How high can animals jump? What are the fastest thrown balls? How fast can aeroplanes and butterflies fly? What does the sea level tell about the sun? What is heat? What are chaos and self-organization?
This free colour pdf on introductory physics guarantees to be entertaining, surprising and challenging on every page. With little mathematics, starting from observations of everyday life, the text presents the best stories, images, movies and puzzles in mechanics, universal gravity and themodynamics. It is downloaded over 40 000 times per year. If you are between the age of 16 and 106, you will enjoy it!
Download
volume I - FALL, FLOW AND HEAT (58 MB).
This volume also explains conservation laws and the reversibility of motion, explores mirror symmetry, and presents the principle of cosmic lazyness: the principle of least action. The text guarantees to be interesting, vivid and challenging on every page. Enjoy!
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| Download
volume I |
FALL, FLOW AND HEAT | |
| 1 | Why should we care about motion? | 15 |
| 2 | From motion measurement to continuity | 33 |
| 3 | How to describe motion – kinematics | 72 |
| 4 | From objects and images to conservation | 90 |
| 5 | From the rotation of the Earth to the relativity of motion | 123 |
| 6 | Motion due to gravitation | 151 |
| 7 | Classical mechanics and the predictability of motion | 195 |
| 8 | Measuring change with action | 213 |
| 9 | Motion and symmetry | 229 |
| 10 | Simple motions of extended bodies – oscillations and waves | 248 |
| 11 | Do extended bodies exist? – Limits of continuity | 283 |
| 12 | Fluids and their motion | 301 |
| 13 | From heat to time-invariance | 319 |
| 14 | Self-organization and chaos - the simplicity of complexity | 348 |
| 15 | From the limitations of physics to the limits of motion | 366 |
| Appendix A | Notation and conventions | 372 |
| Appendix B | Units, measurements and constants | 383 |
| Appendix C | Sources of information of motion | 398 |
Enjoy the reading!