*Science & Mathematics: Books

"Takes a practical approach to the basic notions, formulas, equations, problems, theorems, methods, and laws that most frequently occur in scientific and engineering applications and university education. The authors pay special attention to issues that many engineers and students find difficult to understand. The main text offers a concise, coherent survey of the most important definitions, formulas, equations, methods, theorems, and laws. Numerous examples throughout and references at the end of each chapter provide readers with a better understanding of the topics and methods. Additional issues of interest can be found in the remarks. For ease of reading, the supplement at the back of the book provides several long mathematical tables, including indefinite and definite integrals, direct and inverse integral transforms, and exact solutions of differential equations."

" The transition from school to university mathematics is seldom straightforward. Students face a schism between the algorithmic and informal attitude to mathematics at school, versus a new emphasis on proof, based on logic, and a more abstract development of general concepts, based on set theory. The authors have many years' experience of the potential difficulties involved, through teaching first-year undergraduates and researching the ways in which students and mathematicians think. This book explains the motivation behind abstract foundational material based on students' experiences of school mathematics, and explicitly suggests ways students can make sense of formal ideas. This second edition takes a significant step forward by not only making the transition from intuitive to formal methods, but also by reversing the process, using structure theorems to prove that formal systems have visual and symbolic interpretations that enhance mathematical thinking. This is exemplified by a new chapter on the theory of groups. While the first edition extended counting to infinite cardinal numbers, the second also extends the real numbers rigorously to larger ordered fields. This links intuitive ideas in calculus to the formal epsilon--delta methods of analysis. The approach here is not the conventional one of 'nonstandard analysis', but a simpler, graphically based treatment which makes the notion of an infinitesimal natural and straightforward. This allows a further vision of the wider world of mathematical thinking in which formal definitions and proofs lead to amazing new ways of defining, proving, visualising, and symbolising mathematics beyond previous expectations. -- Back cover."

"Elements of Mathematics takes readers on a fascinating tour that begins in elementary mathematics but, as John Stillwell shows, this subject is not as elementary or straightforward as one might think. Not all topics that are part of today's elementary mathematics were always considered as such, and great mathematical advances and discoveries had to occur in order for certain subjects to become "elementary." Stillwell examines elementary mathematics from a distinctive twenty-first-century viewpoint and describes not only the beauty and scope of the discipline, but also its limits."--Dust jacket.

" Feynman's Tips on Physics is a delightful collection of Richard P. Feynman's insights and an essential companion to his legendary Feynman Lectures on Physics. With characteristic flair, insight, and humour, Feynman discusses topics physics students often struggle with and offers valuable tips on addressing them. Included here are three lectures on problem-solving and a lecture on inertial guidance omitted from The Feynman Lectures on Physics . An enlightening memoir by Matthew Sands and oral history interviews with Feynman and his Caltech colleagues provide firsthand accounts of the origins of Feynman's landmark lecture series. Also included are incisive and illuminating exercises originally developed to supplement The Feynman Lectures on Physics, by Robert B. Leighton and Rochus E. Vogt. Feynman's Tips on Physics was co-authored by Michael A. Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton to provide students, teachers, and enthusiasts alike an opportunity to learn physics from some of its greatest teachers, the creators of The Feynman Lectures on Physics"