Schiller C. Motion Mountain. The Adventure of Physics. Volume I. Fall, Flow and Heat

28th edition. — Christoph Schiller, 2015. — 565 p.Why should we care about motion?
Does motion exist?
How should we talk about motion?
What are the types of motion?
Perception, permanence and change.
Does the world need states?
Galilean physics in six interesting statements.
Curiosities and fun challenges about motion.
Summary on motion.
From motion measurement to continuity
What is velocity?
What is time?
Clocks.
Why do clocks go clockwise?
Does time flow?
What is space?
Are space and time absolute or relative?
Size — why length and area exist, but volume does not.
What is straight?
A hollow Earth?
Curiosities and fun challenges about everyday space and time.
Summary about everyday space and time.
How to describe motion — kinematics
Throwing, jumping and shooting.
Enjoying vectors.
What is rest? What is velocity?
Acceleration.
From objects to point particles
Legs and wheels.
Curiosities and fun challenges about kinematics
Summary of kinematics.
From objects and images to conservation
Motion and contact.
What is mass?
Momentum and mass.
Is motion eternal? — Conservation of momentum
More conservation — energy.
The cross product, or vector product.
Rotation and angular momentum.
Rolling wheels.
How do we walk and run?
Curiosities and fun challenges about mass, conservation and rotation
Summary on conservation in motion.
From the rotation of the earth to the relativity of motion
How does the Earth rotate?
Does the Earth move?
Is velocity absolute? — The theory of everyday relativity.
Is rotation relative?
Curiosities and fun challenges about rotation and relativity.
Legs or wheels? — Again.
Summary on Galilean relativity.
Motion due to gravitation
Gravitation as a limit to uniform motion.
Gravitation in the sky.
Gravitation on Earth.
Properties of gravitation: G and g
The gravitational potential.
The shape of the Earth.
Dynamics — how do things move in various dimensions?
The Moon.
Orbits — conic sections and more.
Tides.
Can light fall?
Mass: inertial and gravitational.
Curiosities and fun challenges about gravitation.
Summary on gravitation.
Classical mechanics, force and the predictability of motion
Should one use force? Power?
Forces, surfaces and conservation.
Friction and motion.
Friction, sport, machines and predictability.
Complete states — initial conditions.
Do surprises exist? Is the future determined?
Free will.
Summary on predictability.
From predictability to global descriptions of motion.Measuring change with action
The principle of least action.
Lagrangians and motion.
Why is motion so often bounded?
Curiosities and fun challenges about Lagrangians.
Summary on action.
Motion and symmetry
Why can we think and talk about the world?
Viewpoints.
Symmetries and groups.
Multiplets.
Representations.
The symmetries and vocabulary of motion.
Reproducibility, conservation and Noether’s theorem.
Parity inversion and motion reversal.
Interaction symmetries.
Curiosities and fun challenges about symmetry.
Summary on symmetry.
Simple motions of extended bodies — oscillations and waves
Oscillations.
Damping.
Resonance.
Waves: general and harmonic.
Water waves.
Waves and their motion.
Why can we talk to each other? — Huygens’ principle.
Wave equations.
Why are music and singing voices so beautiful?
Measuring sound.
Is ultrasound imaging safe for babies?
Signals.
Solitary waves and solitons.
Curiosities and fun challenges about waves and oscillation.
Summary on waves and oscillations.
Do extended bodies exist? — Limits of continuity
Mountains and fractals.
Can a chocolate bar last forever?
The case of Galileo Galilei.
How high can animals jump?
Felling trees.
Little hard balls.
The sound of silence.
How to count what cannot be seen.
Experiencing atoms.
Seeing atoms.
Curiosities and fun challenges about solids and atoms.
Summary on atoms.Fluids and their motion
The state of a fluid.
Laminar and turbulent flow.
The atmosphere.
The physics of blood and breath.
Curiosities and fun challenges about fluids.
What can move in nature? — Flows
Summary on fluids.
On heat and motion reversal invariance
Temperature.
Thermal energy.
Why do balloons take up space? — The end of continuity.
Brownian motion.
Why stones can be neither smooth nor fractal, nor made of little hard balls.
Entropy.
Entropy from particles.
The minimum entropy of nature — the quantum of information.
Is everything made of particles?
The second principle of thermodynamics.
Why can’t we remember the future?
Flow of entropy.
Do isolated systems exist?
Curiosities and fun challenges about heat and reversibility.
Summary on heat and time-invariance.
Self-organization and chaos — the simplicity of complexity
Appearance of order.
Self-organization in sand.
Self-organization of spheres.
Conditions for the appearance of order.
The mathematics of order appearance.
Chaos.
Emergence.
Curiosities and fun challenges about self-organization.
Summary on self-organization and chaos.
From the limitations of physics to the limits of motion
Research topics in classical dynamics.
What is contact?
What determines precision and accuracy?
Can all of nature be described in a book?
Something is wrong about our description of motion.
Why is measurement possible?
Is motion unlimited?
Notation and conventions
The Latin alphabet.
The Greek alphabet.
The Hebrew alphabet and other scripts.
Numbers and the Indian digits.
The symbols used in the text.
Calendars.
People Names.
Abbreviations and eponyms or concepts?
Units, measurements and constants
SI units.
The meaning of measurement.
Curiosities and fun challenges about units.
Precision and accuracy of measurements.
Limits to precision.
Physical constants.
Useful numbers.