![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > Science & Mathematics > Physics > General
Proceedings of the14th European Microscopy Congress, held in Aachen, Germany, 1-5 September 2008. Jointly organised by the European Microscopy Society (EMS), the German Society for Electron Microscopy (DGE) and the local microscopists from RWTH Aachen University and the Research Centre J lich, the congress brings together scientists from Europe and from all over the world. The scientific programme covers all recent developments in the three major areas of instrumentation and methods, materials science and life science.
Designed for hassle-free classroom and independent study, our Revision Guides are designed to complement the Student Books with a range of specially designed features such as the one-topic-per-page format, practice questions, knowledge checks and skills checks. ActiveBook included with every Student Book : An ActiveBook gives your students easy online access to the content in the Student Book. They can make it their own with notes, highlights and links to their wider reading. Perfect for supporting their course work and revision activities.
NOW A MAJOR SERIES 'GENIUS' ON NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, PRODUCED BY RON HOWARD AND STARRING GEOFFREY RUSH Einstein is the great icon of our age: the kindly refugee from oppression whose wild halo of hair, twinkling eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius. He was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days. His character, creativity and imagination were related, and they drove both his life and his science. In this marvellously clear and accessible narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered. Einstein's success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marvelling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a worldview based on respect for free spirits and free individuals. All of which helped make Einstein into a rebel but with a reverence for the harmony of nature, one with just the right blend of imagination and wisdom to transform our understanding of the universe. This new biography, the first since all of Einstein's papers have become available, is the fullest picture yet of one of the key figures of the twentieth century. This is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available -- a fully realised portrait of this extraordinary human being, and great genius. Praise for EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson:- 'YOU REALLY MUST READ THIS.' Sunday Times 'As pithy as Einstein himself.' New Scientist '[A] brilliant biography, rich with newly available archival material.' Literary Review 'Beautifully written, it renders the physics understandable.' Sunday Telegraph 'Isaacson is excellent at explaining the science. ' Daily Express
Stephen Webb, author of WHERE IS EVERYBODY?, takes the interested amateur on a thrilling and enlightening tour of the amazing, even bizarre, new ideas of modern physics, including alternatives to the Big Bang, parallel universes, and an imaginary trip to the other side of the black hole.
The focus of this book and its geometric notions is on real vector spaces X that are finite or infinite inner product spaces of arbitrary dimension greater than or equal to 2. It characterizes both euclidean and hyperbolic geometry with respect to natural properties of (general) translations and general distances of X. Also for these spaces X, it studies the sphere geometries of Moebius and Lie as well as geometries where Lorentz transformations play the key role. Proofs of newer theorems characterizing isometries and Lorentz transformations under mild hypotheses are included, such as for instance infinite dimensional versions of famous theorems of A.D. Alexandrov on Lorentz transformations. A real benefit is the dimension-free approach to important geometrical theories. New to this third edition is a chapter dealing with a simple and great idea of Leibniz that allows us to characterize, for these same spaces X, hyperplanes of euclidean, hyperbolic geometry, or spherical geometry, the geometries of Lorentz-Minkowski and de Sitter, and this through finite or infinite dimensions greater than 1. Another new and fundamental result in this edition concerns the representation of hyperbolic motions, their form and their transformations. Further we show that the geometry (P,G) of segments based on X is isomorphic to the hyperbolic geometry over X. Here P collects all x in X of norm less than one, G is defined to be the group of bijections of P transforming segments of P onto segments. The only prerequisites for reading this book are basic linear algebra and basic 2- and 3-dimensional real geometry. This implies that mathematicians who have not so far been especially interested in geometry could study and understand some of the great ideas of classical geometries in modern and general contexts.
