NEWS

• There will be no class the week of March 10-14 (Spring Break).
• Several Greek alphabet quizzes are available online.
• Please put away your cell phones during the lectures.
• The Department of Natural Sciences is excited to start a seminar series as a part of our NASA project. We have organized a presentation regarding NASA Internships on Thursday, 02/13/2025. This virtual event (Zoom) will be helpful to students because NASA Summer 2025 internship application deadline is approaching soon (02/28/2025). See the seminar series flyer for details.

To Learn More

• To get any further, you will need to learn the calculus. I recommend taking college courses for this. If you would like a brief introduction first, I recommend How to Enjoy Calculus by Eli S. Pine.
• University Physics by Sears and Zemansky (1956). An excellent calculus-based overview of physics. (Newer editions tend to be bloated without adding anything more of value.)
• Physics by Paul J. Tipler (1976). Another excellent calculus-based overview of physics. (As with Sears and Zemansky, newer editions tend to be unnecessarily bloated.)

For some fun physics-related reading, I suggest:

• The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan. Thorne is a well-known physicist who was involved in making the movie Interstellar from its beginning. In this book he and film director Nolan describe the physics shown in the movie.
• Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. A noted physicist discusses the possibility of time travel, force fields, invisibility cloaks, transporters, etc.
• The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. A very entertaining collection of stories surrounding the periodic table of the elements.
• Mr. Tompkins in Paperback (and an updated version, The New World of Mr. Tompkins) by George Gamow. A famous Russian physicist wrote these stories of a world in which the speed of light is just 30 mph so relativistic effects are visible, and more stories of a world where Planck's constant is so large that quantum effects are visible.

Here's an interesting article on the physics of skipping stones from Physics Today: Water-Skipping Stones and Spheres

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