Course Description

    This course is intended for non-majors who wish to know something about some of the fundamental and
glamorous topics of modern physics without getting deeply involved with lots of mathematics. It is our one
term "Physics for Poets" course.

    Topics will include models of the solar system (Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler), concepts of space-time and motion (Einstein, Galileo, Newton), causality, determinism, and uncertainty (Heisenberg, Schroedinger) and some of the
concepts such as symmetry which underlie elementry particle physics (Feynman, Gell-Mann, Wigner and others).

Grading Criteria

    The course grade is based on two or three short answer-essay exams, a few conceptual homework problems and questions, and class discussion.

Course Materials

    The Cornell Library has quite a few good supplementary reading materials for this course.  A few of them are:

Adair, The Great Design
Bridgeman, A Sophistocates's Primer of Relativity
Gamow, Mr. Tompkins in Paperback
Glashow, From Alchemy to Quarks
Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality
Mills, Space, Time and Quanta
Jauch, Are Quanta Real?
Kaufmann, Relativity and Cosmology
Hoffmann, The Strange Story of the Quantum
Brennan, Heisenberg Probably Slept Here

Last modified October 9, 1998  by Richard Jacob