“Physics is a fundamental science, that has a profound influence on all other sciences. Anyone, who plans a career in science, must have a thorough understanding of the fundamental ideas of Physics”.
“Studying physics is an exciting and challenging adventure. To be a professional physicist is even more exciting. Among the most absorbing activities of the human intellect are, to learn about the world we live in and to attempt to unravel the secrets of nature”.
This is how M. Alonso and E. J. Finn look at Physics as they mention in their book “Fundamental University Physics” Volume I.
How would you stop yourself from turning immediately atleast a few pages of the book even if you are from a non Physics background. And if as a student of physics, you have not gone through the three volumes of this book, you will regret to have missed the beauty of physics. In the book, the authors not only try to resolve the mystery of physics that everyone wants to know, but their emphasis is also upon the importance of the fundamental laws of Physics.
So, keep your eyes on basics of Physics and see how easily and with little efforts, you can now attack new problems.
In the second section, the authors speak about the origin of different branches of physics. In the author words, “Having inquiring minds, people have always had a great curiosity about how nature works. At the beginning, their only sources of information were their senses, and, therefore, they classified the phenomenon they observed according to the way they sensed them”.
Wonderful! No explanation could be simpler and interesting than this. A reader can now easily correlate Light with vision, Sound with the act of hearing, Mechanics with motion and so on.
Modern Physics is also brilliantly introduced by them. In their words, “This unified presentation of physics calls for a reappraisal of classical physics from a modern point of view rather than a division of physics into classical and modern. There will always be a modern physics in the sense that there will be contemporary physics being developed in one’s time. This modern physics will require at each instant a revision and re-evaluation of previous ideas and principles.”
So, truly speaking, Physics needs to be considered in a consistent and logical way.
Third section is a complete view of the universe. Initially, when science was evolved, humans were curious to know about Sun, Moon, Earth, Human body, Trees etc.
The authors speak about the basic building components of various living and non-living things and beautifully explain the core concept of the fundamental particles like electron, proton and neutron.
In their words, “Using an oversimplified language, we may say that the free particles- electron, proton and neutron are present in well-defined groups called atoms, with the protons and neutrons clustered in a very small central region called the nucleus”.
Amazing! What a simple presentation of a complicated structure!
And now comes an interesting overview of composition of living body. In the author’s words “A particularly important kind of body is the living body or living matter, called Protoplasm, in which molecules appear in a highly organized pattern and exhibit properties and functions apparently distinct from those of inert matter. The human body, which is the most developed of all living bodies, is composed of about 1028 atoms.
Can human body be introduced in words better than this?
The next section is about Interactions. And it was a excellent idea of the authors to pose the questions, they anticipated from their readers. “Why and how are electrons, protons and neutrons bound together to form atoms? Why and how are atoms are bound together to form molecules? Why and how are molecules bound together to form bodies? How does it happen that matter aggregates itself in size from small dust particles to huge planets, from bacteria to this marvellous creature called a human being?”
Who would not love to get the solutions to these queries? The authors beautifully disclose various interactions of matter.
The words of the Nobel Laureate T.D.Lee, are very well quoted here by the authors, “The purpose of science is to seek for that simple set of fundamental principles through which all known facts are understood and new results predicted. Since all matter is composed of the same fundamental units, the ultimate foundation of all natural science must be based on the laws governing the behaviour of these elementary particles”.
Do fundamental principles of Physics require any further explanation?
The authors, further, emphasise on the importance of Physics by saying that one can not even think of current research without the involvement of Physics. In the authors words “The importance of physics is not just that it provides the basic conceptual and theoretical framework on which the other natural sciences are founded. From the practical point of view, Physics is important because it provides techniques, which can be used in almost any area of pure or applied research”.
So, that means, hardly any activities in research in all fields without any exception, even History and Art can proceed without the use of modern physical techniques.
And, here are those lines, every physicist would love to read.
In the authors words,”we as physicists get a gratifying feeling that Physics not only advances the body knowledge of natural sciences but also continuously works on progress and upliftment of mankind.
The last section deals with the experimental part. Physics is a basic science emancipating from observations of physical phenomenon of nature occurring frequently in everyday life and therefore understanding physics is fundamentally learning about nature. Since a person interacts with nature through experience, therefore the process of learning from experience is utterly important.
As mentioned in the book “In some cases, phenomena occur only infrequently so that analyzing them is a difficult and slow process. For that reason, experimentation is necessary. Experimentation consists of the observation of a phenomenon under prearranged and carefully controlled conditions. The scientist can vary the conditions at will, making it easier to disclose, how they affect the process.”
What a wonderful explanation of experimentation. The reader gets clear idea of importance of experimentation. A physicist has not only access to just experiments, but he is supported by theorical procedure which originates from hypothesis, models, simulations and mathematical procedures. At the end of this section, the authors beautifully explain the requirement and importance of team work not just for Physics but for any other science too.
A book has to be not merely a compilation, not just a beautiful explanation of the subject, but every word of it should act as a stimulator. And, no doubt, Alonso & Finn have done justice to their book.
Department of Physics
Very well and easy explanation of the overview of book “Fundamental University Physics”. This provided an idea of the book and surely raised interest in reading the book