Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Classical Mechanics
Peter Dourmashkin · Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The principles of mechanics successfully described many phenomena encountered in the world. Conservation laws involving energy, momentum and angular momentum provided a second parallel approach to solving many of the same problems. This text investigate both approaches: Force and conservation laws to develop a conceptual understanding of the core concepts, a familiarity with the experimental verification of our theoretical laws, and an ability to predict the motions of bodies.
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Kinematics With Video Examples
Prem-Raj Ruffin · Prince George's Community College
College Physics Kinematics (Open Stax) with detailed videos of typical problems (Raj Ruffin, PGCC)
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Understanding Sound
David Abbott · Buffalo State College
In the contents: 7.01: Solving physics problems
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Special Relativity
Benjamin Crowell · Fullerton College
This a textbook on special relativity, aimed at undergraduates who have already completed a freshman survey course. The treatment of electromagnetism assumes previous exposure to Maxwell's equations in integral form, but no knowledge of vector calculus.
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Astronomy 10: The Solar System
Andrew Totah-McCarty · Chabot College
This textbook is organized to support a broad model-based way of teaching astronomy that focuses on big ideas rather than detailed planet/space facts. Introduction to history and physical principles of astronomy, focusing on our Solar System.
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Introduction to Astronomy
Lumen Learning · LibreTexts
In the contents: 10.11: NASAs Heliophysics Science Division
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Quantum Mechanics
Michael Fowler · University of Virginia
These notes cover the essential core topics of a standard graduate quantum mechanics course. The first lectures here review undergraduate quantum and modern physics as a reminder, this optional material was only covered briefly in class.
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Introduction to Physical Oceanography
Robert Stewart · 2008
This textbook covers physical-oceanographic processes, theories, data, and measurements, targeted at upper-division undergraduates and graduate students in oceanography, meteorology, and ocean engineering. In addition to the classical topics, the author includes discussions of heat fluxes, the role of the ocean in climate, the deep circulation, equatorial processes including El Nino, data bases used by oceanographers, the role of satellites and data from space, ship-based measurements, and the importance of vorticity in understanding oceanic flows. Students should have studied differential equations and introductory college physics, although math is de-emphasized.
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Applications of Maxwell's Equations
John Cochran; Bretislav Heinrich · John F. Cochran, Bretislav Heinrich · 2004
This book was developed at Simon Fraser University for an upper-level physics course. Along with a careful exposition of electricity and magnetism, it devotes a chapter to ferromagnets. According to the course description, the topics covered were “electromagnetics, magnetostatics, waves, transmission lines, wave guides,antennas, and radiating systems.”
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Mechanics and Relativity
Timon Idema · TU Delft Open · 2018
In Mechanics and Relativity, the reader is taken on a tour through time and space. Starting from the basic axioms formulated by Newton and Einstein, the theory of motion at both the everyday and the highly relativistic level is developed without the need of prior knowledge. The relevant mathematics is provided in an appendix. The text contains various worked examples and a large number of original problems to help the reader develop an intuition for the physics. Applications covered in the book span a wide range of physical phenomena, including rocket motion, spinning tennis rackets and high-energy particle collisions.
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Threshold Concepts in Biochemistry
Julian Pakay; Hendrika Duivenvoorden; Thomas Shafee; Kaitlin Clarke · La Trobe University · 2023
Biochemistry (and Molecular Biology) represent one of the fastest-growing fields of scientific research and technical innovation and the resulting biotechnology is increasingly applied to other fields of study. So, an understanding of Biochemistry is increasingly important for students in all biological disciplines. However, at the same time, the content is inherently complex, highly abstract, and often deeply rooted in the pure sciences – mathematics, chemistry, and physics. This makes it difficult to both learn and to teach. This book is designed as a succinct and focused resource, specifically aimed to help students grasp key threshold concepts in Biochemistry. Due to their troublesome nature, understanding threshold concepts is a cognitively demanding task. By using a series of thematically linked case studies that accompany theory, the cognitive load will be reduced. This will free up students to focus on learning concepts rather than distracting them with unnecessary specifics.
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Part SM: Statistical Mechanics
Konstantitn Likharev · Stony Brook University · 2013
Essential Graduate Physics, Lecture Notes and Problems This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Essential Graduate Physics by an authorized administrator of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact mona.ramonetti@stonybrook.edu, hu.wang.2@stonybrook.edu.
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Part QM: Quantum Mechanics
Konstantin Likharev · Stony Brook University · 2013
Essential Graduate Physics, Lecture Notes and Problems This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Essential Graduate Physics by an authorized administrator of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact mona.ramonetti@stonybrook.edu, hu.wang.2@stonybrook.edu.
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Part EM: Classical Electrodynamics
Konstantitn Likharev · Stony Brook University · 2013
Essential Graduate Physics, Lecture Notes and Problems This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Essential Graduate Physics by an authorized administrator of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact mona.ramonetti@stonybrook.edu, hu.wang.2@stonybrook.edu.
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Part CM: Classical Mechanics
Konstantin Likharev · Stony Brook University · 2013
Essential Graduate Physics, Lecture Notes and Problems This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Essential Graduate Physics by an authorized administrator of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact mona.ramonetti@stonybrook.edu, hu.wang.2@stonybrook.edu.
