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Six Ideas
That Shaped
Physics
Third Edition
Thomas A. Moore
moo13946_fm_Title Page.indd i 01/21/16 03:10 PM

Final PDF to printer
moo13946_fm_i-xvii.indd ii 01/23/16 11:45 AM

Some Physical Constants Standard Metric Prefixes
(for powers of 10)
Speed of light c 3.00 × 108 m/s
Gravitational constant G 6.67 × 10-11 N·m2/kg2 Power Prefix Symbol
Coulomb’s constant 1/4πε0 8.99 × 109 N·m2/C2 1018 exa E
Permittivity constant ε0 8.85 × 10-12 C2/(N·m2) 1015 peta P
Permeability constant µ0 4π × 10-7 N/A2 1012 tera T
Planck’s constant h 6.63 × 10-34 J·s 109 giga G
Boltzmann’s constant kB 1.38 × 10-23 J/K 106 mega M
Elementary charge e 1.602 × 10-19 C 103 kilo k
Electron mass me 9.11 × 10-31 kg 10-2 centi c
Proton mass mp 1.673 × 10-27 kg 10-3 milli m
Neutron mass mn 1.675 × 10-27 kg 10-6 micro µ
Avogadro’s number NA 6.02 × 1023 10-9 nano n
10-12 pico p
10-15 femto f
Commonly Used Physical Data 10-18 atto a
Gravitational field strength g =│g

W│ 9.80 N/kg = 9.80 m/s2
(near the earth’s surface)
Mass of the earth Me 5.98 × 1024 kg
Radius of the earth Re 6380 km (equatorial)
Mass of the sun M⊙ 1.99 × 1030 kg
Radius of the sun R⊙ 696,000 km
Mass of the moon 7.36 × 1022 kg
Radius of the moon 1740 km
Distance to the moon 3.84 × 108 m
Distance to the sun 1.50 × 1011 m
Density of water† 1000 kg/m3 = 1 g/cm3
Density of air† 1.2 kg/m3
Absolute zero 0 K = -273.15°C = -459.67°F
Freezing point of water‡ 273.15 K = 0°C = 32°F
Boiling point of water‡ 373.15 K = 100°C = 212°F
Normal atmospheric pressure 101.3 kPa
†
At normal atmospheric pressure and 20°C.
‡
At normal atmospheric pressure.
Useful Conversion Factors
1 meter = 1 m = 100 cm = 39.4 in = 3.28 ft 1 m/s = 2.24 mi/h = 3.28 ft/s

1 mile = 1 mi = 1609 m = 1.609 km = 5280 ft 1 mi/h = 1.61 km/h = 0.447 m/s = 1.47 ft/s
1 inch = 1 in = 2.54 cm 1 liter = 1 l = (10 cm)3 = 10-3 m3 = 0.0353 ft3
1 light-year = 1 ly = 9.46 Pm = 0.946 × 1016 m 1 ft3 = 1728 in3 = 0.0283 m3
1 minute = 1 min = 60 s 1 gallon = 1 gal = 0.00379 m3 = 3.79 l ≈ 3.8 kg H2O
1 hour = 1 h = 60 min = 3600 s Weight of 1-kg object near the earth = 9.8 N = 2.2 lb
1 day = 1 d = 24 h = 86.4 ks = 86,400 s
1 year = 1 y = 365.25 d = 31.6 Ms = 3.16 × 107 s 1 pound = 1 lb = 4.45 N
1 newton = 1 N = 1 kg·m/s2 = 0.225 lb 1 calorie = energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 g
1 joule = 1 J = 1 N·m = 1 kg·m2/s2 = 0.239 cal of H2O by 1 K = 4.186 J
1 watt = 1 W = 1 J/s 1 horsepower = 1 hp = 746 W
1 pascal = 1 Pa = 1 N/m2 = 1.45 × 10–4 psi 1 pound per square inch = 6895 Pa
1 kelvin (temperature difference) = 1 K = 1°C = 1.8°F 1 food calorie = 1 Cal = 1 kcal = 1000 cal = 4186 J
1 radian = 1 rad = 57.3° = 0.1592 rev 1 electron volt = 1 eV = 1.602 × 10-19 J
1 revolution = 1 rev = 2π rad = 360°
1 cycle = 2π rad
1 hertz = 1 Hz = 1 cycle/s
( )
  1K    (T[C] + 273.15°C)
T = ____
1°C ( )
 5°C   (T[F] - 32°F)
T[C] = ____
9°F
T = ( ___
  5K    ) (T
9°F
[F] + 459.67°F) T[F] = 32°F + ____ ( )
  9°F    T[C]
5°C
Six Ideas
That Shaped
Physics
Unit C: Conservation Laws
Constrain Interactions
Third Edition
Thomas A. Moore
SIX IDEAS THAT SHAPED PHYSICS, UNIT C:
CONSERVATION LAWS CONSTRAIN INTERACTIONS, THIRD EDITION
Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2017 by
McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous editions
© 2003, and 1998. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any
means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education, including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or
broadcast for distance learning.
Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to customers outside
the United States.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 RMN/RMN 1 0 9 8 7 6
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Dedication
To All My Family, Near and Far

whose love conserves what is best
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right page.
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website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, Thomas A. (Thomas Andrew), author.
Title: Six ideas that shaped physics. Unit C, Conservation laws constrain
interactions/Thomas A. Moore.
Other titles: Conservation laws constrain interactions
Description: Third edition. | New York, NY : McGraw-Hill Education, [2016] |
2017 | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015043352| ISBN 9780073513942 (alk. paper) | ISBN
0073513946 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Conservation laws (Physics)—Textbooks.
Classification: LCC QC793.3.C58 M66 2016 | DDC 539.7/54—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043352
www.mhhe.com
Contents: Unit C
Conservation Laws Constrain
Interactions
About the Author viii Chapter C3 38

