Back-of-the-Envelope Physics

2004-12-01
Back-of-the-Envelope Physics

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  • Author: Clifford Swartz
  • Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
  • ISBN: 0801881641
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 174

From an award-winning teacher, “a delightful and instructive accessory to an introductory physics course” (Physics World). Physicists use “back-of-the-envelope” estimates to check whether or not an idea could possibly be right. In many cases, the approximate solution is all that is needed. This compilation of 101 examples of back-of-the-envelope calculations celebrates a quantitative approach to solving physics problems. Drawing on a lifetime of physics research and nearly three decades as the editor of The Physics Teacher, Clifford Swartz—a winner of two awards from the American Association of Physics Teachers—provides simple, approximate solutions to physics problems that span a broad range of topics. What note do you get when you blow across the top of a Coke bottle? Could you lose weight on a diet of ice cubes? How can a fakir lie on a bed of nails without getting hurt? Does draining water in the northern hemisphere really swirl in a different direction than its counterpart below the equator? In each case, only a few lines of arithmetic and a few natural constants solve a problem to within a few percent. Covering such subjects as astronomy, magnetism, optics, sound, heat, mechanics, waves, and electricity, this book provides a rich source of material for teachers and anyone interested in the physics of everyday life. “This is a book that will help make the study of physics fun and relevant.” —Mark P. Silverman, author of Waves and Grains: Reflections on Light and Learning

Fly By Night Physics

2020-10-27
Fly By Night Physics

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  • Author: A. Zee
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 0691207739
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 448

The essential primer for physics students who want to build their physical intuition Presented in A. Zee's incomparably engaging style, this book introduces physics students to the practice of using physical reasoning and judicious guesses to get at the crux of a problem. An essential primer for advanced undergraduates and beyond, Fly by Night Physics reveals the simple and effective techniques that researchers use to think through a problem to its solution—or failing that, to smartly guess the answer—before starting any calculations. In typical physics classrooms, students seek to master an enormous toolbox of mathematical methods, which are necessary to do the precise calculations used in physics. Consequently, students often develop the unfortunate impression that physics consists of well-defined problems that can be solved with tightly reasoned and logical steps. Idealized textbook exercises and homework problems reinforce this erroneous impression. As a result, even the best students can find themselves completely unprepared for the challenges of doing actual research. In reality, physics is replete with back of the envelope estimates, order of magnitude guesses, and fly by night leaps of logic. Including exciting problems related to cutting-edge topics in physics, from Hawking radiation to gravity waves, this indispensable book will help students more deeply understand the equations they have learned and develop the confidence to start flying by night to arrive at the answers they seek. For instructors, a solutions manual is available upon request.

Aerospace Engineering on the Back of an Envelope

2012-03-05
Aerospace Engineering on the Back of an Envelope

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  • Author: Irwin E. Alber
  • Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
  • ISBN: 3642225373
  • Category : Technology & Engineering
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 326

Engineers need to acquire “Back-of-the-Envelope” survival skills to obtain rough quantitative answers to real-world problems, particularly when working on projects with enormous complexity and very limited resources. In the case studies treated in this book, we show step-by-step examples of the physical arguments and the resulting calculations obtained using the quick-fire method. We also demonstrate the estimation improvements that can be obtained through the use of more detailed physics-based Back-of-the-Envelope engineering models. These different methods are used to obtain the solutions to a number of design and performance estimation problems arising from two of the most complex real-world engineering projects: the Space Shuttle and the Hubble Space Telescope satellite.

Maths on the Back of an Envelope: Clever ways to (roughly) calculate anything

2019-09-19
Maths on the Back of an Envelope: Clever ways to (roughly) calculate anything

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  • Author: Rob Eastaway
  • Publisher: HarperCollins
  • ISBN: 000832459X
  • Category : Mathematics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 208

‘Another terrific book by Rob Eastaway’ SIMON SINGH ‘A delightfully accessible guide to how to play with numbers’ HANNAH FRY

Back-of-the-envelope Quantum Mechanics: With Extensions To Many-body Systems, Integrable Pdes, And Rare And Exotic Methods (Second Edition)

2024-01-10
Back-of-the-envelope Quantum Mechanics: With Extensions To Many-body Systems, Integrable Pdes, And Rare And Exotic Methods (Second Edition)

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  • Author: Maxim Olchanyi (Olshanii)
  • Publisher: World Scientific
  • ISBN: 9811286396
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 223

Dimensional and order-of-magnitude estimates are practiced by almost everybody but taught almost nowhere. When physics students engage in their first theoretical research project, they soon learn that exactly solvable problems belong only to textbooks, that numerical models are long and resource consuming, and that 'something else' is needed to quickly gain insight into the system they are going to study. Qualitative methods are this 'something else', but typically, students have never heard of them before.The aim of this book is to teach the craft of qualitative analysis using a set of problems, some with solutions and some without, in advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate Quantum Mechanics. Examples include a dimensional analysis solution for the spectrum of a quartic oscillator, simple WKB formulas for the matrix elements of a coordinate in a gravitational well, and a three-line-long estimate for the ionization energy of atoms uniformly valid across the whole periodic table. The pièce de résistance in the collection is a series of dimensional analysis questions in Integrable Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations with no dimensions existing a priori. Solved problems include the relationship between the size and the speed of solitons of the Korteweg-de Vries equation and an expression for the oscillation period of a Nonlinear Schrödinger breather as a function of its width.A new theme that appears in the second edition are the rare and exotic methods in elementary quantum mechanics. The new chapter covers quantum-mechanical supersymmetry, power index method, scale invariance, self-similarity, and circle inversion.

