Bücher von Bruce Cameron Reed

Quantum mechanics is one of the most fascinating elements of the physics curriculum, but its conceptual nuances and mathematical complexity can be daunting for beginning students. This user-friendly text is designed for a one-semester course which bridges the gap between sophomore-level treatments and advanced undergraduate/lower-graduate courses. Qualitative explanations and descriptions of historical background are combined with detailed mathematical analyses to help students establish a firm foundation for further study. Classical problems such potential wells, barrier penetration, alpha decay, the harmonic oscillator, and the hydrogen atom are examined in detail, and formalisms and techniques such as operators, expectation values, commutators, perturbation theory, numerical solutions, and the variational theorem are also covered. Particular emphasis is placed on providing numerous worked examples and exercises.

New sections cover, for example, composite bomb cores, approximate methods for various of the calculations presented, and the physics of the polonium-beryllium "neutron initiators" used to trigger the bombs.The author delivers in this book an unparalleled, clear and comprehensive treatment of the physics behind the Manhattan project.

The development of man's understanding of planetary motions is the crown jewel of Newtonian mechanics. This book offers a concise but self-contained handbook-length treatment of this historically important topic for students at about the third-year-level of an undergraduate physics curriculum.

Though thousands of articles and books have been published on various aspects of the Manhattan Project, this book is the first comprehensive single-volume history prepared by a specialist for curious readers without a scientific background.

Provides a concise, fast-paced account of all major aspects of the Manhattan project. The text describes the underlying scientific discoveries that made nuclear weapons possible, how the project was organised, the daunting challenges faced and overcome, the dramatic Trinity test carried out in the desert of southern New Mexico in July 1945, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It gives a clear introduction to fission weapons at the level of an upper-year undergraduate physics student by examining the details of nuclear reactions, their energy release, analytic and numerical models of the fission process, how critical masses can be estimated, how fissile materials are produced, and what factors complicate bomb design.

In this book, a physicist and expert on the history of the Manhattan Project clearly explains the underlying science behind the development of the atomic bomb, including how atomic bombs work, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions, and the legacy of the Project.