Vectors 38
Preface ix
Chapter Overview 38
Introduction for Students xvi C3.1 Introduction 40
C3.2 Reference Frames 40
C3.3 Displacement Vectors 41
Chapter C1 2 C3.4 Arbitrary Vectors 44
C3.5 Seven Rules to Remember 45
The Art of Model Building 2 C3.6 Vectors in Two Dimensions 47
C3.7 Vectors in One Dimension 48
Chapter Overview 2 TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 49
C1.1 The Nature of Science 4 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 49
C1.2 The Development and Structure of Physics 5 ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 51
C1.3 A Model-Building Example 7
C1.4 Trick Bag: Unit Awareness 10
C1.5 Trick Bag: Unit Conversions 11
C1.6 Trick Bag: Dimensional Analysis 12 Chapter C4 52
TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 14 Systems and Frames 52
HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 14
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 17 Chapter Overview 52
C4.1 Systems of Particles 54
C4.2 A System’s Center of Mass 54
Chapter C2 18 C4.3 How the Center of Mass Moves 57
C4.4 Inertial Reference Frames 59
Particles and Interactions 18 C4.5 Freely Floating Frames 60
C4.6 Interactions with the Earth 62
Chapter Overview 18 TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 64
C2.1 The Principles of Modern Mechanics 20 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 65
C2.2 Describing an Object’s Motion 21 ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 67
C2.3 Vector Operations 23
C2.4 Momentum and Impulse 24
C2.5 Force and Weight 26
C2.6 Interaction Categories 28 Chapter C5 68
C2.7 Momentum Transfer 30 Conservation of Momentum 68
TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 32
HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 33 Chapter Overview 68
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 37 C5.1 Degrees of Isolation 70
C5.2 How to Solve Physics Problems 71
C5.3 Conservation of Momentum Problems 75
C5.4 Examples 76
C5.5 Airplanes and Rockets 79
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 83
v
vi Table of Contents
Chapter C6 84 C9.3 One-Dimensional Potential Energy Diagrams 139

C9.4 Relaxing the Mass Limitation 144
Conservation of Angular Momentum 84 C9.5 The Spring Approximation 145
C9.6 The Potential Energy “of an Object” 146
Chapter Overview 84
C9.7 An Example 146
C6.1 Introduction 86
C6.2 Quantifying Orientation 86
C6.3 Angular Velocity 87
C6.4 The Angular Momentum of a Rigid Object 88
C6.5 Twirl and Torque 91
C6.6 Gyroscopic Precession 92
C6.7 Conservation of Angular Momentum 93 Chapter C10 154
Work 154
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 99 Chapter Overview 154
C10.1 The Momentum Requirement 156
C10.2 The Dot Product 157
Chapter C7 100 C10.3 The Definition of Work 158
C10.4 Long-Range Interactions 161
More About Angular Momentum 100 C10.5 Contact Interactions 162
Chapter Overview 100
C7.1 First Steps 102
C7.2 The Cross Product 103
C7.3 The Angular Momentum of a Moving Particle 105
C7.4 Rotating Objects 106
C7.5 Rotating and Moving Objects 107 Chapter C11 170
C7.6 Torque and Force 108
Rotational Energy 170
C7.7 Why Angular Momentum Is Conserved 110
TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 112 Chapter Overview 170
HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 113 C11.1 Introduction to Rotational Energy 172
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 117 C11.2 Rotational Energy of an Object at Rest 172
C11.3 Calculating Moments of Inertia 174
C11.4 When an Object Both Moves and Rotates 176
Chapter C8 118 C11.5 Rolling Without Slipping 177
Conservation of Energy 118 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 183
C8.1 Introduction to Energy 120
C8.2 Kinetic Energy 121
C8.3 Potential Energy 122 Chapter C12 186
C8.4 Fundamental Potential Energy Formulas 124
Thermal Energy 186
C8.5 Internal Energy and Power 126
C8.6 Isolation 126 Chapter Overview 186
C8.7 Solving Conservation-of-Energy Problems 127 C12.1 The Case of the Disappearing Energy 188
TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 130 C12.2 Caloric Is Energy 188
HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 131 C12.3 Thermal Energy as Microscopic Energy 190
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 134 C12.4 Friction and Thermal Energy 192
C12.5 Heat, Work, and Energy Transfer 193
C12.6 Specific “Heat” 194
Chapter C9 136 C12.7 Problems Involving Thermal Energies 196
Potential Energy Graphs 136 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 200
C9.1 Interactions Between Macroscopic Objects 138
C9.2 Interactions Between Two Atoms 138
Table of Contents vii
Chapter C13 204 Appendix CA 240

