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Preface Part I - The Earth
(The quest for natural explanations)
Drawing from the well (What the Greeks absorbed from older civilizations)
From knowledge to understanding (The pivotal transformation from know-how to science)
The first philosopher's geometric insights (Thales' ideas about the composition of the universe)
Unity behind diversity (Seeking unified explanations)
Sweet symmetries (Pythagoras recognizes the importance of symmetry in nature)
A mystic elevates mathematics
Patterns in the sand (Examples of mathematical patterns in nature)
All is number (Nature must conform to a mathematical description)
Natural forces (Greek and modern notions)
Sense or reason (Two distinct approaches towards understanding)
A golden age
A method of thought (Socrates speaks for logical deductions over creative speculation)
For geometers only (Plato stresses the importance of mathematics)
The first empiricist (Aristotle stresses observation)
Observe the round earth (Tangible evidence for a round earth
Recapping pivotal events
Updates
Search for symmetries
Dynamic symmetry
Chapter 2 Matter in Motion- An Elementary Quest: Beyond Reason and Observation
- The walking philosopher's natural motion
(Aristotle's theory for the motion of the elements )
Violent motion (Aristotle's theory of horizontal motion)
The Egyptian melting pot (The knowledge of the world converges in Alexandria)
The Athenian brain drain (Greek thinkers make breakthroughs in Alexandria)
To catch a thief (Archimedes determines density)
A librarian measures the earth from shadows (Eratosthenes figures the earth's circumference)
Updates
Air, water, fire and earth are not elements (Lavoisier dismisses the elements of antiquity)
The discrete clues to the atom (Dalton recognizes the atomic nature of matter)
How Much Does an Atom Weigh? (Organizing chemical elements according to atomic weight)
The electric atom and the atom of electricity (Electrical nature of matter)
Shuffling the elements (The Periodic Table)
Tearing the atom apart (Thomson discovers the electron)
Penetrating rays (Roentgen discovers penetrating X-rays)
To the heart of matter (Rutherford discovers the nucleus)
Music of the elements (Bohr's atomic model explains the hydrogen spectral lines)
Elementary electron clouds (Electron wave-functions account for the regularities of the Periodic Table)
Poltergeists (The neutron and the neutrino)
Pandora's box (A zoo of elementary particles)
The quirks of nature (Gell-Mann postulates quarks)
Chapter 3 Science Lost, Science Regained: The Rise of Empiricism
- The library is burned, the academy is closed
(Greek culture succumbs to Roman expansion and Christian spirituality)
Return to a flat earth (The Dark Ages)
Arabian Nights and the House of Wisdom (Arabs preserve and extend Greek knowledge)
Relighting the lamp of knowledge (Europeans rediscover the classical knowledge of Greece through Islam)
Nightmares for the Church (The Church finds Aristotle's ideas a serious problem)
A saint restores reason (Thomas Aquinas divorces science from religion)
A medieval monk cuts a new path (Roger Bacon speaks for fresh observations over grilling the classics)
Magnets and the finger of reason (Early experiments on magnetism)
Razor sharp logic (Ockham's razor)
Cultural transformations (From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance)
Admiring creation (Renaissance artists stress observations of nature)
Updates
Unification of magnetism with electricity (Oersted and Faraday)
Space is not nothing (Faraday introduces fields)
A temporary scaffolding (Maxwell unifies electricity and magnetism)
Unifying light (Maxwell unifies light with electromagnetism)
Chapter 4 Terrestrial Motion: Dynamic Symmetries
- Falling from the leaning tower (
Galileo challenges Aristotle's paradigm)
The pulse and the pendulum (The pendulum principle)
Rocks and feathers (Free fall motion)
Beyond the classics (Motion in physics and art)
Observations on an incline (Experiments and idealizations from motion down an inclined plane)
Motion without cause (The law of inertia)
Graceful parabolas
Mass and energy
Perfect symmetry
A moving symmetry (Galilean relativity)
The father of science (Tribute to Galileo)
Updates
Broken symmetry (Parity violation, CP violation)
A special theory- Einstein's relativity of space and time
Space travel
Time travel (restricted)
Unifying mass and energy
Part II. The Heavens
(Determining the solstice)
Shadows (Using the sun for orientation and time-keeping)
Moonstruck (Lunar phases and eclipses
Calendars - Unlucky thirteen (Reconciling the solar and lunar calendars)
Animals in the sky (Constellations)
Pointer star (North star)
A clock in the night sky (Little Dipper)
Wine making under the constellations (Tracking the seasons)
Just watch the bear (Astronomy for navigation)
Sacrifices for the sun and moon (Eclipses)
The celestial Nile (The Milky Way)
The heavenly sword (Comets)
The rising of Sirius, the flooding of the Nile (Locating the sun with reference to the stars)
A corrective leap (Precision in calendar-making, the leap year
A circle of animals (The zodiac constellation and the ecliptic)
Evening star, morning star (Early observations of Venus)
A gallery of gods (Planets and gods)
Planet of love (Venus)
Lucky seven and the origins of astrology (Seven heavenly bodies)
Updates
Three new planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto discoveries)
A heavenly close-up (A modern view of the planets from Hubble.)
