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Offers an opinionated introduction to philosophical issues concerning idealizations in physics, including the concept of and reasons for introducing idealization, abstraction, and approximation, possible taxonomy and justification, and application to issues of mathematical Platonism, scientific realism, and scientific understanding

• Introduction
• Dismantling classical physics
• Cathode ray tube: X-rays and the electron
• The gold foil experiment: The structure of the atom
• The Photoelectric Effect: The light quantum
• Matter beyond atoms
• Cloud chambers: Cosmic rays and a shower of new particles
• The first particle accelerators: Splitting the atom
• Cyclotron: Artificial production of radioactivity
• Synchrotron radiation: An unexpected light emerges
• The standard model and beyond
• Particle physics goes large: The strange resonances
• Mega-detectors: Finding the elusive Neutrino
• Linear accelerators: The discovery of quarks
• The Tevatron: A third generation of matter
• The large Hadron collider: The Higgs Boson and beyond
• Future experiments
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

"An accelerator physicist's fascinating journey through the experiments that uncovered the nature of matter and made the modern world. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists believed that the project of physics was nearly complete, that there was little left to explore. But as the new century dawned, scientists with the drive to deepen their understanding began looking ever more closely at the atom, and as a result of their remarkable discoveries, physics--and the world around us--would never again be the same. When the cathode ray tube revealed the secret of X-rays, physics immediately proved itself to be a source of enormous technological innovation, enabling life-saving medical equipment, safer building construction, and stronger security measures. And with every discovery since, our expanded knowledge of the infinitesimal has also brought a corresponding change in technology. These experiments ushered us into the modern world, helping us to create detectors that map the insides of volcanoes and predict eruptions as well as photovoltaic cells that power remote controls, accelerate our Internet speeds, and harness the sun's energy. From the smallest of instruments to machines so large they straddle international borders, Suzie Sheehy takes readers on a captivating journey through twelve crucial experiments that shaped our understanding of the cosmos and how we live within it. Along the way, Sheehy pulls back the curtain to reveal how physics is really done--not by theorists with blackboards, but by experimentalists with brilliant designs. Celebrating human ingenuity, creativity, and above all curiosity, The Matter of Everything is an inspiring story about the scientists who make real discoveries, and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know"-- Provided by publisher

• Introduction: On Retrieving Natural Philosophy Part One: A Critical Conversation with the Tradition
• 1: The Origins of Natural Philosophy: Aristotle
• 2: The Consolidation of Natural Philosophy: The Middle Ages
• 3: Skywatching: The Natural Philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo
• 4: English Natural Philosophy: Bacon, Boyle, and Newton
• 5: The Parting of the Ways: From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science Part Two: A Reconceived Natural Philosophy: Exploring a Disciplinary Imaginary
• 6: Reconceiving Natural Philosophy: Laying the Foundations
• 7: Theory: The Contemplation of Nature
• 8: Objectivity: Understanding the External World
• 9: Subjectivity: An Affective Engagement with Nature
• 10: Natural Philosophy: Recasting a Vision Acknowledgements Works Consulted Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Recovering the forgotten discipline of Natural Philosophy for the modern world This book argues for the retrieval of 'natural philosophy', a concept that faded into comparative obscurity as individual scientific disciplines became established and institutionalized. Natural philosophy was understood in the early modern period as a way of exploring the human relationship with the natural world, encompassing what would now be seen as the distinct disciplines of the natural sciences, mathematics, music, philosophy, and theology. The first part of the work represents a critical conversation with the tradition, identifying the essential characteristics of natural philosophy, particularly its emphasis on both learning about and learning from nature. After noting the factors which led to the disintegration of natural philosophy during the nineteenth century, the second part of the work sets out the reasons why natural philosophy should be retrieved, and a creative and innovative proposal for how this might be done. This draws on Karl Popper's 'Three Worlds' and Mary Midgley's notion of using multiple maps in bringing together the many aspects of the human encounter with the natural world. Such a retrieved or 're-imagined' natural philosophy is able to encourage both human attentiveness and respectfulness towards Nature, while enfolding both the desire to understand the natural world, and the need to preserve the affective, imaginative, and aesthetic aspects of the human response to nature.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Philosophers debate the ideas and implications of one of the most important contemporary works in the philosophy of science, David Albert's Time and Chance. In the twenty-odd years since its publication, David Albert's Time and Chance has been recognized as one of the most significant contemporary contributions to the philosophy of science. Here, philosophers and physicists explore the implications of Albert's arguments and debate his solutions to some of the most intractable problems in theoretical physics. Albert has attempted to make sense of the tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of that world. In particular, he is concerned with problems arising from causality and the direction of time: defying common sense, almost all our basic scientific ideas suggest that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen in reverse. Focusing on Newtonian mechanics, Albert provides a systematic account of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. He also generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and suggests a deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The essays included in The Probability Map of the Universe develop, explore, and critique this account, while Albert himself replies. The result is an insightful discussion of the foundations of statistical mechanics and its relation to cosmology, the direction of time, and the metaphysical nature of laws and objective probability.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) was a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate who contributed tremendously to particle physics. Until his death, Weinberg was regarded by many as the greatest living scientist. His most well-known work was the formulation of electroweak theory for which he earned the 1979 Nobel Prize with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam, but his research spanned many other fields. Examples include effective Lagrangians, quantum chromodynamics, supersymmetry, quantum gravity, and cosmology.Weinberg's publications were renowned not only for their profundity and originality but also for their devastating logic and clarity. This volume brings together 37 of his most significant papers, together with commentaries, providing today's physicists with easy access to these seminal papers. More than just a collection, this selection by editor Michael Duff places each article into a comprehensive overview, providing the reader with the scientific and historical context of Weinberg's finest papers.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 5. Experimental and other skills
• 5.1. Investigative work
• 5.2. Projects
• 5.3. Types of assessment
• 5.4. Examples of assessment criteria
• 5.5. General remarks