Other Forms of Internal Energy 204 The Standard Model 240
Chapter Overview 204 CA.1 Introduction 240
C13.1 Bonds 206 CA.2 Matter Particles 240
C13.2 Latent “Heat” 208 CA.3 Fundamental Interactions 240
C13.3 Chemical Energy 211 CA.4 The Importance of Color-Neutrality 242
C13.4 Nuclear Energy 212 CA.5 Stability and the Weak Interaction 243
C13.5 Modes of Energy Transfer 213 CA.6 Conclusion 245
C13.6 Mechanisms of Heat Transfer 214 TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 246
C13.7 A Comprehensive Energy Master Equation 216 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS 246
TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS 218 ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 246
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 221 Index 247
Periodic table 255

Chapter C14 222
Collisions 222 Short Answers to Selected Problems 256

C14.1 Types of Collisions 224
C14.2 One-Dimensional Collisions 224
C14.3 Two-Dimensional Collisions 227
C14.4 The Slingshot Effect 230
C14.5 Using All Three Conservation Laws 232
C14.6 Asteroid Impacts 234
About the Author
Thomas A. Moore graduated from Carleton College
(magna cum laude with Distinction in Physics) in 1976.
He won a Danforth Fellowship that year that supported
his graduate education at Yale University, where he
earned a Ph.D. in 1981. He taught at Carleton College
and Luther College before taking his current position at
Pomona College in 1987, where he won a Wig Award for
Distinguished Teaching in 1991. He served as an active
member of the steering committee for the national Intro-
ductory University Physics Project (IUPP) from 1987
through 1995. This textbook grew out of a model curric-
ulum that he developed for that project in 1989, which
was one of only four selected for further development
and testing by IUPP.
He has published a number of articles about astro-
physical sources of gravitational waves, detection of
gravitational waves, and new approaches to teaching
physics, as well as a book on general relativity entitled
A General Relativity Workbook (University Science Books,
2013). He has also served as a reviewer and as an associate editor for A
merican
Journal of Physics. He currently lives in Claremont, California, with his wife
Joyce, a retired pastor. When he is not teaching, doing research, or writing,
he enjoys reading, hiking, calling contradances, and playing Irish traditional
fiddle music.
viii
Preface
Introduction
This volume is one of six that together comprise the text materials for Six
Ideas That Shaped Physics, a unique approach to the two- or three-semester
calculus-based introductory physics course. I have designed this curriculum
(for which these volumes only serve as the text component) to support an
introductory course that combines two elements that rarely appear together:
(1) a thoroughly 21st-century perspective on physics (including a great deal
of 20th-century physics), and (2) strong support for a student-centered class-
room that emphasizes active learning both in and outside of class, even in
situations where large-enrollment sections are unavoidable.
This course is based on the premises that innovative metaphors for
teaching basic concepts, explicitly instructing students in the processes of
constructing physical models, and active learning can help students learn the
subject much more effectively. In the course of executing this project, I have
completely rethought (from scratch) the presentation of every topic, taking
advantage of research into physics education wherever possible. I have done
nothing in this text just because “that is the way it has always been done.”
Moreover, because physics education research has consistently underlined
the importance of active learning, I have sought to provide tools for pro-
fessors (both in the text and online) to make creating a coherent and self-
consistent course structure based on a student-centered classroom as easy
and practical as possible. All of the materials have been tested, evaluated,
and rewritten multiple times. The result is the culmination of more than
25 years of continual testing and revision.
I have not sought to “dumb down” the course to make it more accessible.
Rather, my goal has been to help students become smarter. I have intention-
ally set higher-than-usual standards for sophistication in physical thinking,
but I have also deployed a wide range of tools and structures that help even
average students reach this standard. I don’t believe that the mathemati-
cal level required by these books is significantly different than that in most
university physics texts, but I do ask students to step beyond rote think-
ing patterns to develop flexible, powerful, conceptual reasoning and model-
building skills. My experience and that of other users is that normal students
in a wide range of institutional settings can (with appropriate support and
practice) meet these standards.
Each of six volumes in the text portion of this course is focused on a
single core concept that has been crucial in making physics what it is today.
The six volumes and their corresponding ideas are as follows:
Unit C: Conservation laws constrain interactions
Unit N: The laws of physics are universal (Newtonian mechanics)
Unit R: The laws of physics are frame-independent (Relativity)
Unit E: Electric and Magnetic Fields are Unified
Unit Q: Particles behave like waves (Quantum physics)
Unit T: Some processes are irreversible (Thermal physics)
ix
x Preface
I have listed the units in the order that I recommend they be taught, but I have
also constructed units R, E, Q, and T to be sufficiently independent so they
can be taught in any order after units C and N. (This is why the units are
lettered as opposed to numbered.) There are six units (as opposed to five
or seven) to make it possible to easily divide the course into two semesters,
three quarters, or three semesters. This unit organization therefore not only
makes it possible to dole out the text in small, easily-handled pieces and
provide a great deal of flexibility in fitting the course to a given schedule,
but also carries its own important pedagogical message: Physics is organized
hierarchically, structured around only a handful of core ideas and metaphors.
Another unusual feature of all of the texts is that they have been designed
so that each chapter corresponds to what one might handle in a single
50-minute class session at the maximum possible pace (as guided by years of
experience). Therefore, while one might design a syllabus that goes at a slower
rate, one should not try to go through more than one chapter per 50-minute
session (or three chapters in two 70-minute sessions). A few units provide
more chapters than you may have time to cover. The preface to such units
will tell you what might be cut.
Finally, let me emphasize again that the text materials are just one part of
the comprehensive Six Ideas curriculum. On the Six Ideas website, at
𝚠𝚠𝚠𝚙𝚑𝚢𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚎𝚍𝚞/𝚜𝚒𝚡𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚜/
you will find a wealth of supporting resources. The most important of these
is a detailed instructor’s manual that provides guidance (based on Six Ideas
users’ experiences over more than two decades) about how to construct a
course at your institution that most effectively teaches students physics. This
manual does not provide a one-size-fits-all course plan, but rather exposes
the important issues and raises the questions that a professor needs to con-
sider in creating an effective Six Ideas course at their particular institution.
The site also provides software that allows professors to post selected prob-
lem solutions online where their students alone can see them and for a time
period that they choose. A number of other computer applets provide expe-
riences that support student learning in important ways. You will also find
there example lesson plans, class videos, information about the course phi-
losophy, evidence for its success, and many other resources.
There is a preface for students appearing just before the first chapter of
each unit that explains some important features of the text and assumptions
behind the course. I recommend that everyone read it.
Comments about the Current Edition
My general goals for the current edition have been to correct errors, enhance
the layout, improve the presentation in many areas, make the book more
flexible, and improve the quality and range of the homework problems as
well as significantly increase their number. Users of previous editions will
note that I have split the old “Synthetic” homework problem category into
“Modeling” and “Derivations” categories. “Modeling” problems now more
specifically focus on the process of building physical models, making appro-
priate approximations, and binding together disparate formulas. “Deriva-
tion” problems focus more on supporting or extending derivations presented
in the text. I thought it valuable to more clearly separate these categories.
The “Basic Skills” category now includes a number of multipart prob-
lems specifically designed for use in the classroom to help students practice
basic issues. The instructor’s manual discusses how to use such problems.
Preface xi
I have also been more careful in providing instructors with more choices
about what to cover, making it possible for instructors to omit chapters without
a loss of continuity. See the unit-specific part of this preface for more details.
Users of previous editions will also note that I have dropped the menu-
like chapter location diagrams, as well as the glossaries and symbol lists that
appeared at the end of each volume. I could find no evidence that these were
actually helpful to students. Units C and N still instruct students very care-
fully on how to construct problem solutions that involve translating, mod-
eling, solving, and checking, but examples and problem solutions for the
remaining units have been written in a more flexible format that includes
these elements implicitly but not so rigidly and explicitly. Students are rather
guided in this unit to start recognizing these elements in more generally for-
matted solutions, something that I think is an important skill.
The only general notation change is that now I use │v W│ exclusively and
universally for the magnitude of a vector v W . I still think it is very important
to have notation that clearly distinguishes vector magnitudes from other sca-
lars, but the old mag(vW) notation is too cumbersome to use exclusively, and
mixing it with using just the simple letter has proved confusing. Unit C con-
tains some specific instruction about the notation commonly used in texts by
other authors (as well as discussing its problems).
Finally, at the request of many students, I now include short answers to
selected homework problems at the end of each unit. This will make students
happier without (I think) significantly impinging on professors’ freedom.
Specific Comments About Unit C
This unit is the foundation on which a Six Ideas course rests. The current
course structure assumes that unit C is taught first, immediately followed by
unit N. Unit C contains core material that will be used in all the other units,
as well as providing an introduction to the process of model building that is
central to the course.
Why study conservation laws before Newtonian mechanics? The most
important reasons are as follows: (1) Conservation of “stuff” is a concrete
idea that is easy to understand. Beginning with such simple ideas helps build
student confidence at the beginning of the course. (2) Using conservation
laws does not really require calculus, and so helps students polish their alge-
bra skills before getting involved with calculus. (3) Studying conservation of
momentum and angular momentum does require vectors, allowing students
to use vectors for several weeks in simple contexts before introducing vec-
tor calculus. (4) Conservation laws really are more fundamental than even
Newtonian mechanics, so it is good to start the course with concepts that are
central and will be used throughout the course.
I did not intuit these benefits at first: the earliest versions of Six Ideas
presented mechanics in the standard order. Rather, this inversion emerged
naturally as a consequence of observations of student learning and some
reflection about the course’s logical flow.
Inverting the order can be a challenge (in both a positive and negative
sense) for the student who already has some background in mechanics.
Reviewing mechanics from a different perspective can be quite good for such
a student because it makes her or him really think about the subject again. The
instructor can play a key role in helping such students appreciate this and by
emphasizing the power and breadth of the conservation law approach and
its importance in contemporary physics, as well as celebrating with them the
power one gains by being able to approach situations from multiple angles.
xii Preface
The momentum-transfer model of interactions (introduced now in