This work tackles the problems of understanding how energy is transmitted and distributed in power-grids as well as in determining how robust this transmission and distribution is when modifications to the grid or power occur. The most important outcome is the derivation of explicit relationships between the structure of the grid, the optimal transmission and distribution of energy, and the grid's collective behavior (namely, the synchronous generation of power). These relationships are extremely relevant for the design of resilient power-grid models. To allow the reader to apply these results to other complex systems, the thesis includes a review of relevant aspects of network theory, spectral theory, and novel analytical calculations to predict the existence and stability of periodic collective behavior in complex networks of phase oscillators, which constitute a paradigmatic model for many complex systems.
Pascal was a scientist and man of the world who came to be a passionately devout Christian. The fragments of his great defense of Christianity, left unfinished at his death in 1662, survive in the form of the Pensees. This series of brief, dramatic notes on his religious convictions are here translated into English. These thoughts expose Pascal's vision of the world and display powerful reasoning and a profound faith.
Proceedings of a Symposium held in Geneva, January 12-16, 1987
This special issue of ZAMP is published to honor Paul M. Naghdi for his contributions to mechanics over the last forty years and more. It is offered in celebration of his long, productive career in continuum mechan ics; a career which has been marked by a passion for the intrinsic beauty of the subject, an uncompromising adherence to academic standards, and an untiring devotion to our profession. Originally, this issue was planned in celebration of Naghdi's 70th birthday, which occurred on 29 March 1994. But, as the papers were being prepared for the press, it became evident that the illness from which Professor Naghdi had been suffering during recent months was extremely serious. On 26 May 1994, a reception took place in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley, at which Naghdi received The Berkeley Citation (which is given in lieu of an honorary degree) and where he was also presented with the Table of Contents of the present collection. Subse quently, he had the opportunity to read the papers in manuscript form. He was very touched that his colleagues had chosen to honor him with their fine contributions. The knowledge that he was held in such high esteem by his fellow scientists brought a special pleasure and consolation to him in his last weeks. On Saturday evening, 9 July 1994, Paul Naghdi succumbed to the lung cancer which he had so courageously endured.
This book is intended as an introductory text on the subject of Lie groups and algebras and their role in various fields of mathematics and physics. It is written by and for researchers who are primarily analysts or physicists, not algebraists or geometers. Not that we have eschewed the algebraic and geo metric developments. But we wanted to present them in a concrete way and to show how the subject interacted with physics, geometry, and mechanics. These interactions are, of course, manifold; we have discussed many of them here-in particular, Riemannian geometry, elementary particle physics, sym metries of differential equations, completely integrable Hamiltonian systems, and spontaneous symmetry breaking. Much ofthe material we have treated is standard and widely available; but we have tried to steer a course between the descriptive approach such as found in Gilmore and Wybourne, and the abstract mathematical approach of Helgason or Jacobson. Gilmore and Wybourne address themselves to the physics community whereas Helgason and Jacobson address themselves to the mathematical community. This book is an attempt to synthesize the two points of view and address both audiences simultaneously. We wanted to present the subject in a way which is at once intuitive, geometric, applications oriented, mathematically rigorous, and accessible to students and researchers without an extensive background in physics, algebra, or geometry."
Complexity increases with increasing system size in everything from organisms to organizations. The nonlinear dependence of a system's functionality on its size, by means of an allometry relation, is argued to be a consequence of their joint dependency on complexity (information). In turn, complexity is proven to be the source of allometry and to provide a new kind of force entailed by a system's information gradient. Based on first principles, the scaling behavior of the probability density function is determined by the exact solution to a set of fractional differential equations. The resulting lowest order moments in system size and functionality gives rise to the empirical allometry relations. Taking examples from various topics in nature, the book is of interest to researchers in applied mathematics, as well as, investigators in the natural, social, physical and life sciences. Contents Complexity Empirical allometry Statistics, scaling and simulation Allometry theories Strange kinetics Fractional probability calculus
Ya. B. Zeldovich was most assuredly one of the greatest physicists and cosmologists of the 20th century. This volume presents reminiscences about this exemplary academician, providing biographical and historical insights from the friends, students, and colleagues who knew him best. They outline Zeldovich's life and achievements, from his early days in chemical physics through his groundbreaking work in combustion and detonation, his role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, and his contributions to nuclear and elementary particle physics, to his later years in cosmology and astrophysics. Zeldovich: Reminiscences not only pays homage to an outstanding scientist and his accomplishments. It also offers incisive commentary on Soviet science and the impact that Zeldovich had on future generations, in the former Soviet Union and throughout the international physics community.
