Year: 2000
Essential Physics 1, is an intensive introduction to classical and special relativity, Newtonian dynamics and gravitation, Einsteinian dynamics and gravitation, and wave motion. Mathematical methods are discussed, as needed; they include: elements of differential geometry, linear operators and matrices, ordinary differential equations, calculus of variations, orthogonal functions and Fourier series, and non-linear equations for chaotic systems. The contents of this book can be taught in one semester. It is a book for first-year college students who have an interest in pursuing a career in Physics or a closely related field.
Throughout the decade of the 1990’s, I taught a one-year course of a specialized nature to students who entered Yale College with excellent preparation in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences, and who expressed an interest in Physics or a closely related field. The level of the course was that typified by the Feynman Lectures on Physics. My one-year course was necessarily more restricted in content than the two-year Feynman Lectures. The depth of treatment of each topic was limited by the fact that the course consisted of a total of fifty-two lectures, each lasting one-and-a-quarter hours. The key role played by invariants in the Physical Universe was constantly emphasized . The material that I covered each Fall is presented, almost verbatim, in this book.
