presentation of modern physics available. The book is intended for a one-semester course for students who have already taken basic physics and calculus courses. The balance of the book leans more towards ideas than experimental methods and practical applications because the beginning student is better served by a conceptual framework than by a mass of details.

Physics – atomic physics, nuclear physics, molecular physics, solid-state physics – is a very complicated thing. The essential idea of this account is to go back to the main fundamental ideas which I feel have been somehow lost in the wealth of complicated theory and mathematics.

Authors: Becchi, Carlo Maria, D'Elia, Massimo
New to this edition is a more detailed discussion on Lorentz transformations, a deeper treatment of quantum mechanics, and a closer comparison of statistical mechanics in classical and in quantum physics
Includes more worked examples of relevant applications as well as solved problems
Provides a rigorous and self-contained presentation within the simplest theoretical framework and using elementary mathematical tools

Particle or Wave is the first popular-level book to explain the origins and development of modern physical concepts about matter and the controversies surrounding them.