Physics University

More mind-bending fun in physics.

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.

This is an outstanding collection of original essays. All of them concern the history and philosophy of mathematics and physics in the years from 1870 to 1930. More specifically, they are intellectual histories of the interactions between the three disciplines, philosophy, mathematics and physics, in that period. And as the essays bring out, what a period it was: of both ferment and synergy, heat and light! Most of the giants - especially Helmholtz, Hertz, Poincare, Hilbert, Einstein and Weyl - are here: engaging not just in physics and mathematics but also in philosophy, often together, or with figures like Schlick. The editors are to be congratulated on a major contribution to our understanding of one of the most complex but fertile periods in the history of all three disciplines.