Modern Physics

For sophomore-level courses in modern physics.

This comprehensive text provides a clear, correct, and up-to-date introduction and survey of the topics of importance to tomorrow's engineers and scientists. The presentation includes the description of the history of the topics, to show students how we got to where we are; it stresses the importance of observation and experiment; and it emphasizes numbers, so that students develop a feel for the magnitudes involved and for when different principles become important.

About the Authors

Jeremy Bernstein
Jeremy Bernstein has had a dual career in physics and writing. He was on the staff of the New Yorker from 1963 to 1993 and was a Professor of Physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology from 1968 until his retirement in 1993, when he became Professor emeritus. He has won several awards for his writing about science and mountain travel. He has also published widely in both technical and non-technical journals. Some of his recent books are: An Introduction to Cosmology, Albert Einstein and the Frontiers of Physics, A Theory for Everything, In the Himalayas, and Dawning of the Raj. He has held visiting appointments at The Rockefeller University, The University of Islamabad, The Ecole Polytechnique, CERN laboratory, Princeton University, and Oxford. This photograph of Jeremy was taken on a bicycle trip in northern California. The thumb, which is on the grounds of the Clos Pegase art gallery and winery in Calistoga, was the work of the French artist Cesar Baldachini. Bernstein has bicycled in many countries including Bali and Crete. He makes his home in New York City and Aspen, Colorado.

Paul M. Fishbane
Paul Fishbane has been teaching undergraduate courses at the University of Virginia, where he is Professor of Physics, for some 25 years. He received his doctoral degree from Princeton University in 1967 and has published some 100 papers in his field, theoretical high energy physics. He is co-author of Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Stephen Gasiorowicz and Stephen Thornton. Paul has held visiting appointments at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, CERN laboratory in Switzerland, Amsterdam's NIKHEF laboratory, France's Institut de Physique Nucleaire, the University of Paris-Sud, and the Ecole Polytechnique. He has been active for many years at the Aspen Center for Physics, where current issues in physics are discussed with an international group of participants. His other interests include biking, music, and the physics of the kitchen. All of the rest of his time is spent trying to keep up with his family, especially his youngest son Nicholas.

Stephen Gasiorowicz
Stephen Gasiorowicz was born in Poland and received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1952. After spending 8 years at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota, where his field of research is theoretical high energy physics. As a visiting professor, he has traveled to the Niels Bohr Institute, NORDITA in Copenhagen, the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, DESY in Hamburg, Fermilab in Batavia, and the Universities of Marseille and Tokyo. He has been a frequent visitor and an officer of the Aspen Center for Physics. Steve is co-author of Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Paul Fishbane and Stephen Thornton and has written books on elementary particle physics and quantum physics. A relatively new occupation is that of grandfather, which still leaves some time for reading (history), biking, canoeing, and skiing.