chapter C2) is really what makes it possible to talk about conservation laws
without starting with Newton’s laws. This model will be a new and challeng-
ing idea for almost everyone. Instructors should work carefully with students
to give them enough practice with the model to ensure they understand it
and can talk about it correctly. The payoff is that when students really grasp
this model, it by its very nature helps them avoid many of the standard mis-
conceptions that plague students in introductory courses.
I have substantially revised this unit from the second edition, focusing
my attention on the following specific goals.
• I have enlarged the discussion of the model-building process, providing
new examples and a more (literally) up-front discussion of tricks and
techniques such as unit conversion and dimensional analysis.
• I have reorganized the first few chapters to provide a better logical flow.
• I have substantially rethought how to present expert problem-solving
styles. The second edition’s experiment with cartoon balloons and
interaction diagrams was not very successful with my students. I have
replaced this approach with checklists that specify tasks to complete and
a more flexible solution style that I think will be easier for students to
emulate. Colored comments on many of the example solutions help stu-
dents see the connection between the solutions and checklists, and there
is also some opportunity for students to practice writing the comments
themselves, and so become more self-reflective about the process.
• I have brought the two vector conservation laws (momentum and angu-
lar momentum) together, which has several pedagogical advantages
(including highlighting how these quantities are similar and how they
both contrast with energy).
• I have also reorganized the angular momentum chapters so that the
basic idea (and what is necessary for later units) appears first and in its
own chapter. All the complicated material (involving the cross product)
appears in the second chapter, which may be postponed or even omitted.
• I have reorganized the material in the conservation of energy chapters
to better even out the pace and improve the logical flow. In particular,
I have separated the material on potential energy graphs from material
on bonds, latent heat, chemical energy, and nuclear energy (this was all
just too much for one chapter).
• Finally, and most importantly, I have reorganized the energy material
to be more consistent with the approach that John Jewett outlined in his
series of “Energy and the Confused Student” articles in various issues
of The Physics Teacher in 2008. While I don’t completely agree with Jew-
ett on every issue, his insights into student difficulties were consistent
with what I have observed in the classroom, and I think his approach is
superior pedagogically to what I had been doing. This has meant saying
farewell to “k-work,” which now much more correctly appears as the
requirement that conservation of momentum imposes on a system. I now
also have a complete discussion of “work” that allows a consistent appli-
cation to deformable systems (including human bodies).
Finally, I have sought to provide more flexibility for instructors. Most of
the chapters are crucial and should be discussed in order, but, as noted ear-
lier, chapter C7 on the hard parts of angular momentum may be omitted or
delayed, because no other chapter depends on it.
Preface xiii
I have also made chapter C14 optional. I think that is very valuable, par-
ticularly as a preparation for the last chapters of unit R, but it is not abso-
lutely necessary.
Appreciation
A project of this magnitude cannot be accomplished alone. A list including

