CWRU Faculty & Staff Authors

Unpredictable. And the more you can predict, the more control you will have over your own life. From calculating the health risks of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day to deciding on the best investments for your money, probabilities play a part in nearly all aspects of everyday life. Now, physics professor John D. McGervey puts all the facts and figures at your fingertips to help you make savvy, informed choices at home, at work, and at play.

This re-focused third edition of McGervey's Introduction to Modern Physics is one of the most comprehensive up-to-date textbooks and reference sources on quantum mechanics available. This revision fills the gap between the mainly descriptive treatments of quantum mechanics, usually found in traditional modern physics texts, and the non-intuitive approaches that treat the subject as a series of mathematical theorems. McGervey achieves this goal with a thoughtful analysis of a number of experiments, supplementing these with fully worked examples, and by investigating paradoxes rather than relying on the analysis of a series of dry mathematical theorems. Software, provided with the text, is available for IBM-PC compatible computers with VGA graphics. The software is the basis for the homework problems, many of which have not been used in any form in other books at this level. The text is exceptionally current, a fact reflected in the significant amount of material based on articles published in recent years in The American Journal of Physics, The Physical Review, and Science. In all, McGervey provides a lively discussion that will motivate interest and understanding of the subject at the senior undergraduate level.