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I wish I'd had this when I was learning physics

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JennyB:
MOTION MOUNTAIN
THE FREE PHYSICS TEXTBOOK

This colour pdf guarantees to be entertaining, surprising and challenging on every page. With little mathematics, starting from observations of everyday life, the text presents the best stories, images, movies and puzzles in physics. If you are between the age of 17 and 107, you will enjoy it.

The colour pdf tells about animals and sport (mechanics and heat), about the sky at night (relatvity and the structure of the universe), about lightning and nerves (electricity, light, the brain, language and truth), and about colours, pleasure and the stars (basic and advanced quantum physics). If you are interested, a separate volume tells about the search for a final, unified theory of physics. Enjoy!

Motion Mountain is downloaded over 30 000 times per year. Several younger readers liked it so much that they decided to study physics at university. A paper edition delivered to your home can be ordered here.
--- End quote ---

It's also big (over 1,000 pages) and beautifully designed.  :-*  8)

A few quotes at random:

In contrast to most animals, sedentary creatures, like plants or sea anemones, have no
legs and cannot move much; for their self-defence, they developed poisons. Examples of
such plants are the stinging nettle, the tobacco plant, digitalis, belladonna and poppy;
poisons include caseine, nicotine, and curare. Poisons such as these are at the basis of
most medicines.Therefore, most medicines exist essentially because plants have no legs.
--- End quote ---


How can the speed of falling rain be measured using an umbrella? The answer is important:
the same method can also be used to measure the speed of light, as we will find out
later. (Can you guess how?)
--- End quote ---

As a consequence, if the Earth stopped rotating (but kept its shape), the water of the
oceans would žow north; all of Europe would be under water, except for the few moun-
tains of the Alps that are higher than about 4 km. The northern parts of Europe would
be covered by between 6 km and 10 km of water. Mount Sagarmatha would be over 11 km
above sea level. If one takes into account the resulting change of shape of the Earth, the
numbers come out smaller. In addition, the change in shape would produce extremely
strong earthquakes and storms. As long as there are none of these effects, we can be sure
that the Sun will indeed rise tomorrow, despite what some philosophers might pretend.
--- End quote ---

 :P

Stoic Joker:
Sounds like some fun reading, thanks.

lanux128:
thanks for the heads-up, sounds like a good read.. :up:

40hz:
I think they've been discovered.  :)

All the download links on their website were returning a 'server error' message yesterday whenever I tried them.  :huh:

UPDATE: Finally got it. Yay!  :beerchug:

Veign:
Might be interested in the OpenCourseWare from MIT:
http://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/introductory-mit-courses/physics/

Contains videos of classes and class projects.

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