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Physics in the Arts

Physics in the Arts is a concise, 288-page four-color entry in the Complementary Science Series, designed for science enthusiasts and liberal arts students requiring or desiring… Read more

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Description

Physics in the Arts is a concise, 288-page four-color entry in the Complementary Science Series, designed for science enthusiasts and liberal arts students requiring or desiring a well-developed discussion of physical phenomena, particularly with regard to sound and light.

Topics discussed include the nature of sound and sound perception, and the fundamentals of harmony, musical photography, color perception, and color mixing. The materials are covered at a level appropriate for self-study or as a complementary textbook.

A companion website for Instructors is available in Spring 2008.

Key features

  • Offers an alternative route to science literacy for those interested in the arts, music and photography
  • Popular science book with wide readership beyond the classroom at an accessible level
  • Material covered at a level appropriate for self-study or as a complementary textbook
  • Companion website for Instructors available in Spring 2008

Readership

Non-science students in courses related to the study of physics with light and sound.

Table of contents

IntroductionLight1: Light and Light Waves2: Reflection and Refraction3: Lenses4: The Eye5: Photography6: Color and Color Vision7: Additive Color Mixing8: Subtractive Color Mixing9: Color Generating Mechanisms Sound10: Periodic Oscillations11: Simple Harmonic Motion12: Damped Oscillations and Resonance13: Adding Sound Sources: Beats and Harmony14: Waves15: Sound Perception16: The Ear17: Vibration of Strings18: Pipes19: Fourier Analysis20: Musical Scales21: Musical Instruments Solutions to Problems

Review quotes

"...the work of a pair of great physicists and top teachers...clear and imaginative. I cannot remember an occasion where a student complained about this text."—Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin, Madison"I found the book very-well written...the book is also very popular with students. It covers the material at a depth appropriate for non-science students who are interested in the subject...it will be a very useful addition to the textbook literature for liberal arts colleges."—Baha Balantekin, Eugene P. Wigner Professor of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Product details

About the authors

PG

Pupa U.P.A. Gilbert

Pupa Gilbert is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an amateur surrealist painter. She is a physicist with passionate loves for biology, geoscience, and modern art. She studied at the Sapienza University of Rome, worked as a staff scientist at the Italian National Research Council and at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne until she joined the University of Wisconsin in 1999. Her research focuses on biominerals, including coral skeletons, tooth enamel, nacre, and sea urchin spines. She studies them with spectromicroscopy methods at the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley, where she discovers the complex structures of the biominerals, and their formation mechanisms. She won several awards for her research and teaching, including the UW-Madison Distinguished Teaching Award in 2011, Radcliffe Fellowship 2014-15, and the David A. Shirley Award in 2018. She lives in Madison and Berkeley with her husband Ben.
Affiliations and expertise
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

WH

Willy Haeberli

Affiliations and expertise
University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.