Chapter 6 Spherical Models: Scaling the Cosmos
- Out of the shadows (Early rational explanations for the heavens)
- Music of the spheres (Pythagoras' spherical model)
- Horns, tiaras and hunchbacks (
A geometric model for lunar phases)
Night at mid-day day (A geometric model for the eclipses)
Heavenly truth (Plato's idealizations)
A new inclination (Seasons and the tilted path of the sun - the ecliptic)
Celestial spheres multiply (Elaboration of spherical models)
Crystalline spheres (The architecture of the heavens)
Similar triangles in the heavens (Aristarchus determines the relative distance and sizes of the sun and moon)
The pirouette of the planets (Apollonius invents epicycles to explain retrograde motion)
The age of Aquarius (Hipparchus discovers the precession of the equinoxes)
A majestic encyclopedia (Ptolemy's universe and the Almagest)
Islamic heavens
Updates
Hipparchus' legacies: counting stars and galaxies
A cosmic distance ladder
Scaling the cosmic ladder (From parallax to Cepheid Variables
Chapter 7 Reformation and Revolution: Changing Perspectives
Rediscovery of classical astronomy)
A word of advice for God (The complexity of the Ptolemaic system)
The divine comedy (Dante blends Greek cosmology with Christian Theology)
On the spice trail (The Age of Exploration)
Around the dark continent (Navigating around Africa)
Westward Ho! (Columbus turns west)
Easter in December (The calendar slips as Europeans ignore astronomy)
A madman makes the moon disappear (The importance of astronomy to calendar keeping, and eclipse predictions)
Reformation and inquisition (Martin Luther)
Ptolemy's Frankenstein (Copernicus' berates Ptolemy's monstrous system)
The lamp at the temple's center (The heliocentric system)
A tilted wobbly home (The inclination and precession of the earth's rotation axis
Predictive power (of the heliocentric system)
Discordant notes (Complications to the heliocentric model)
Safe commentaries (Copernicus hesitates to publish)
Reformation of the calendar (A successful application of the heliocentric model)
Published under false pretenses (Copernicus' book makes it to press, with a false preface)
Burned at the stake (Bruno and the heresy of the heliocentrics)
Updates
A restless universe (Evidence for earth rotation and revolution)
Star drifts
Is earth unique? (Extra-solar planets)
Chapter 8 Laws of Motion in the Heavens: Opening New Doors Through Precision
- Sparked by an exploding star
(Tycho discovers a nova)
A castle for astronomy (Tycho restores precision to astronomy)
A comet shatters the crystalline spheres (Tycho places comets in the heavens using parallax)
The eviction of the great Dane (The banishing of Tycho)
A bumbling mystic looks for celestial harmonies (Kepler's first mystical ideas based on classical geometry)
"Let me not have lived in vain" (Tycho leaves his observations to Kepler)
Reformation of astronomy (Kepler abandons the circle to discover the ellipse)
The ellipse, an honest maiden of nature (Kepler's 1st law)
Dreams come true (Kepler's 2nd and 3rd Laws of planetary motion)
A new bond for the heavens (A mechanical bond for the solar system)
A nova shines over war-torn Europe (Religious wars and a second supernova)
The book is written (The Rudolphine Tables - a new standard for astronomy)
Updates
The birth and death of stars
Interstellar Nurseries
Proto-Star, planets and starbirth
A hail of comets
Fusion of stars and elements
The smoking gun (Supernova 1987a)
Supernovas past, present and future
Chapter 9 A New Heaven: A Wide-Open Universe
- A spyglass for merchants and marines
(The first telescope and practical applications)
The toy that penetrated the heavens (Galileo turns the telescope to the sky)
The spotted sun (Galileo discovers sunspots)
The shapes of Cynthia in the mother of love (Venus shows phases like the moon)
Find some new stars to bear my name! (The moons of Jupiter)
A spurt of milk from the breast of a goddess (The Milky Way)
The message from the stars (Galileo's interpretations of the new finds)
The extraordinary stupidity of the mob (Galileo's cuts objections with his wit)
The way the heavens go (Interactions with the Church)
A message from the Church ( "the earth is at rest" )
The dangerous dialogs (Galileo and the Inquisition)
The noblest eyes (Galileo in exile turns blind)
The secret rings (Huygens discovers the rings of Saturn)
The immensity of the solar system (The size of the solar system through the parallax of Mars)
The moons of Jupiter reveal the speed of light
Updates
Powerful reflections (From Newton's reflecting telescope to Hershel's discoveries)
The great debate on the universe (Shapley and Curtis debate the size and uniqueness of the Milky Way)
Resolutions (Hubble determines Andromeda to be a galaxy)
Part III- Synthesis
ircular motion and simple harmonic motion
Breakthroughs in circular motion
The period of the pendulum
Problems with the pendulum
The longitude prize
A gravity free clock
Perfect movements (Harrison's chronometers)
Updates
Unifying space and time (through Einstein's special relativity)
Chapter 11 Universal Gravitation - The First Synthesis
- Good for nothing but college
(Newton arrives on the scene)
The key to the mechanical universe (Newton's second law of motion)
Miracle of falling apples (Gravitational force is proportional to mass; the inverse square law)
Ulysses draws Achilles into battle (Halley persuades Newton to
publish)
The point of spherical symmetry (A sphere behaves as if all its mass is concentrated at the center)
From apple to moon to sun to universe (Newtons's law of universal gravitation)
The missing piece (Cavendish and the value of G)
A bridge to the heavens (Satellites)
Taming of the comet (Predicting the coming of comets)
Tides make gravity visible
Shape of the spinning earth
The Bible of Classical Physics (the Principia)
The man and the legend
The age of reason
Just the facts (Newton avoids hypothesis about the cause of gravity)
Updates
A happy thought - the general theory of relativity
Crumpled space and warped time
Newton eclipsed
Epilogue: Unity in Physics
- An expanding universe
- A big bang synthesis
- First light (The cosmic microwave background)
- Before there was light
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