The Many Voices Of Modern Physics

The Many Voices of Modern Physics follows a revolution that began in 1905 when Albert Einstein published papers on special relativity and quantum theory. Unlike Newtonian physics, this new physics often departs wildly from common sense, a radical divorce that presents a unique communicative challenge to physicists when writing for other physicists or for the general public, and to journalists and popular science writers as well. In their two long careers, Joseph Harmon and the late Alan Gross have explored how scientists communicate with each other and with the general public. Here, they focus not on the history of modern physics but on its communication. In their survey of physics communications and related persuasive practices, they move from peak to peak of scientific achievement, recalling how physicists use the communicative tools available—in particular, thought experiments, analogies, visuals, and equations—to convince others that what they say is not only true but significant, that it must be incorporated into the body of scientific and general knowledge. Each chapter includes a chorus of voices, from the many celebrated physicists who devoted considerable time and ingenuity to communicating their discoveries, to the science journalists who made those discoveries accessible to the public, and even to philosophers, sociologists, historians, an opera composer, and a patent lawyer. With their final collaboration, Harmon and Gross offer a tribute to the communicative practices of the physicists who convinced their peers and the general public that the universe is a far more bizarre and interesting place than their nineteenth-century predecessors imagined.

While the two previous books entitled Introduction to Modern Physics: Theoretical Foundations and Advanced Modern Physics: Theoretical Foundations exposed the reader to the foundations and frontiers of today's physics, the goal of this third volume is to cover in some detail several topics omitted in the essentially linear progression of the first two. This book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is on quantum mechanics. Analytic solutions to the Schrödinger equation are developed for some basic systems. The analysis is then formalized, concluding with a set of postulates for the theory. Part 2 is on applications of quantum mechanics: approximation methods for bound states, scattering theory, time-dependent perturbation theory, and electromagnetic radiation and quantum electrodynamics. Part 3 covers some selected topics in relativistic quantum field theory: discrete symmetries, the Heisenberg picture, and the Feynman rules for quantum chromodynamics. The three volumes in this series taken together provide a clear, logical, self-contained, and comprehensive base from which the very best students can learn modern physics. When finished, readers should have an elementary working knowledge in the principal areas of theoretical physics of the twentieth century.

Originally published: New York: Wiley, 1980.