This unique text discusses the mathematical principles behind Megalithic stone circles, and how these were used for observing lunar cycles in prehistoric times. The author, A. Thom, shows that stone circles were precisely planned and laid out in accordance with certain geometric figures in the classic Pythagorean tradition. Containing some mathematical and astronomical details, along with notes on site survey and location, this book is ideal for amateur enthusiasts and academicians of archaeology, astronomy, and mathematics.
Despite successes of modern physics, the existence of dark energy and matter is indicative that conventional mechanical accounting is lacking. The most basic of all mechanical principles is Newton's second law, and conventionally, energy is just energy whether particle or wave energy. In this monograph, Louis de Broglie's idea of simultaneous existence of both particle and associated wave is developed, with a novel proposal to account for mass and energy through a combined particle-wave theory. Newton's second law of motion is replaced by a fully Lorentz invariant reformulation inclusive of both particles and waves. The model springs from continuum mechanics and forms a natural extension of special relativistic mechanics. It involves the notion of "force in the direction of time" and every particle has both particle and wave energies, arising as characteristics of space and time respectively. Dark matter and energy then emerge as special or privileged states occurring for alignments of spatial forces with the force in the direction of time. Dark matter is essentially a backward wave and dark energy a forward wave, both propagating at the speed of light. The model includes special relativistic mechanics and Schroedinger's quantum mechanics, and the major achievements of mechanics and quantum physics. Our ideas of particles and waves are not yet properly formulated, and are bound up with the speed of light as an extreme limit and particle-wave demarcation. Sub-luminal particles have an associated superluminal wave, so if sub-luminal waves have an associated superluminal particle, then there emerges the prospect for faster than light travel with all the implications for future humanity. Carefully structured over special relativity and quantum mechanics, Mathematics of Particle-Wave Mechanical Systems is not a completed story, but perhaps the first mechanical model within which such exalted notions might be realistically and soberly examined. If ultimately the distant universe become accessible, this will necessitate thinking differently about particles, waves and the role imposed by the speed of light. The text constitutes a single proposal in that direction and a depository for mathematically related results. It will appeal to researchers and students of mathematical physics, applied mathematics and engineering mechanics.
Asymptotic methods are of great importance for practical applications, especially in dealing with boundary value problems for small stochastic perturbations. This book deals with nonlinear dynamical systems perturbed by noise. It addresses problems in which noise leads to qualitative changes, escape from the attraction domain, or extinction in population dynamics. The most likely exit point and expected escape time are determined with singular perturbation methods for the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation. The authors indicate how their techniques relate to the Ito calculus applied to the Langevin equation. The book will be useful to researchers and graduate students.
This volume presents the lectures given by distinguishyed contributors at the First German-Polish Max Born Symposium, held at Wojnowice in Poland in September, 1991. This is the first such symposium to continue the tradition of a German-Polish collaboration in theoretical physics in the form of biannual seminars organized between the Universities of Leipzig and Wroclaw since the early seventies. The papers in this volume are devoted to quantum group theory, non-commutative differential geometry, and integrable systems. Particular emphasis is given to the formalisms of noncommutative geometry on quantum groups, the quantum deformation of Poincare algebra and the axiomatric approach to superselection rules. Possible relations between noncommutative geometry and particle phyics models are also considered. For researchers and postgraduate students of theoretical and mathematical physics.
