Gino C. Segré and John D. Stack
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226805146
- eISBN:
- 9780226805283
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226805283.001.0001
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Mathematical Physics
As well as being a famously lucid lecturer, the great physicist Enrico Fermi was reported to be omniscient in almost every area of his chosen discipline so it is tantalizing to imagine how he might ...
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As well as being a famously lucid lecturer, the great physicist Enrico Fermi was reported to be omniscient in almost every area of his chosen discipline so it is tantalizing to imagine how he might have taught the one-semester advanced undergraduate course on geophysics that he offered at Columbia University in the springs of 1939, 1940 and 1941. The brief set of notes that he left behind about the course he taught contain a list of the topics he discussed and some indication of how the material was presented. The two authors of this book have tried to fill in the gaps and create the book that two diligent students who attended Fermi’s lectures might have written, hopefully doing so without errors that Fermi would have noted. The range of topics he covered in the course is extraordinarily broad, touching in one way or another almost every branch of classical physics and going beyond that in a few cases: the techniques of classical mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, fluid mechanics, elasticity, electricity and magnetism are all present, all directed to solving questions of geophysical interest. The topics discussed include planetary motion, phase transitions, heat transfer, ocean tides, surface waves in fluids, seismic waves, radioactivity, magnetic storms, upper atmosphere phenomena ranging from the escape of light molecules to the reflection of radio waves by the ionosphere’s plasma and this is only a partial list.Less
As well as being a famously lucid lecturer, the great physicist Enrico Fermi was reported to be omniscient in almost every area of his chosen discipline so it is tantalizing to imagine how he might have taught the one-semester advanced undergraduate course on geophysics that he offered at Columbia University in the springs of 1939, 1940 and 1941. The brief set of notes that he left behind about the course he taught contain a list of the topics he discussed and some indication of how the material was presented. The two authors of this book have tried to fill in the gaps and create the book that two diligent students who attended Fermi’s lectures might have written, hopefully doing so without errors that Fermi would have noted. The range of topics he covered in the course is extraordinarily broad, touching in one way or another almost every branch of classical physics and going beyond that in a few cases: the techniques of classical mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, fluid mechanics, elasticity, electricity and magnetism are all present, all directed to solving questions of geophysical interest. The topics discussed include planetary motion, phase transitions, heat transfer, ocean tides, surface waves in fluids, seismic waves, radioactivity, magnetic storms, upper atmosphere phenomena ranging from the escape of light molecules to the reflection of radio waves by the ionosphere’s plasma and this is only a partial list.
Daemons Are Forever
The Hinge
Living on the Edge
The Pensive Image
After Redlining
Beethoven
The Calamity Form
Catastrophic Thinking
Congress Overwhelmed
