Physics Introductory

The book first describes connections between some basic problems and technics of combinatorics and statistical physics. The discrete mathematics and physics terminology are related to each other. Using the established connections, some exciting activities in one field are shown from a perspective of the other field. The purpose of the book is to emphasize these interactions as a strong and successful tool. In fact, this attitude has been a strong trend in both research communities recently.

This classroom-tested textbook is an innovative, comprehensive, and forward-looking introductory undergraduate physics course. While it clearly explains physical principles and equips the student with a full range of quantitative tools and methods, the material is firmly grounded in biological relevance and is brought to life with plenty of biological examples throughout.

This book grew out of an ongoing effort to modernize Colgate University's three-term, introductory, calculus-Ievel physics course. The book is for the first term of this course and is intended to help first-year college students make a good transition from high-school physics to university physics. The book concentrates on the physics that explains why we believe in the existence of atoms and their properties. This story line, which motivates much of our professional research, has helped us limit the material presented to a more humane and more realistic amount than is presented in many beginning university physics courses. The theme of atoms also supports the presentation of more non-Newtonian topics and ideas than is customary in the first term of calculus-Ievel physics. We think it is important and desirable to introduce students sooner than usual to some of the major ideas that shape contemporary physicists' views of the nature and behavior of matter. On the verge of the twenty-first century such a goal seems particularly appropriate.

Modern Introductory Physics, 2nd Edition, by Charles H. Holbrow, James N. Lloyd, Joseph C. Amato, Enrique Galvez, and Beth Parks, is a successful innovative text for teaching introductory college and university physics. It is thematically organized to emphasize the physics that answers the fundamental question: Why do we believe in atoms and their properties? The book provides a sound introduction to basic physical concepts with particular attention to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics underlying our modern ideas of atoms and their structure.