Perkowitz S. Physics. A Very Short Introduction

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. — 101 p. — (Very Short Introductions).My aim in this book is to help you the reader gain insight into this big subject. I hope to show you enough physics, and enough about physics and its history, for you to appreciate what physics covers; to grasp how physicists carry out research and why that research is important; to understand how and why society supports physics, and how physics affects society; and to contemplate how physics answers some of humanity’s greatest questions, from ‘How did it all begin?’ to ‘How can we sustain ourselves on Earth?’.
This overview draws on my career as a physics researcher, educator, and administrator, and on my extensive work in science outreach and popular science writing. My research experience includes industrial, academic, and government laboratories; ‘small’ physics with table-top equipment in my own lab, and ‘big’ physics at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and other major installations. I’ve visited places where physics history was made, such as the Mt Wilson observatory, where the expanding universe was discovered; the site of the first atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico; and the Paris Observatory, where the speed of light was first measured.
In sharing my varied experiences and knowledge of physics, I’ve focused on making the subject accessible. My writing assumes minimal prior knowledge of physics, and I discuss it in descriptive and conceptual terms rather than mathematical ones.Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
List of abbreviations
It all began with the Greeks
What physics covers and what it doesn’t
How physics works
Physics applied and extended
A force in society
Future physics: unanswered questionsFurther reading and viewing