Live data from Hacker News

Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

ajp.dickinson.edu

1–9 of 9 posts

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#2
Ed Purcell is probably one of the least famous but amazing expositor of Physics that I have come across. His book on electricity and magnetism (part of Berkeley Physics Course) is one of the best introductions to the topic (but again not very well known) Edit: Linking to the amazon page of the US edition, which seems to be out of print(http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Berkeley-Physics...)

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#3
Has anyone attempted to recreate the original Fermi problem? Fermi was in a bunker during the first nuclear test, and approximated the power by measuring the displacement of paper shreds due to the shock wave.

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#4
post #2

Ed Purcell is probably one of the least famous but amazing expositor of Physics that I have come across. His book on electricity and magnetism (part of Berkeley Physics Course) is one of the best introductions to the topic (but again not very well known) Edit: Linking to the amazon page of the US edition, which seems to be out of print( http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Berkeley-Physics... )

He also gave the classic talk "Life at Low Reynolds Number": http://brodylab.eng.uci.edu/~jpbrody/reynolds/lowpurcell.htm...

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#5
post #2

Ed Purcell is probably one of the least famous but amazing expositor of Physics that I have come across. His book on electricity and magnetism (part of Berkeley Physics Course) is one of the best introductions to the topic (but again not very well known) Edit: Linking to the amazon page of the US edition, which seems to be out of print( http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Berkeley-Physics... )

3rd edition in prep: http://www.cambridge.org/no/knowledge/isbn/item6869923/

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#6
post #2

Ed Purcell is probably one of the least famous but amazing expositor of Physics that I have come across. His book on electricity and magnetism (part of Berkeley Physics Course) is one of the best introductions to the topic (but again not very well known) Edit: Linking to the amazon page of the US edition, which seems to be out of print( http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Berkeley-Physics... )

I used his book in my class.

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#7
post #4
post #2

Ed Purcell is probably one of the least famous but amazing expositor of Physics that I have come across. His book on electricity and magnetism (part of Berkeley Physics Course) is one of the best introductions to the topic (but again not very well known) Edit: Linking to the amazon page of the US edition, which seems to be out of print( http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Berkeley-Physics... )

He also gave the classic talk "Life at Low Reynolds Number": http://brodylab.eng.uci.edu/~jpbrody/reynolds/lowpurcell.htm...

> I got into this through the work of a former colleague of mine at Harvard, Howard Berg. Berg got his Ph.D. with [Nobel Prize winner] Norman Ramsey

Norman Ramsey is also the name of a much younger yet contemporaneous Harvard professor of Computer Science (and a very prolific Stackoverflow answerer). (He is now at Tufts) I wonder how his name affected his career.

http://www.google.com/search?q=norman+ramsey

Re: Back of the Envelope [Physics] Problems

#9
post #5
post #2

Ed Purcell is probably one of the least famous but amazing expositor of Physics that I have come across. His book on electricity and magnetism (part of Berkeley Physics Course) is one of the best introductions to the topic (but again not very well known) Edit: Linking to the amazon page of the US edition, which seems to be out of print( http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Berkeley-Physics... )

3rd edition in prep: http://www.cambridge.org/no/knowledge/isbn/item6869923/

This is good to hear, Thank you! Edit: the picture on the cover is that of the electric field of an electron as it approaches the speed of light. This was the only book I know that actually tried to illustrate this..I simply love the beautiful illustrations :)