The Berkeley Physics Course is a series of college-level

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

textbooks written mostly (but not exclusively) by

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

professors.

Description

The series consists of the following five volumes, each of which was originally used in a one-semester course at Berkeley: #''Mechanics'', by

Charles Kittel Charles Kittel (July 18, 1916 – May 15, 2019) was an American physicist. He was a professor at University of California, Berkeley from 1951 and was professor emeritus from 1978 until his death. Life and work Charles Kittel was born in New Yo ...

, et al. #'' Electricity and Magnetism'', by

Edward M. Purcell Edward Mills Purcell (August 30, 1912 – March 7, 1997) was an American physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for his independent discovery (published 1946) of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and in solids. Nuclear magne ...

#''Waves'', by Frank S. Crawford Jr. #''Quantum Physics'', by Eyvind H. Wichmann #''Statistical Physics'', by Frederick Reif Volume 2, '' Electricity and Magnetism'', by Purcell (Harvard), is particularly well known, and was influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the introductory college level. Half a century later the book is still in print, in an updated version by authors Purcell and Morin. The third edition of the text, published by

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

in 2013, was completely revised and updated to

SI units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes Pleonasm#Acronyms and initialisms, pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most wid ...

History

A Sputnik-era project funded by a

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

grant, the course arose from discussions between

Philip Morrison Philip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum physi ...

(then at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

) and Charles Kittel (Berkeley) in 1961, and was published by

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...

starting in 1965. The Berkeley course was contemporary with ''

The Feynman Lectures on Physics ''The Feynman Lectures on Physics'' is a physics textbook based on some lectures by Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate who has sometimes been called "The Great Explainer". The lectures were presented before undergraduate students at the Californ ...

'' (a college course at a similar mathematical level), and PSSC Physics (a high school introductory course). These physics courses were all developed in the atmosphere of urgency about science education created in the West by

Sputnik Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

. Because of the government support received, the original editions contained notices on their copyright pages stating that the books were to be available royalty-free after five years. The authors got lump-sum payments but did not receive

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset o ...

. There was a parallel series of laboratory courses developed by Alan Portis. The

Heathkit Heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company. The products over the decades have included electronic test equipment, high fidelity home audio equipment, television receivers, amateu ...

company marketed a line of its electronic instruments which had been adapted for use with Berkeley series of lab manuals. The series was translated into a number of foreign languages. Although the course was influential in physics education worldwide, the book series sold better in foreign markets than in the US, possibly because students in other countries specialized earlier and were therefore better prepared mathematically than US students.Helmholtz It was felt to be too advanced for typical engineering students at Berkeley, but continued to be used there in

honors course An honors student or honor student is a student recognized for achieving high grades or high marks in their coursework at school. United States In the US, honors students may refer to: # Students recognized for their academic achievement on lis ...

s for physics majors. Course adoption may have also been hindered by the initial choice of

Gaussian units Gaussian units constitute a metric system of physical units. This system is the most common of the several electromagnetic unit systems based on cgs (centimetre–gram–second) units. It is also called the Gaussian unit system, Gaussian-cgs unit ...

of measurement, and later editions of volumes 1 and 2 were eventually published with the Gaussian system replaced by

References

{{Authority control McGraw-Hill books Physics textbooks Series of non-fiction books University of California, Berkeley

Description

History

See also

References