This book is written for readers who may not be familiar with classical physics, but who are willing to pick up enough... to be able to understand th… - Steven Weinberg

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This book is written for readers who may not be familiar with classical physics, but who are willing to pick up enough... to be able to understand the rich tangle of ideas and experiments that make up the history of twentieth century physics. This background is provided in a number of "flashback"sections on the nature of electricity, Newton's laws of motion, electric and magnetic forces, conservation of energy, atomic weights and so on... inserted wherever... needed to allow the reader to understand the next point in the history. ...Generally ...the student or reader is ...is offered only one path ...ideal for ...physicists, but for many ...an impassable desert ...I invite the reader to plunge immediately into... key topics ...using each ...as an entreé into just those concepts and methods ...needed to understand that topic. ...Most of what I know about physics and mathematics I have learned only when there was no alternative ...in order to get on with my work. ...So the plan of this book may be closer to the actual education of working scientists than many ...My hope ...that this book may contribute to a radical revision in the way ...science is brought to the nonscientists. ...This book is intended to be comprehensible to readers who have no prior background in science, and no familiarity with mathematics beyond arithmetic. ...Appendices present some of the calculations that underlie the reasoning in the main text. ...The great scientific achievements described here form the a large part of the soil from which our... recent harvest of discoveries have sprung. ...I hope that scientists find some ...enlightening.
I also hope that this book will be enjoyed by students and practitioners of the history of science.