Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Physics

I have adopted this book this spring semester for an introductory astronomy class that focuses on cosmology. The intended audience of this book is NOT physics majors, or even science or engineering majors of ANY KIND. This book is for general education classes that focus on non-science majors WITH THE CAVEAT that the instructor wants to do some mathematics along with the information. That is EXACTLY what I have been doing without a good text for that market. In that light it presents MODERN PHYSICS with a heavy focus on recent cosmology and "how the universe works". With a lot of supplement provided by me in my lecture notes, things are going well and I intend on using this for the forseable future!For my purposes I basically will skip the main part of the quantum mechanics chapter beyond the basics of atoms so that I can focus on relativity and the Big Bang.I also have the students read a popular science book called "A Brief History of the Universe" by JP McEvoy. I used to use "Your Cosmic Context" for this class but decided I didn't like the weird order it presents material and the lack of including basic mathematical calculations in the material.

As an undergraduate, I used Griffiths' E&M, particle, and quantum books. All of them, I truly enjoyed reading and learning from. This book provides highlights from his text [sometimes even borrowed in whole]. As such, it contains Dr. Griffiths' expository and vivid writing style that makes learning physics [almost] easy.I do have two complaints. First, he only covers the original "big three" quantum mechanics "world views": realist, orthodox [Copenhagen], and agnostic. However, in today's usage of quantum, there are a great many new world views that are not compatible with the Copenhagen [Dr. Griffiths' choice of the 'true' one] interpretation. To be sure, there does not exist a complete world view of quantum mechanics that is fully descriptive and prescriptive of all quantum phenomena.Second, in his discussion [which was otherwise excellent!] of cosmology, he repeatedly refers to the Big Bang as an "explosion." This is precisely **not** the picture that the Big Bang provides. Granted, this is not a heavy text on cosmology, but it is important not to give a false impression of what the models tell us.Overall, an excellent read.

David J. Griffiths has written several great physics textbooks. This one keeps the math to a minimum while explaining the basics of Twentieth-Century Physics. Highly recommended!

Just the book I was looking for - one that would give a tour of modern physics without shying away from math but not going beyond high-school level math.

Love this book by my former professor of physics. I've written a book myself, on acoustic waves, and learned something from this book even though it's sort of a pop-science text. His personality and energy really come through.

The book was a great book, i loved the first chapters about the classical physics, special relativity, and quantum physics. However i was not a big fun of particle physics, but im also not a particle physics guy. I would have loved if the author dedicated a chapter to electro dynamics, he talks about it here and there in the book but didn't go into depth about it. All in all the book is great for people wanting to get a look into modern physics topics without going deep into the math. 4 out of 5!

This is an outsider's treasure! Just what you need if you're trying to update the Big Picture, as I am.

An excellent beginning level intro to modern physics.