• DOI:10.1038/021153a0
• Corpus ID: 5053529

Lecture Notes on Physics

@article{HeppLectureNO,
  title={Lecture Notes on Physics},
  author={Klaus Hepp and Jrich and Robert L. Jaffe and Rudolf Kippenhahn and D. IRuelle},
  journal={Nature},
  volume={21},
  pages={153-153}
}

• K. Hepp, Jrich, +2 authors D. IRuelle
• Physics
• Nature

THE author says in his preface that the book “may be supposed to represent the notes, somewhat expanded, which the teacher would desire the class to take down and learn.” If so, the “notes”before us would certainly merit a good deal of attention from the teacher's red-ink pen. Of its 178 pages, 68 are taken up with examination papers of the Science and Art Department. The various branches of physics are very unequally treated. Occasional blunders are frequent. Thus on p. 27 we are told that “Writing m for the refractive index, the critical angle for any medium is 1/m” On p. 2 Laplace's correction of the velocity of sound for the adiabatic conditions is stated to be the ratio of the two specific heats of air, when it should be the square root of that ratio. On the very next page we are told that the amplitude of a soundwave varies inversely as the square of the distance from the source, and that therefore the intensity falls off in the same ratio; whereas in fact the intensity is proportional to the square of the amplitude. Under the heading “Electrometers” we observe that the only instruments named are the quadrant pith-ball electroscope, the torsion balance (which is not eren described), and the unit-jar! But one could hardly expect accuracy of an author who allows himself to talk about “force” being “converted into heat.”Lecture Notes on Physics.By C. Bird (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1880.)