This provocative and critical work addresses the question of why scientific realists and positivists consider experimental physics to be a natural and empirical science. Taking insights from contemporary science studies, continental philosophy, and the history of physics, this book describes and analyses the metaphysical presuppositions that underwrite the technological use of experimental apparatus and instruments to explore, model, and understand nature. By revealing this metaphysical foundation, the author questions whether experimental physics is a natural and empirical science at all.
Isogeometric Analysis is a groundbreaking computational approach that promises the possibility of integrating the finite element method into conventional spline-based CAD design tools. It thus bridges the gap between numerical analysis and geometry, and moreover it allows to tackle new cutting edge applications at the frontiers of research in science and engineering. This proceedings volume contains a selection of outstanding research papers presented at the second International Workshop on Isogeometric Analysis and Applications, held at Annweiler, Germany, in April 2014.
One of the most enduring elements in theoretical physics has been
group theory. GROUP 24: Physical and Mathematical Aspects of
Symmetries provides an important selection of informative articles
describing recent advances in the field. The applications of group
theory presented in this book deal not only with the traditional
fields of physics, but also include such disciplines as chemistry
and biology.
This book provides an introduction to dynamical systems with multiple time scales. The approach it takes is to provide an overview of key areas, particularly topics that are less available in the introductory form. The broad range of topics included makes it accessible for students and researchers new to the field to gain a quick and thorough overview. The first of its kind, this book merges a wide variety of different mathematical techniques into a more unified framework. The book is highly illustrated with many examples and exercises and an extensive bibliography. The target audience of this book are senior undergraduates, graduate students as well as researchers interested in using the multiple time scale dynamics theory in nonlinear science, either from a theoretical or a mathematical modeling perspective.
General relativity ranks among the most accurately tested fundamental theories in all of physics. Deficiencies in mathematical and conceptual understanding still exist, hampering further progress. This book collects surveys by experts in mathematical relativity writing about the current status of, and problems in, their fields. There are four contributions for each of the following mathematical areas: differential geometry and differential topology, analytical methods and differential equations, and numerical methods.
Many books have been written on the history of quantum mechanics. So far as I am aware, however, this is the first to incorporate the results of the large amount of detailed scholarly research completed by professional historians of physics over the past fifteen years. It is also, I believe, the first since Max Jammer's pioneering study of fifteen years ago to attempt a genuine 'history' as opposed to a mere technical report or popular or semi-popular account. My aims in making this attempt have been to satisfy the needs of historians of science and, more especially, to promote a serious interest in the history of science among phYSicists and physics students. Since the creation of quantum mechanics was inevitably a technical process conducted through the medium of technical language it has been impossible to avoid the introduction of a large amount of such language. Some acquaintance with quantum mechanics, corresponding to that obtained through an undergraduate physics course, has accordingly been assumed. I have tried to ensure, however, that such an acquaintance should be sufficient as well as necessary, and even someone with only the most basic grounding in physics should be able with judicious skip ping, to get through the book. The technical details are essential to the dialogue, but the plot proceeds and can, I hope, be understood on a non technical level."
Constructibility and complexity play central roles in recent research in computer science, mathematics and physics. For example, scientists are investigating the complexity of computer programs, constructive proofs in mathematics and the randomness of physical processes. But there are different approaches to the explication of these concepts. This volume presents important research on the state of this discussion, especially as it refers to quantum mechanics. This foundational debate' in computer science, mathematics and physics was already fully developed in 1930 in the Vienna Circle. A special section is devoted to its real founder Hans Hahn, referring to his contribution to the history and philosophy of science. The documentation section presents articles on the early Philipp Frank and on the Vienna Circle in exile. Reviews cover important recent literature on logical empiricism and related topics.
In this introductory text, Dr. Birdi demonstrates experimental methods and analyses of fractal dimensions in natural processes. In addition to a general overview, he discusses in detail problems in the fields of chemistry, geochemistry, and biophysics. Both students and professionals with a minimum of mathematics or physical science training will learn to find and model shapes and patterns from their own everyday observations. |
![]() ![]() You may like...
|