English in Physics

This book is an English translation from a Hungarian book designed for graduate and postgraduate students about the use of variational principles in theoretical physics. Unlike many academic textbooks, it dashes across several lecture disciplines taught in physics courses. It emphasizes and demonstrates the use of the variational technique and philosophy behind the basic laws in mechanics, relativity theory, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics. The book is meant for advanced students and young researchers in theoretical physics but, also, more experienced researchers can benefit from its reading.

This volume is important because despite various external representations, such as analogies, metaphors, and visualizations being commonly used by physics teachers, educators and researchers, the notion of using the pedagogical functions of multiple representations to support teaching and learning is still a gap in physics education.

This volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction.

This book results from the XVIII Spanish-French School 'Jacques Louis Lions' on Numerical Simulation in Physics and Engineering, that took place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria from 25th to 29th June 2018. These conferences are held biennially since 1984 and sponsored by the Spanish Society of Applied Mathematics (SEMA).

This book contains a systematic exposition of the theory of spinors in finite-dimensional Euclidean and Riemannian spaces. The applications of spinors in field theory and relativistic mechanics of continuous media are considered.

What is the role and meaning of probability in physical theory, in particular in two of the most successful theories of our age, quantum physics and statistical mechanics? Laws once conceived as universal and deterministic, such as Newton‘s laws of motion, or the second law of thermodynamics, are replaced in these theories by inherently probabilistic laws.