Physics textbooks

Example texts

Elements of Physics by Alpheus W. Smith.<bibref f="default.bib">Smith

1943</bibref>

at Carpenter Library

In 1943 preface states purpose "to stress correct scientific thinking rather than to stress the accumulation of facts or to trace the historical development of the subject."

A Textbook of Physics by Edwin Hall. <bibref>Hall

A-text-book-of-AA</bibref>

Electromagnetic Theory by Attay Kovetz

Intermediate classical (non-quantized) electromagnetic theory presented as a string of mathematical obviousnesses. Preface and contents

Astronomy textbook promises "choose your own adventure."

Slater, Slater, & Lyons, 2010. Engaging in Astronomical Inquiry (protected, for internal use only). W. H. Freeman Publishing.

Six Ideas That Shaped Physics by Thomas A. Moore. http://physics.pomona.edu/sixideas/ Moore has rethought the scope and sequence of introductory physics for college.

Textbooks and social class

Standard, statewide-standardized, Advanced Placement, and honors courses and the students tracked into these courses..

General questions

Why is there a separate text for non-physics majors. Corollary: Why are the topics in texts for non-majors not addressed in texts for majors?

See for example Physics for the Inquiring Mind by Eric M. Rogers, 1960. "This book offers a course in physics to non-physicists who wish to know physics and understand it...It welcomes all readers." Flipping through the chapters, it looks like this text is a standard introductory physics text with additives of philosophy and vocabulary-building.

Textbooks in use in physics classes

See http://www.aip.org/statistics/texts/hsttext.htm for the results of a US survey of physics teachers in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics. The survey classifies courses as "regular, conceptual, honors, Advanced Placement (AP) B, and AP C." 40% of "regular" physics classes are using Zitzewitz' Glencoe book, the most popular.

Contents of textbooks

See First chapters of physics textbooks for one angle.

Phillip Lenard's Deutsche physik in vier bänden may provide an example of meaningful omissions, in that it leaves out Einstein and Einstein's special relativity for nationalistic reasons. How did this mutated text affect its students? How are lines of culture drawn in physics textbooks? Do some texts blur those lines more than others, and does that leave them more or less culturally relevant, more or less palatable?

Can textbooks help us integrate philosophy and history?

Other people who have studied textbooks

David Kaiser

MIT, recommended by Suman Seth.

This is his description of a presentation "Zen and the Art of Textbook Publishing" given at a History of Science Society conference (Montreal 2010).

Textbooks on quantum mechanics -- physicists' description of matter and forces at the atomic scale -- solidified into an identifiable pattern soon after World War II. Unprecedented enrollment pressures in the United States, which saw physics student numbers grow faster than any other field, helped to craft a particular and oft-repeated style in textbooks on quantum theory. Practical calculation trumped more open-ended philosophical engagement or speculation, even for a field like quantum theory that had famously inspired deep philosophical debates. But the student numbers crashed, falling as quickly in the early 1970s as they had risen in the wake of Sputnik. The sudden change in classroom conditions facilitated a speculative or interpretive idiom again. The material that helped to fill that void was often inflected by the growing New Age and counterculture movements, then gathering steam on North American university campuses. I will examine one of these quasi-textbooks closely: Fritjof Capra's _The Tao of Physics_ (1975), which was originally conceived as a textbook, published as a popular book, and picked up by eager physicists across the continent for classroom use.

Antonio García-Belmar, José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, and Brenadette Bensaude-Vincent

The power of didactic writings:French chemistry textbooks of the nineteenth century, in Kaiser, ed. <bibref>Kaiser:2005</bibref> pp. 219-251. In their chapter, Belmar et al. illumine the social function of textbooks, not only didactic but also organizational and even confrontational.

Bruce Lewenstein, Cornell U.

Not textbooks, but Bruce studies the history of books for the public about science, among other science for the public studies. http://lewenstein.comm.cornell.edu/ and http://lewenstein.comm.cornell.edu/scicomm.html

References

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