everyone who has offered important and greatly appreciated help with this
project over the past 25 years would be much too long (and such lists appear
in the previous editions), so here I will focus for the most part on people who
have helped me with this particular edition. First, I would like to thank Tom
Bernatowicz and his colleagues at Washington University (particularly Marty
Israel and Mairin Hynes) who hosted me for a visit to Washington University
where we discussed this edition in detail. Many of my decisions about what
was most important in this edition grew out of that visit. Bruce Sherwood and
Ruth Chabay always have good ideas to share, and I appreciate their generos-
ity and wisdom. Benjamin Brown and his colleagues at Marquette University
have offered some great suggestions as well, and have been working hard on
the important task of adapting some Six Ideas problems for computer grading.
I’d like to thank Michael Lange at McGraw-Hill for having faith in the
Six Ideas project and starting the push for this edition, and Thomas Scaife
for continuing that push. Eve Lipton and Jolynn Kilburg has been superb
at guiding the project at the detail level. Many others at McGraw-Hill,
including Melissa Leick, Ramya Thirumavalavan, Kala Ramachandran,
David Tietz, and Deanna Dausener, were instrumental in proofreading
and producing the printed text. I’d also like to thank Dwight Whitaker
of Pomona College and and his Physics 70 students (especially Nathaniel
Roy, Eric Cooper, Neel Kumar, Milo Barisof, Sabrina Li, Samuel Yih, Asher
Abrahms, Owen Chapman, Mariana Cisneros, Nick Azar, William Lamb,
Wuyi Li, Errol Francis, and Cameron Queen) and my students in Physics 71
(especially Alex Hof, Gabrielle Mehta, Gail Gallaher and Jonah Grubb) for
helping me track down errors in the manuscript. David Haley and Marilee
Oldstone-Moore helped me with several crucial photographs and offered
useful feedback. Finally a very special thanks to my wife, Joyce, who
sacrificed and supported me and loved me during this long and demanding
project. Heartfelt thanks to all!
Thomas A. Moore
Claremont, California
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content he or she needs to learn, while simultaneously promoting long-term
retention of material. Use SmartBook’s real-time reports to quickly identify
the concepts that require more attention from individual s tudents–or the
entire class. The end result? Students are more engaged with course content,
can better prioritize their time, and come to class ready to participate.
xiv Preface
Learn Without Limits

Continually evolving, McGraw-Hill Connect® has been redesigned to pro-
vide the only true adaptive learning experience delivered within a simple
and easy-to-navigate environment, placing students at the very center.
• Performance Analytics – Now available for both instructors and stu-
dents, easy-to-decipher data illuminates course performance. Students
always know how they’re doing in class, while instructors can view stu-
dent and section performance at-a-glance.
• Mobile – Available on tablets, students can now access assignments,
quizzes, and results on-the-go, while instructors can assess student and
section performance anytime, anywhere.
• Personalized Learning – Squeezing the most out of study time, the adap-
tive engine in Connect creates a highly personalized learning path for
each student by identifying areas of weakness, and surfacing learning
resources to assist in the moment of need. This seamless integration of
reading, practice, and assessment, ensures that the focus is on the most
important content for that individual student at that specific time, while
promoting long-term retention of the material.
Introduction for Students
Introduction
Welcome to Six Ideas That Shaped Physics! This text has a number of features
that may be different from science texts you may have encountered previ-
ously. This section describes those features and how to use them effectively.
Why Is This Text Different?

