Written for the non-science major, this text emphasizes modern physics and the scientific process-and engages students by drawing connections between physics and everyday experience. Hobson takes a conceptual approach, with an appropriate focus on quantitative skills. The Fifth Edition increases coverage of key environmental topics such as global warming and energy, and adds new topics such as momentum. Hobson's text remains the least expensive textbook available for students taking nonmajors physics.

Table of Contents

1. The Way of Science: Experience and Reason

Problem Set (5/e): The Way of Science: Experience and Reason

2. Atoms: The Nature of Things

Problem Set (5/e): Atoms: The Nature of Things

3. How Things Move: Galileo Asks the Right Questions

Problem Set (5/e): How Things Move: Galileo Asks the Right Questions

4. Why Things Move as They Do

Problem Set (5/e): Why Things Move as They Do

5. Newton's Universe

Problem Set (5/e): Newton's Universe

6. Conservation of Energy: You Can't Get Ahead

Problem Set (5/e): Conservation of Energy: You Can't Get Ahead

7. Second Law of Thermodynamics

Problem Set (5/e): Second Law of Thermodynamics

8. Electromagnetism

Problem Set (5/e): Electromagnetism

9. Waves, Light, and Climate Change

Problem Set (5/e): Waves, Light, and Climate Change

10. The Special Theory of Relativity

Problem Set (5/e): The Special Theory of Relativity

11. Einstein's Universe and the New Cosmology

Problem Set (5/e): Einstein's Universe and the New Cosmology

12. The Quantum Idea

Problem Set (5/e): The Quantum Idea

13. The Quantum Universe

Problem Set (5/e): The Quantum Universe

14. The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

Problem Set (5/e): The Nucleus and Radioactivity: A New Force

15. The Energy Challenge

Problem Set (5/e): The Energy Challenge

16. Fusion and Fission- and a New Energy

Problem Set (5/e): Fusion and Fission- and a New Energy

17. Quantum Fields: Relativity Meets the Quantum

Problem Set (5/e): Quantum Fields: Relativity Meets the Quantum

18. Summing Up

Periodic Table of the Elements

Flow Chart of Topics

About the Author

Art Hobson is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he continues to keep a campus office and remains quite active in research.