What is static electricity? How do magnets work? Is light made of waves or particles? What, really, is the theory of relativity all about? And who were all those great scientists—from Ptolemy, A
Colin Shindler's remarkable history begins in 1948, as waves of immigrants arrived in Israel from war-torn Europe to establish new cities, new institutions, and a new culture founded on the Hebrew language. Optimistic beginnings were soon replaced with the sobering reality of wars with Arab neighbours, internal ideological differences, and ongoing confrontation with the Palestinians. In this updated edition, Shindler covers the significant developments of the last decade, including the rise of the Israeli far right, Hamas's takeover and the political rivalry between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel's uneasy dealings with the new administration in the United States, political Islam and the potential impact of the Arab Spring on the region as a whole. This sympathetic yet candid portrayal asks how a nation that emerged out of the ashes of the Holocaust and was the admiration of the world is now perceived by many Western governments in a less than benevolent light.
The field of high-power laser-plasma interaction has grown in the last few decades, with applications ranging from laser-driven fusion and laser acceleration of charged particles to laser ablation of materials. This comprehensive text covers fundamental concepts including electromagnetics and electrostatic waves, parameter instabilities, laser driven fusion,charged particle acceleration and gamma rays. Two important techniques of laser proton interactions including target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) and radiation pressure acceleration (RPA) are discussed in detail, along with their applications in the field of medicine. An analytical framework is developed for laser beat-wave and wakefield excitation of plasma waves and subsequent acceleration of electrons. The book covers parametric oscillator model and studies the coupling of laser light with collective modes.
Climatic factors such as rain, snow, and other forms of precipitation can have a significant impact on the transmission of radio, light, or heat waves in the atmosphere. Communication systems may expe
In Virginia Woolf and the Visible World, Emily Dalgarno examines Woolf's engagement with notions of the subject and codes of the visible. Dalgarno examines how Woolf's writing engages with visible and non-visible realms of experience, and draws on ideas from the diverse fields of psychoanalytic theory, classical Greek tragedy, astronomy, photography and photojournalism. The solar eclipse of 1927 marks a dividing line in Woolf's career, after which she portrayed the visible world in terms of light, and shifted her interest from painting to photography. Dalgarno offers textual analyses of Woolf's individual works, including To the Lighthouse, The Waves and Three Guineas, arguing for the importance of her ongoing interest in Greek translation. In later chapters, she explores the theory of the subject that emerges from Woolf's representation of the visible in her autobiography.
Physics with Answers contains 500 problems covering the full range of introductory physics and its applications to many other subjects, along with clear, step-by-step solutions to each problem. No calculus is required. By attempting these exercises and learning from the solutions, students will gain confidence in solving class problems and improve their grasp of physics. The book is split into two parts. The first contains the problems, together with useful summaries of the main results needed for solving them. The second part gives full solutions to each problem, often accompanied by thoughtful comments. Subjects covered include statics, Newton's Laws, circular motion, gravitation, electricity and magnetism, electric circuits, liquids and gases, heat and thermodynamics, light and waves, atomic physics, and relativity. The book will be invaluable to anyone taking an introductory course in physics, whether at college or pre-university level.
This volume is the first systematic presentation of the work of Albert Einstein, comprising fourteen essays by leading historians and philosophers of science that introduce readers to his work. Following an introduction that places Einstein's work in the context of his life and times, the book opens with essays on the papers of Einstein's 'miracle year', 1905, covering Brownian motion, light quanta, and special relativity, as well as his contributions to early quantum theory and the opposition to his light quantum hypothesis. Further essays relate Einstein's path to the general theory of relativity (1915) and the beginnings of two fields it spawned, relativistic cosmology and gravitational waves. Essays on Einstein's later years examine his unified field theory program and his critique of quantum mechanics. The closing essays explore the relation between Einstein's work and twentieth-century philosophy, as well as his political writings.
From epidemics and earthquakes to tornadoes and tidal waves, the overwhelming power of Nature never ceases to instil humankind with both terror and awe. As natural disasters continue to claim human lives and wreak havoc in their wake, Perils of a Restless Planet examines our attempts to understand and anticipate such phenomena. Drawing upon case studies from ancient to present times, this book focuses on scientific inquiry, technological innovation and public policy to provide a lucid and riveting look at natural disasters. While shedding light on the elusive quality of Nature and the limits scientific study and laboratory replication impose on our understanding of her mercurial ways, the author extrapolates from the history of science to suggest how we may someday learn to warn and protect vulnerable populations on our small and tempestuous planet. Anyone interested in the power of Nature will find this book compelling and informative.