Why active learning is crucial Research into physics education consistently shows that people learn physics
most effectively through activities where they practice applying physical rea-
soning and model-building skills in realistic situations. This is because phys-
ics is not a body of facts to absorb, but rather a set of thinking skills acquired
through practice. You cannot learn such skills by listening to factual lectures
any more than you can learn to play the piano by listening to concerts!
This text, therefore, has been designed to support active learning both
inside and outside the classroom. It does this by providing (1) resources for
various kinds of learning activities, (2) features that encourage active reading,
and (3) features that make it as easy as possible to use the text (as opposed
to lectures) as the primary source of information, so that you can spend class
time doing activities that will actually help you learn.
The Text as Primary Source

Features that help you use the To serve the last goal, I have adopted a conversational style that I hope you
text as the primary source of will find easy to read, and have tried to be concise without being too terse.
information Certain text features help you keep track of the big picture. One of the
key aspects of physics is that the concepts are organized hierarchically: some
are more fundamental than others. This text is organized into six units, each
of which explores the implications of a single deep idea that has shaped
physics. Each unit’s front cover states this core idea as part of the unit’s title.
A two-page chapter overview provides a compact summary of that
chapter’s contents to give you the big picture before you get into the details
and later when you review. Sidebars in the margins help clarify the purpose
of sections of the main text at the subpage level and can help you quickly
locate items later. I have highlighted technical terms in bold type (like this)
when they first appear: their definitions usually appear nearby.
A physics formula consists of both a mathematical equation and a con-
ceptual frame that gives the equation physical meaning. The most important
formulas in this book (typically, those that might be relevant outside the cur-
rent chapter) appear in formula boxes, which state the equation, its purpose
(which describes the formula’s meaning), a description of any limitations on
the formula’s applicability, and (optionally) some other u seful notes. Treat
everything in a box as a unit to be remembered and used together.
What is active reading? Active Reading

Just as passively listening to a lecture does not help you really learn what
you need to know about physics, you will not learn what you need by simply
xvi
scanning your eyes over the page. Active reading is a crucial study skill for
all kinds of technical literature. An active reader stops to pose internal ques-
tions such as these: Does this make sense? Is this consistent with my experi-
ence? Do I see how I might be able to use this idea? This text provides two
important tools to make this process easier.
Use the wide margins to (1) record questions that arise as you read (so you Features that support develop-
can be sure to get them answered) and the answers you eventually receive, ing the habit of active reading
(2) flag important passages, (3) fill in missing mathematical steps, and
(4) record insights. Writing in the margins will help keep you actively
engaged as you read and supplement the sidebars when you review.
Each chapter contains three or four in-text exercises, which prompt you
to develop the habit of thinking as you read (and also give you a break!).
These exercises sometimes prompt you to fill in a crucial mathematical detail
but often test whether you can apply what you are reading to realistic situ-
ations. When you encounter such an exercise, stop and try to work it out.
When you are done (or after about 5 minutes or so), look at the answers at
the end of the chapter for some immediate feedback. Doing these exercises is
one of the more important things you can do to become an active reader.
SmartBook (TM) further supports active reading by continuously mea-
suring what a student knows and presenting questions to help keep students
engaged while acquiring new knowledge and reinforcing prior learning.
Class Activities and Homework

This book’s entire purpose is to give you the background you need to do the Read the text BEFORE class!
kinds of practice activities (both in class and as homework) that you need
to genuinely learn the material. It is therefore ESSENTIAL that you read every
assignment BEFORE you come to class. This is crucial in a course based on this
text (and probably more so than in previous science classes you have taken).
The homework problems at the end of each chapter provide for differ- Types of practice activities
ent kinds of practice experiences. Two-minute problems are short concep- provided in the text
tual problems that provide practice in extracting the implications of what you
have read. Basic Skills problems offer practice in straightforward appli-
cations of important formulas. Both can serve as the basis for classroom
activities: the letters on the book’s back cover help you communicate the
answer to a two-minute problem to your professor (simply point to the let-
ter!). Modeling problems give you practice in constructing coherent mental
models of physical situations, and usually require combining several formu-
las to get an answer. Derivation problems give you practice in mathemati-
cally extracting useful consequences of formulas. Rich-context problems
are like modeling problems, but with elements that make them more like
realistic questions that you might actually encounter in life or work. They
are especially suitable for collaborative work. Advanced problems chal-
lenge advanced students with questions that involve more subtle reasoning
and/or difficult math.
Note that this text contains perhaps fewer examples than you would
like. This is because the goal is to teach you to flexibly reason from basic prin-
ciples, not slavishly copy examples. You may find this hard at first, but real
life does not present its puzzles neatly wrapped up as textbook examples.
With practice, you will find your power to deal successfully with realistic,
practical problems will grow until you yourself are astonished at how what
had seemed impossible is now easy. But it does take practice, so work hard and
be hopeful!
xvii
C1 The Art of Model
Building
Chapter Overview
Section C1.1: The Nature of Science
One of the main goals of science is the development of imaginative conceptual models
of physical reality. A model deliberately simplifies a complex reality in such a way
that it captures its essence and helps us think more clearly about it. This text’s main
purpose is to teach you the art of scientific model building, by helping you not only under-
stand and appreciate the grand models we call theories but also practice building the
small-scale models one needs to apply a theory in a given situation.
Science is an unusually effective process for generating powerful models of real-
ity that involves four crucial elements coming together:
1. A sufficiently large community of scholars, who share
2. A commitment to logical consistency as an essential feature of all models,
3. An agreement to use reproducible experiments to test models, and
4. A grand theory rich enough to provide a solid foundation for research.
In the case of physics, the Greek philosophical tradition created a community that
valued logical reasoning. Early Renaissance thinkers championed the value of repro-
ducible experiments as being crucial for testing models. But physics was not really
launched until 1687, when Newton provided a theory of mechanics grand and com-
pelling enough to unify the community and provide a solid context for research.
Section C1.2: The Development and Structure of Physics

