Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University
Modern physics is a common catch-all term for astonishing scientific advances of the past 100+ years that most non-physicists find counterintuitive and borderline incomprehensible. The category covers quantum mechanics and special and general relativity theory, particle physics and inflationary cosmology, and similarly challenging but stimulating topics. If you or someone you know teaches any of those topics, I’d like to call to your attention Modern Physics (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Gary N. Felder and Kenny M. Felder, a textbook for a course generally taught in the third semester of the standard undergraduate physics curriculum. That shared last name is not coincidental—the authors are my two sons. Gary teaches physics at Smith College and Kenny has a physics degree and teaches math at Raleigh (NC) Charter High School. I've spent most of my career promoting good pedagogy in general and active learning in particular. Whether due to heredity or just exposure, Gary and Kenny adopted those missions and have built them into Modern Physics. The book's clear, informal prose and its combination of mathematical precision and physical intuition may remind of you of a chemical engineering textbook that I'm particularly fond of, but they've also built in all the features and tools physics instructors would need to start using active learning right away with no special pedagogical training. Active learning tools can be found in some recent first-year physics textbooks but generally not in texts at this higher level. If you teach modern physics or you know someone who does, I highly recommend taking a look (or passing the word to take a look) at https://lnkd.in/eNPAte7K to learn more about the book’s content and instructional features. Rich
Charles Gooding
2mo
Check this out, Physics Profs! 🤓
Retired as Director, Air Pollution Prevention & Control Div. at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
2moImpressive on many levels.