• 6. Summaries and suggestions
• 6.1. Introduction
• 6.2. Emergent issues
• 6.3. Suggestions for improvement
• 6.4. Summary

• 1. Introduction and the purposes of assessment
• 1.1. Introduction
• 1.2. Purposes of assessment
• 1.3. General remarks

• 2. Methods of assessment
• 2.1. Introduction
• 2.2 Norm and criterion referencing
• 2.3. Difficulty and scaling
• 2.4. Types of assessment
• 2.5. Students with disabilities
• 2.6. Concluding remarks

• 3. What are we assessing?
• 3.1. Introduction
• 3.2. Testing physics programmes
• 3.3. Assessment of teamwork
• 3.4. Final remarks

• 4. Timed examinations
• 4.1. Introduction
• 4.2. Structure and nomenclature
• 4.3. Quality control
• 4.4. Marking
• 4.5. Analysis of examination papers
• 4.6. General remarks

Assessment is an important part of any education programme. However, following tradition, many academics offer modules that are lecture-based with a formal unseen examination as the principal assessment. This book explores issues regarding student assessment in university-level physics education

• 1. Introduction
• 2. C*-algebras of physical quantities
• 3. Quantization and the classical limit
• 4. Intertheoretic reduction
• 5. Interpretation
• 6. Theory construction
• 7. Conclusion.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This Element provides an entry point for philosophical engagement with quantization and the classical limit. It introduces the mathematical tools of C*-algebras as they are used to compare classical and quantum physics. It then employs those tools to investigate philosophical issues surrounding theory change in physics. It discusses examples in which quantization bears on the topics of reduction, structural continuity, analogical reasoning, and theory construction. In doing so, it demonstrates that the precise mathematical tools of algebraic quantum theory can aid philosophers of science and philosophers of physics.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1: Introduction.
• 2: Getting Comfortable.
• 3: Interpolation and Data Fitting.
• 4: Searching for Roots.
• 5: Numerical Quadrature.
• 6: Ordinary Differential Equations.
• 7: Fourier Analysis.
• 8: Monte Carlo Methods.
• 9: Partial Differential Equations.
• 10: Advanced Numerical Quadrature.
• 11: Advanced ODE Solver and Applications.
• 12: High Performance Computing. Bibliography. Appendix. Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This updated edition provides an introduction to computational physics in order to perform physics experiments on the computer. Computers can be used for a wide variety of scientific tasks, from the simple manipulation of data to simulations of real-world events. This book is designed to provide the reader with a grounding in scientific programming. It contains many examples and exercises developed in the context of physics problems. The new edition now uses C++ as the primary language. The book covers topics such as interpolation, integration, and the numerical solutions to both ordinary and partial differential equations. It discusses simple ideas, such as linear interpolation and root finding through bisection, to more advanced concepts in order to solve complex differential equations. It also contains a chapter on high performance computing which provides an introduction to parallel programming. Features Includes some advanced material as well as the customary introductory topics Uses a comprehensive C++ library and several C++ sample programs ready to use and build into a library of scientific programs Features problem-solving aspects to show how problems are approached and to demonstrate the methods of constructing models and solutions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1: Scaling features of crackling noise
• 2: Sandpile models
• 3: Avalanches in disordered media
• 4: The depinning transition
• 5: Fracture
• 6: Plasticity
• 7: Granular matter
• 8: The Barkhausen effect
• 9: Vortices in superconductors
• 10: Flow in porous media
• 11: Avalanches in biological systems
• 12: Outlook References Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The response of materials and the functioning of devices is often associated with noise. In this book, Stefano Zapperi concentrates on a particular type of noise, known as crackling noise, which is characterized by an intermittent series of broadly distributed pulses. While representing a nuisance in many practical applications, crackling noise can also tell us something useful about the microscopic processes ruling the materials behavior. Each crackle in the noise series usually corresponds to a localized impulsive event, an avalanche, occurring inside the material. A distinct statistical feature of crackling noise, and of the underlying avalanche behavior, is the presence of scaling, observed as power-law distributed noise pulses, long-range correlation, and scale free spectra. These are the hallmarks of critical phenomena and phase transitions. This work summarizes the current understanding of crackling noise, reviewing research undertaken in the past 30 years, from the early and influential ideas on self-organized criticality in sandpile models, to more modern studies on disordered systems. Crackling Noise covers the main theoretical models used to investigate avalanche phenomena, describes the statistical tools needed to analyze crackling noise, and provides a detailed discussion of a set of relevant examples of crackling noise in materials science. These include acoustic emission in fracture, strain bursts in amorphous and crystal plasticity, granular avalanches, magnetic noise in ferromagnets and superconductors, and fluid flow in porous media. The book concludes by considering the wider application of these models in the natural sciences.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)