Since the days of Newton, physicists have sought to create models able to embrace
originally distinct areas of study and thus cover broader ranges of physical phenom-
ena. The current conceptual structure of physics, illustrated in figure C1.1, rests on
two grand theories: general relativity (GR) and the Standard Model (SM) of parti
cle physics. In practice, though, physicists almost always use five simpler theories
(which are approximations valid in various limited contexts): newtonian mechanics,
special relativity, electromagnetic field theory, quantum mechanics, and statistical
mechanics. This text focuses on these five models.
Physicists have recently come to appreciate the role that symmetries play in
physics. Both GR and the SM acknowledge (as almost any imaginable theory must)
certain symmetries (such as the time and position independence of physical laws)
that give rise to conservation laws (such as the laws of conservation of energy and
momentum). Such laws have a validity beyond the specific theories currently in
vogue. Indeed, GR and the SM themselves are based on new, nonobvious symmetries.
Section C1.3: A Model-Building Example

To apply a grand theoretical model to any actual physical situation of interest, a sci-
entist must construct an idealized model that simplifies the situation, bringing its
essence into focus in such a way that one can easily connect it to the grand model.
This course is designed to help you practice this process, which is really the only way
to learn how to do it. This section illustrates what is involved in an example situation.
In the process, the section describes some useful tricks that can help you simplify
situations and think about which simplifications are appropriate:
2
1. Lines or rays from a very distant point are nearly parallel.
2. The length of a gentle curve between two points is almost the same as that of a
straight line between those points.
3. The fractional uncertainty of a result calculated by multiplication or division
from uncertain quantities is roughly equal to that of the most uncertain quantity
involved. The same is true for the sine or tangent of small angles.
Part of the art of model building is to develop a bag of such tricks that you can
pull out when helpful. The only real way to learn these tricks is by practice, and also by
making mistakes that you learn to correct. So be bold and learn from your mistakes!
Solutions to most physics problems involve three different sections:
1. A model section that describes the simplifications one makes to the situation
2. A math section where one does the mathematics implied by the model
3. A check section where one decides whether the result makes sense
Your earlier experience with more trivial problems may lead you to neglect the model
and check sections, but I strongly recommend you do not. The model section is par-
ticularly important in this course. A good and sufficiently well-labeled diagram is
often the core of a sufficient model for problem solutions you prepare.
Section C1.4: Trick Bag: Unit Awareness

One of the most powerful tricks you can put in your bag is being aware of units. Units
give meaning to quantities and are essential for correctly communicating that mean-
ing to others. Being constantly aware of units (even when working with symbolic
equations) is one of the best and easiest ways to spot mistakes in your work.
Here is a list of the things you should know to increase your unit awareness:
1. Know the basic and derived SI units and SI prefixes (see the inside front cover).
2. Know and/or refer to the SI unit benchmarks in figure C1.2.
3. Know that the units on both sides of an equation must match.
4. Know that you cannot add or subtract quantities with different units, but you
can multiply or divide them.
5. Know that you should be aware of units even in symbolic equations.
6. Know that math functions take unitless arguments and yield unitless results.
Section C1.5: Trick Bag: Unit Conversions

In most physics problem solutions, you will need to convert units. My preferred tech-
nique for doing this is the unit operator method, where you convert unit equalities
such as 1 mile = 1609 meters into a ratio equal to 1 such as 1 = (1 mi/1609 m) or
1 = (1609 m/1 mi). Since anything can be multiplied by 1 without changing it, you
can multiply any quantity by such a unit operator and cancel units top and bottom
(as if they were algebraic symbols) until only the units you want are left over. For
example: 23 mi = (23 mi
)(1609 m/1 mi
@ ) = 37,000 m. This method is foolproof as long as
@
you pay attention to unit consistency and to canceling units correctly.
Section C1.6: Trick Bag: Dimensional Analysis

