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    Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear (Transcript)
    Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear (Transcript)
    Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear (Transcript)
    Ebook391 pages9 hours

    Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear (Transcript)

    By Michael Starbird

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear is the companion book to the audio/video series of the same name. It contains a full transcript of the series as well as the complete course guidebook which includes lecture notes, bibliography, and more.

    About this series:

    Physics is the fundamental science. It explains how the universe behaves at every scale, from the subatomic to the extragalactic. It describes the most basic objects and forces and how they interact. Its laws tell us how the planets move, where light comes from, what keeps birds aloft, why a magnet
    attracts and also repels, and when a falling object will hit the ground, and it gives answers to countless other questions about how the world works.

    Physics also gives us extraordinary power over the world, paving the way for devices from radios to GPS satellites, from steam engines to nanomaterials. It's no exaggeration to say that every invention ever conceived makes use of the principles of physics. Moreover, physics not only underlies all of the natural sciences and engineering, but also its discoveries touch on the deepest philosophical questions about the nature of reality.

    Which makes physics sound like the most complicated subject there is. But it isn't. The beauty of physics is that it is simple, so simple that anyone can learn it. In 60 enthralling half-hour lectures, Physics and Our Universe: How It All Works proves that case, giving you a robust, introductory college-level course in physics. This course doesn't stint on details and always presents its subject in all of its elegance—yet it doesn't rely heavily on equations and mathematics, using nothing more advanced than high school algebra and trigonometry.

    Your teacher is Professor Richard Wolfson, a noted physicist and educator at Middlebury College. Professor Wolfson is author or coauthor of a wide range of physics textbooks, including a widely used algebra-based introduction to the subject for college students. He has specially designed Physics and Our Universe to be entirely self-contained, requiring no additional resources. And for those who wish to dig deeper, he includes an extensive list of suggested readings that will enhance your understanding of basic physics.

    Explore the Fundamentals of Reality

    Intensively illustrated with diagrams, illustrations, animations, graphs, and other visual aids, these lectures introduce you to scores of fundamental ideas such as these:

    Newton's laws of motion: Simple to state, these three principles demolish our intuitive sense of why things move. Following where they lead gives a unified picture of motion and force that forms the basis of classical physics.
    Bernoulli effect: In fluids, an increase in speed means a decrease in pressure. This effect has wide application in aerodynamics and hydraulics. It explains why curve balls curve and why plaque in an artery can cause the artery to collapse.
    Second law of thermodynamics: Echoing the British novelist and physicist C. P. Snow, Professor Wolfson calls this law about the tendency toward disorder "like a work of Shakespeare's" in its importance to an educated person's worldview.
    Maxwell's equations: Mathematically uniting the theories of electricity and magnetism, these formulas have a startling outcome, predicting the existence of electromagnetic waves that move at the speed of light and include visible light.
    Interference and diffraction: The wave nature of light looms large when light interacts with objects comparable in size to the light's wavelength. Interference and diffraction are two intriguing phenomena that appear at these scales.
    Relativity and quantum theory: Introduced in the early 20th century, these revolutionary ideas not only patched cracks in classical mechanics but led to realms of physics never imagined, with limitless new horizons for research.

    A Course of Breathtaking Scope

    The above ideas illustrate the breathtaking scope of Physics and Our Universe, which is broken into six areas of physic
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Great Courses
    Release dateDec 21, 2006
    ISBN9781598032321
    Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear (Transcript)

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