Fun with physics - new pdf book edition for free download

[motionmountain]

The new edition of the free physics text in pdf format
is now online at

http://www.motionmountain.net

The new edition includes many new topics, pictures, puzzles
and tables; it keeps the promise to be fascinating and
challenging on every page.

The text now explains the geometric phase and its uses
in optics, the limited, three-dimensional colour space of
humans, how artists use it, and the twelve-dimensional colour
space of mantis shrimps, the fascinating physics of the human
voice, the singing of high-voltage lines, the knots possible
in Maxwell's equations, and the reasons not take Descartes'
philosophy seriously, following his own advice, because of
the finiteness of the speed of light.

The text also tells how to build a mirror that moves almost
as fast as light itself, explains why the signals between the
eye and the brain should be explored further, presents new
findings on how birds feel magnetic fields, introduces the
the nine mineral classes and the nine chemical elements
that make up almost all rocks, shows the shadow produced
by a single atom, tells how to measure the air temperature
in the summer using a clock and add various topics on
forensic physics, especially on the ways to make hidden
fingerprints visible.

Enjoy the reading.

Christoph Schiller

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I see you use LaTeX to typeset your books; I'm impressed by the quality of the design. (But then most self-published textbooks I see just use \documentclass{book} and Computer Modern and don't bother with anything else.)

 

I do notice the following license restrictions:

 

This pdf file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Germany Licence, whose full text can be found on the website creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/de, with the additional restriction that reproduction, distribution and use, in whole or in part, in any product or service, be it commercial or not, is not allowed without the written consent of the copyright owner. The pdf file was and remains free for everybody to read, store and print for personal use, and to distribute electronically, but only in unmodified form and at no charge.

That's unusually restrictive for an openly-licensed textbook. Why did you choose this license? Admittedly my book is a much smaller undertaking, but I went with a much looser license.

[Everett]

I am reading the last volume of Motion Mountain, the part of the strand model. In spite you talk about Feyman diagramas and deduce the equation for interactions from a particle with a field by the 3 gauge interactions, I would like to know how can be deduced the complete standard model lagrangian.

 

And a more basic question, why relavistic quantum effects exist only when Schwarzschild radius is 2 times Compton wavelength?

Edited August 28, 2015 by Everett