This undergraduate text takes the reader along the trail of light from Newton's particles to Einstein's relativity. Like the best detective stories, it presents clues and encourages the reader to draw conclusions before the answers are revealed. The first seven chapters describe how light behaves, develop Newton's particle theory, introduce waves and an electromagnetic wave theory of light, discover the photon, and culminate in the wave-particle duality. The book then goes on to develop the special theory of relativity, showing how time dilation and length contraction are consequences of the two simple principles on which the theory is founded. An extensive chapter derives the equation E = mc2 clearly from first principles and then explores its consequences and the misconceptions surrounding it. That most famous of issues arising from special relativity - the aging of the twins - is treated simply but compellingly.
A unifying element that links the apparently diverse phenomena observed in optical processes is the dielectric dispersion of matter. It describes the response of matter to incoming electromagnetic waves and charged particles, and thus predicts their behavior in the self-induced field of matter, known as polariton and polaron effects. The energies of phonon, exciton and plasmon, quanta of collective motions of charged particles constituting the matter, are also governed by dielectric dispersion. Since the latter is a functional of the former, one can derive useful relations for their self-consistency. Nonlinear response to laser light inclusive of multiphoton processes, and excitation of atomic inner shells by synchrotron radiation, are also described. Within the configuration coordinate model, photo-induced lattice relaxation and chemical reaction are described equally to both ground and relaxed excited states, to provide a novel and global perspective on structural phase transitions a
Enlarged and updated in 1983, this is the second edition of Dr Steel's popular textbook on interferometry. The text has been revised throughout and major additions have been made to reflect the phenomenal growth of laser techniques and applications. The book provides a general treatment that brings together the many different applications of the interference of light waves, light being used in its most general sense to include all electromagnetic radiation. The applications can cover precise measurement of length, the testing of optical components against a computed hologram, measurements of atmospheric pollution by infrared spectroscopy and many of the methods of radio astronomy and the measurement of size of visible stars. These apparently unrelated methods have a common theory, which the book presents and extends to each main field of application. It shows workers in one field how their problems relate to those in other fields, where they may have been solved already. The book will
Almost all the many past studies on chaos have been concerned with classical systems. This book, however, is one of the first to deal with quantum chaos, the natural progression from such classical systems. In this book the author deals with three major issues in quantum chaos. First, quantum mechanics is applied to both bounded and open systems exhibiting classical chaos. Potential problems involving quantum chaos are revealed in diverse areas of solid-state science, and standard concepts such as diamagnetism, antiferromagnetism, spin waves, electrical conductance and so on are shown in a fresh light through quantum chaos. Second, adiabatic-ansatz eigenvalue problems are shown to yield a new paradigm of non-linear dynamics, closing the gap between the greatly different theories of solitons and random matrices. Finally, the author provides a clue to how quantum mechanics may be improved so as to accommodate temporal chaos. First published in 1993, this book will be of value to researc
Physics with Answers contains 500 problems covering the full range of introductory physics and its applications to many other subjects, along with clear, step-by-step solutions to each problem. No calculus is required. By attempting these exercises and learning from the solutions, students will gain confidence in solving class problems and improve their grasp of physics. The book is split into two parts. The first contains the problems, together with useful summaries of the main results needed for solving them. The second part gives full solutions to each problem, often accompanied by thoughtful comments. Subjects covered include statics, Newton's Laws, circular motion, gravitation, electricity and magnetism, electric circuits, liquids and gases, heat and thermodynamics, light and waves, atomic physics, and relativity. The book will be invaluable to anyone taking an introductory course in physics, whether at college or pre-university level.
Gravitational waves were predicted 100 years ago by Einstein as part of his general theory of relativity. This volume contains the exciting results presented at IAU Symposium 338, following the announcement of the first results of the observation of the collision of neutron stars by the LIGO and Virgo Advanced detectors, and follow-up observations by many ground-based and space telescopes. These observations provided an incredible context for the talks, posters and discussions at the meeting, fostering new interactions and collaborations between physicists and astronomers in an exciting new era of multimessenger astrophysics. For the first time, space-time messengers (gravitational waves) and electromagnetic ones (visible, infrared and ultraviolet light, x-rays, gamma-rays, radio waves) can be correlated, to increase our understanding of binary systems of compact objects, rotating or exploding stars and other astrophysical phenomena. A new window has opened through which we can view th
This text is an introduction to some of the mathematical wonders of Maxwell's equations. These equations led to the prediction of radio waves, the realization that light is a type of electromagnetic wave, and the discovery of the special theory of relativity. In fact, almost all current descriptions of the fundamental laws of the universe can be viewed as deep generalizations of Maxwell's equations. Even more surprising is that these equations and their generalizations have led to some of the most important mathematical discoveries of the past thirty years. It seems that the mathematics behind Maxwell's equations is endless. The goal of this book is to explain to mathematicians the underlying physics behind electricity and magnetism and to show their connections to mathematics. Starting with Maxwell's equations, the reader is led to such topics as the special theory of relativity, differential forms, quantum mechanics, manifolds, tangent bundles, connections, and curvature.
Suitable as either a student text or professional reference, Lightwave Engineering addresses the behavior of electromagnetic waves and the propagation of light, which forms the basis of the wide-rangi