The Astronomers' Magic Envelope

2018
The Astronomers' Magic Envelope

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  • Author: Prasenjit Saha
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0198816464
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 132

Working physicists, and especially astrophysicists, value a good `back-of-the-envelope' calculation, meaning a short, elegant computation or argument that starts from general principles and leads to an interesting result. This book guides students on how to understand astrophysics using general principles and concise calculations -- endeavouring to be elegant where possible and using short computer programs where necessary. The material proceeds in approximate historical order. The book begins with the Enlightenment-era insight that the orbits of the planets is easy, but the orbit of the Moon is a real headache, and continues to deterministic chaos. This is followed by a chapter on spacetime and black holes. Four chapters reveal how microphysics, especially quantum mechanics, allow us to understand how stars work. The last two chapters are about cosmology, bringing us to 21st-century developments on the microwave background and gravitational waves.

Everyday Physics

2021-09-02
Everyday Physics

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  • Author: Jo Hermans
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
  • ISBN: 1906860823
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 407

Fascinating, fun and friendly, this physics book is perfect for anyone with a healthy dose of curiosity. How can you tell where a sound is coming from? What is the human energy equivalent of a vacuum cleaner? How does GPS work? Why do eggs explode in the microwave? Is there a vacuum inside double-glazed windows? Can you get less wet by cycling faster? With clear explanations and hundreds of colourful photos and diagrams, Everyday Physics is an engaging physics book accessible for all ages. You can read this brilliant book in whatever order you want, dipping in and out of the different sections. Based on Hermans' Everyday physics lecture series, it combines deep physical insights with back-of-the-envelope calculations, relating abstract physics concepts to the real world, often in a surprising way. Everyday Physics also features lots of intriguing home experiments to further demonstrate the explanations. Most of these can be done using simple items from the kitchen, such as using a glass of water, a torch, and a few drops of milk to understand why the sky is blue and the setting sun red. If you want to dig a bit deeper, there are extra resources in the shaded boxes throughout. Whether you're a parent, grandparent, college student or just have a healthy interest in the world around you, this book will bring the magic of physics to your everyday life. Once you discover the beauty of science, ordinary things will become extraordinary.

Guesstimation

2009-02-09
Guesstimation

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  • Author: Lawrence Weinstein
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 1400824443
  • Category : Mathematics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 320

Guesstimation is a book that unlocks the power of approximation--it's popular mathematics rounded to the nearest power of ten! The ability to estimate is an important skill in daily life. More and more leading businesses today use estimation questions in interviews to test applicants' abilities to think on their feet. Guesstimation enables anyone with basic math and science skills to estimate virtually anything--quickly--using plausible assumptions and elementary arithmetic. Lawrence Weinstein and John Adam present an eclectic array of estimation problems that range from devilishly simple to quite sophisticated and from serious real-world concerns to downright silly ones. How long would it take a running faucet to fill the inverted dome of the Capitol? What is the total length of all the pickles consumed in the US in one year? What are the relative merits of internal-combustion and electric cars, of coal and nuclear energy? The problems are marvelously diverse, yet the skills to solve them are the same. The authors show how easy it is to derive useful ballpark estimates by breaking complex problems into simpler, more manageable ones--and how there can be many paths to the right answer. The book is written in a question-and-answer format with lots of hints along the way. It includes a handy appendix summarizing the few formulas and basic science concepts needed, and its small size and French-fold design make it conveniently portable. Illustrated with humorous pen-and-ink sketches, Guesstimation will delight popular-math enthusiasts and is ideal for the classroom.

Building Physics of the Envelope

2018-05-07
Building Physics of the Envelope

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  • Author: Ulrich Knaack
  • Publisher: Birkhäuser
  • ISBN: 3035609497
  • Category : Architecture
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 134

The facade is the building’s interface with its environment. It is here that building physics parameters such as heat, humidity, sound and light interact with the building. All these influences need to be controlled by the building envelope in order to ensure the comfort of the user and the functional performance of the architecture. This introduction explains the most important phenomena and then relates them to design and building practice – which materials react in which way to these factors? How do facade systems deal with heat, humidity, sound and light? This practice-oriented book, which is the result of cooperation between an architect and a structural engineer, describes the most important facade materials and constructions under the aspect of their building physics performance.

Project Hail Mary

2022-10-04
Project Hail Mary

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  • Author: Andy Weir
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books
  • ISBN: 0593135229
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 497

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Martian, a lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—in development as a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling. HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today “If you loved The Martian, you’ll go crazy for Weir’s latest.”—The Washington Post Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he? An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.