Understanding the Universe

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Watchers of the Heavens

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 1-15

3. The Stuff Moves Around

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 16-32

4. Eyes on the Skies

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 33-53

5. Newton Puts It All Together

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 54-68

6. Running the Machine

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 69-81

7. Off the Straight and Narrow

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 82-88

8. The Gravity of It All

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 89-103

9. Round and Round She Goes

   • James B. Seaborn

   Pages 104-112

10. As the World Turns

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 113-126

11. Let There Be Light!

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 127-147

12. What’s the Matter?

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 148-155

13. Hot Stuff

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 156-160

14. Einstein’s Bundles

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 161-171

15. The Great Dane

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 172-186

16. Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice…

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 187-195

17. The Starry Messenger

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 196-217

18. The Sun Is a Gas

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 218-232

19. The Sun Is a Nuclear Furnace

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 233-248

20. No More to Wonder What You Are…

    • James B. Seaborn

    Pages 249-265

For the last eighteen years, I have been teaching an introductory course in as­ trophysics. The course is intended for nonscience majors satisfying a general education requirement in natural science. It is a physics course with applications in astronomy. The only prerequisite is the high school mathematics required for ad­ mission to the university. For a number of years, I used an astronomy text, which I supplemented with lecture notes on physics. There are many good astronomy texts available, but this was not a satisfactory state of affairs, since the course is a physics course. The students needed a physics text that focused on astronomical applications. Over the last few years, I have developed a text which my students have been using in manuscript form in this course. This book is an outgrowth of that effort. The purpose of the book is to develop the physics that describes the behavior of matter here on the earth and use it to try to understand the things that are seen in the heavens. Following a brief discussion of the history of astronomy from the Greeks through the Copernican Revolution, we begin to develop the physics needed to understand three important problems at a level accessible to undergraduate nonscience majors: (1) the solar system, (2) the structure and evolution of stars, and (3) the early universe. All ofthese are related to the fundamental problem of how matter and energy behave in space and time.

• Atom
• Cosmology
• Universe
• astrophysics
• electricity
• magnetism
• mechanics

From the reviews

"This excellent text on physics is intended for undergraduate non-science majors. It is a unique introductory physics book in the sense that its emphasis is on applications in astronomy … This kind of well-written and compelling text is the best publicity for the physical sciences! Even science majors and physicists (especially teachers) should read it and enjoy (at least the reviewer enjoyed it a lot)." Mathematical Reviews

 

• Department of Physics, University of Richmond, Richmond, USA

  James B. Seaborn

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