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Fizyka dla szkół wyższych
William Moebs; Samuel Ling; Jeff Sanny · OpenStax · 2017
Fizyka dla szkół wyższych. Tom 2 dopasowana jest pod względem zakresu i układu treści do typowych kursów wprowadzających z fizyki ogólnej opartych na analizie matematycznej. Podręcznik kładzie nacisk na powiązania między teorią a praktycznymi zastosowaniami, wyjaśniając zagadnienia fizyczne w ciekawy i zrozumiały sposób, lecz z zachowaniem niezbędnego rygoru matematycznego. Liczne, dobrze dobrane przykłady pokazują, jak podejść do zadania, jak wykorzystać wzory i wreszcie jak sprawdzić i uogólnić wynik.
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Future Energy: Opportunities & Challenges
Thomas Kerlin · The University of Tennessee Libraries · 2013
How can we produce enough sustainable energy while avoiding unacceptable environmental consequences? To evaluate the various energy options, we must understand the science of each potential energy source and energy use technology. This book presents the science in an easy-to-understand way to enable readers to make informed decisions about what is possible and practical, and to choose lifestyle options to implement in their personal lives. America and the world face daunting questions about how we produce energy and how we use it. Conservation and improved energy efficiency can help reduce energy requirements, but cannot halt the steady increase in energy consumption. An increasing world population and increasing energy appetites in emerging economies will create competition for energy resources for all nations. The possibilities for future energy production include fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal, oil sands, and oil shale), biofuels, solar, wind, hydro-energy, geothermal, and nuclear (probably fission and possibly fusion). Each of these sources has relative advantages and disadvantages. The problem is to produce enough sustainable energy while avoiding unacceptable environmental consequences, especially climate change. In order to evaluate the potential of the various energy options, one must understand the basic science that underlies each potential energy source and energy use technology. This knowledge will enable us to determine what is possible and practical and, maybe more importantly, what is impossible or impractical. Fortunately most of the pertinent science is old, well established and, for the most part, quite simple. This science provides a framework into which one can insert real data and draw conclusions. Without such quantitative assessments, claims about capabilities of the various energy options must be viewed as unverified assumptions rather than hard facts. This book presents the essential science in an easy-to-understand, yet comprehensive
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BSc Optics
Sander Konijnenberg; Aurèle Adam; Paul Urbach · TU Delft Open · 2024
This book treats optics at the level of students in the later stage of their bachelor or the beginning of their master. It is assumed that the student is familiar with Maxwell’s equations. Although the book takes account of the fact that optics is part of electromagnetism, special emphasis is put on the usefulness of approximate models of optics, their hierarchy and limits of validity. Approximate models such as geometrical optics and paraxial geometrical optics are treated extensively and applied to image formation by the human eye, the microscope and the telescope. Polarisation states and how to manipulate them are studied using Jones vectors and Jones matrices. In the context of interference, the coherence of light is explained thoroughly. To understand fundamental limits of resolution which cannot be explained by geometrical optics, diffraction theory is applied to imaging. The angular spectrum method and evanescent waves are used to understand the inherent loss of information about subwavelength features during the propagation of light. The book ends with a study of the working principle of the laser.
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Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet
Thomas Murphy · eScholarship · 2021
Where is humanity going? How realistic is a future of fusion and space colonies? What constraints are imposed by physics, by resource availability, and by human psychology? Are default expectations grounded in reality? This textbook, written for a general-education audience, aims to address these questions without either the hype or the indifference typical of many books. The message throughout is that humanity faces a broad sweep of foundational problems as we inevitably transition away from fossil fuels and confront planetary limits in a host of unprecedented ways—a shift whose scale and probable rapidity offers little historical guidance. Salvaging a decent future requires keen awareness, quantitative assessment, deliberate preventive action, and—above all—recognition that prevailing assumptions about human identity and destiny have been cruelly misshapen by the profoundly unsustainable trajectory of the last 150 years. The goal is to shake off unfounded and unexamined expectations, while elucidating the relevant physics and encouraging greater facility in quantitative reasoning. After addressing limits to growth, population dynamics, uncooperative space environments, and the current fossil underpinnings of modern civilization, various sources of alternative energy are considered in detail— assessing how they stack up against each other, and which show the greatest potential. Following this is an exploration of systemic human impediments to effective and timely responses, capped by guidelines for individual adaptations resulting in reduced energy and material demands on the planet’s groaning capacity. Appendices provide refreshers on math and chemistry, as well as supplementary material of potential interest relating to cosmology, electric transportation, and an evolutionary perspective on humanity’s place in nature.
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Coastal Dynamics
Judith Bosboom; Marcel Stive · TU Delft Open · 2021
This textbook on Coastal Dynamics focuses on the interrelation between physical wave, flow and sediment transport phenomena and the resulting morphodynamics of a wide variety of coastal systems. The textbook is unique in that it explicitly connects the dynamics of open coasts and tidal basins; not only is the interaction between open coasts and tidal basins of basic importance for the evolution of most coastal systems, but describing the similarities between their physical processes is highly instructive as well. This textbook emphasizes these similarities to the benefit of understanding shared processes such as nonlinearities in flow and sediment transport. Some prior knowledge with respect to the dynamics of flow, waves and sediment transport is recommended.