Freely downloadable Physics Textbook

[Lithos]

http://www.motionmountain.net/

Looks interesting.

L-

[Dudley_DUright]

1. OK, the author has gone too far here!

Christoph Schiller, born in 1960, is of unclear nationality. Raised in Varese, he studied physics at the Universität Stuttgart and received his Ph.D. in physics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in the department of Ilya Prigogine. He is convinced that exploring physics is more fun that making love - and he explains why in the present text.

(although supposedly Newton died a virgin, so maybe its true)

[wtmusic]

2. "Imagine a rubber band that is attached to a horse

at one end and attached to a wall at the other end. The rubber is infinitely stretchable. On the rubber, near the wall, there is a snail. Both the snail and the horse start moving with typical speeds. Can the snail reach the horse?"

(problem at link)

Fie! you made me figure it out! ;-)

[Esra Star]

9. I think the snail falls off the "rubber" when the horse breaks into

a canter.

[BearSquirrel2]

3. Chapter 2 ... RELATIVITY!!!!

WOW!!!

Then again perhaps it's something you have to chomp of early so the students can scratch their heads the rest of the semester. Looking at things from a constructionist view often produces methods that initially make you screech. I teach Algebra investigational style and I know darn well my students don't like it. But they actually start to LEARN things instead of just regurgitating information.

[Occulus]

4. Seeing as how I have almost zero formal physics education

this book is going straight onto my hard drive.

I do have one question, though. I've always been absolutely horrible in mathematic, but I suspect that's due to some extremely poor early instruction. I seem to have done if not "fine" then at least "average" until middle school, where we had this strange and demeaning "levels" system wherein the teacher didn't actually instruct math, but simply graded the papers for each student as they progressed through the various "levels". There were something like forty levels or so, progressing from simple math to basic algebra.

When I say demeaning, I mean demeaning. People around me were at level seventeen or twenty while I was struggling through level eight. There was next to no personalized instruction, either. We were all left mostly to ourselves.

Given those things, and keeping in mind that while I got C's in high school algebra, I got almost straight A's in geometry (and that high school is where my math education ended), where should I begin to learn from a math education standpoint if I want to fully grasp modern physics? I understand enough to know that understanding the equations and what they really mean depends on an understand of the underlying mathematics, but my poor math skillz (sic) completely prevent that.

[caraher]

15. I think calculus would be a big help

After all, it was invented specifically for use in mechanics. "Non-calculus" physics courses inevitably bring in the basic concepts of calculus; teaching one is an exercise in remembering to say "slope of the function" rather than "derivative" and "area under the curve" rather than "integral." Calculus makes life easier.

I bought and gave my son Quick Calculus: A Self-Teaching Guide, a "programmed instruction" text by two excellent physicists, Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey. That might be worth a look; it's a paperback so it's cheap.

[RL3AO]

5. I have a cd copy of the physics book I use at school. It is one less book to bring home.

[Book Lover]

6. Hey, how does reading the text on cd work for you?

I work in textbook publishing, and so would love to know what you think about e-textbooks.

[RL3AO]

7. Works great.

Opens up in adobe. I wish every book had a disc.

[Book Lover]

13. Thanks so much for your reply

Do you find not being able to mark up the page an issue when you study?

[Igel]

11. Last summer I taught a lit-in-translation course without a textbook.

I scanned and PDFed all the readings--more than I assigned, actually, since I had no idea what readings I'd actually be assigning when the course began, how much the students could cope with. In fact, I hadn't even determined which authors would for sure be covered near the end of the course and certainly hadn't obtained materials for all writers I knew we'd be covering. (Such is teaching a survey literature course for the first time, during summer session, and finding out you're teaching it a week before the first class period.) On Friday I'd hand out CDs with the readings for the following week.

It took about two weeks for everybody to get used to entirely on-screen readings.

Then there were the advantages due to the last-minute nature of the course. The flexibility from having materials scanned and not having to put stuff 'on reserve' or have a copyshop make course packets was phenomenal. What would be cool would be to have a publisher set up a database with automatic copyright clearance/royalty payment for a wide variety of writers and literatures, so that a teacher could put together a course packet for literature courses together 'on line'--then students either get a CD in the mail, download a group of files for reading, or possibly just access them over the web when they want to read them.


Currently I'm learning a foreign language using an on-screen textbook. The audio files are great, but I print out the pages as I cover them. I read Tolstoy and Pushkin differently from how I read a language textbook. Literature I can read for a couple of hours, taking notes, with minimal backtracking. Language textbooks are different ... I flip between pages, stop and start, reading maybe a page or two at a time, copy things down that I don't quite understand at the time (vocabulary and grammar to be learned).

[Book Lover]

12. Thomson Gale had something like what you describe set up

in an embryonic form... but with the sale (Thomson sold Thomson Learning and TL is now Cengage. I'm sure you wanted to know that), I don't know what the status of that database is. Electronic permissions is costly and problematic, unfortunately.

I've got to think a bit further on your comments about studying from paper, but reading from a screen... Thanks so very much for your reply!

[UndertheOcean]

8. thanks!

[jody]

10. Thanks! n/t

[ismnotwasm]

14. Cool

Thank you