Dimensional analysis is a surprisingly powerful trick that often yields good estimates
of physics formulas and/or quantities without requiring anything more than the
most basic knowledge of a situation. As such, it often represents the simplest model
you can construct of a given situation.
This trick takes advantage of the facts that (1) units must agree on both sides of
any equation, (2) that most formulas in physics are simple power laws, and (3) that
most unitless constants appearing in such formulas are within a factor of 10 or so of
one. The steps in applying dimensional analysis to a situation are as follows:
1. Decide what quantities your desired value might depend on.
2. Assume that these quantities appear in a power law formula (e.g., Q = KAmBn).
3. Find the powers by requiring units to be consistent on both sides of the formula.
4. Assume that the unitless constant K in front of the equation is 1.
3
4 Chapter C1 The Art of Model Building
C1.1 The Nature of Science
By our nature, we humans strive to discern order in the cosmos and love to
tell stories that use ideas from our collective experience to “explain” what
we see. Science stands firmly in this ancient tradition: stories about how the
gods guide the planets around the sky and modern stories about how space-
time curvature does the same have much in common. What distinguishes
science from the rest of the human storytelling tradition are (1) the types of
stories scientists tell, (2) the process that they use for developing and sifting
these stories, and (3) the predictive success enjoyed by the surviving stories.
Scientists express their stories in the form of conceptual models, which
bear a similar relation to the real world as a model airplane does to a real jet.
A good scientific model captures a phenomenon’s essence while being small
and simple enough for a human mind to grasp. Models are essential because
reality is too complicated to understand fully; models distill complex phe-
nomena into bite-sized chunks that finite minds can digest. Framing a model
is less an act of discovery than of imagination: a good model is a compelling
story about reality that creatively ignores just the right amount of complexity.
Model building occurs at all Model-making in science happens at all levels. Theories—grand models
levels of science embracing a huge range of phenomena—are for science what great novels are
for literature: soaring works of imagination that we study and celebrate for
their insight. But applying such a grand model to a real-life situation requires
building a smaller model of the situation itself, simplifying the situation and
making appropriate approximations to help us connect it to the grand model.
Scientists do this second kind of model-making daily, and one of the main
goals of this course is to help you learn that art.
Because models are necessarily and consciously simpler than reality, all
have limits: the full “truth” about any phenomenon can never be told. Push-
ing any model far enough eventually exposes its inadequacies. Even so, one
can distinguish better from poorer models. Better models are more logical,
more predictive in a broader range of cases, more elegantly constructed, and
more productive in generating further research than poorer ones are.
Science is really a process for building, evaluating, and refining models,
one that (since its beginnings in the 1600s) has proved to be an astonishingly
prolific producer of powerful and trustworthy models. It owes part of its suc-
cess to its focus on the natural world, whose orderly behavior at many levels
makes finding and testing models easier than in the world of human culture.
Scholars of the philosophy and history of science suggest that a discipline
becomes a science only when the following four elements come together:
1. A sufficiently large community of scholars, who share
2. A commitment to logical consistency as an essential feature of all models,
3. An agreement to use reproducible experiments to test models, and
4. A grand theory rich enough to provide a solid foundation for research.
How physics became a science In the case of physics, the Greek philosophical tradition founded a com-
munity of scholars who appreciated the power of logical reasoning: indeed,
this community found logic’s power so liberating that it long imagined pure
logic to be sufficient for knowing. The idea of using experiments to test one’s
logic and assumptions was not even fully expressed until the 13th century,
and was not recognized as necessary until the 17th. Eventually, though, the
community recognized that the human desire to order experience is so strong
that the core challenge facing a thinker is to distinguish real order from mere-
ly imagined patterns. Reproducible experiments make what would otherwise
be individual experience available to a wider community, anchoring models
more firmly to reality. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was a great champion of
C1.2 The Development and Structure of Physics 5
this approach. His use of the newly invented telescope to display features of
heavenly bodies unanticipated by models of the time underlined to his peers
the inadequacy of pure reason and the importance of observation.
A prescientific community lacking a grand theory, however, tends to
fragment into schools, each championing its own theory. Rapid progress is
thwarted because each school sees any collected data through the lens of
its cherished model, making arguments virtually impossible to resolve. This
was the situation in physics during most of the 1600s. However, in 1687 Isaac
Newton published an ingenious model of physics broad enough to embrace
both terrestrial and celestial phenomena. His grand theory captured the imagi-
nation of the entire physics community, which turned away from a rguing
about partial models and toward working together to refine, test, and extend
Newton’s basic theory, confident that it would be shown to be universally
true and valid. At this moment, physics became a science.
The unified community now made rapid progress in constructing pow- The ironic paradox at the heart
erful subordinate models that greatly extended the reach of Newton’s grand of science
vision, feeding the Industrial Revolution along the way. Ironically, the com-
munity that strove energetically to extend Newton’s model universally even-
tually amassed evidence proving it incomplete! Only a community devoted to
a theory can collect the kind of detailed and careful evidence necessary to
expose its inadequacies, and thus move on to better theories. This irony is the
engine that drives science forward.
C1.2 The Development and Structure of Physics
Unification of apparently distinct models has been an important theme in the The history of physics since
development of physics since Newton’s theory unified terrestrial and celes- Newton
tial physics. In the 1800s, work on electricity, magnetism, and light (initially
described by distinct partial models) culminated in an “electromagnetic field
model” embracing them all, and physicists found how to subsume thermal
phenomena into Newton’s model. This process was going so well in the late
1800s that the physicist Lord Kelvin famously claimed that there was prob-
ably little left to learn about physics!
In the early 1900s, though, physicists began to see that certain experi-
mental results were simply incompatible with Newton’s framework. After
what amounted to a period of revolution, the community demoted Newton’s
theory and coalesced around two new grand theories—general relativity
(1915) and quantum mechanics (1926)—which embraced the new results but
yielded the same results as Newton’s theory in the appropriate limits.
In the 1950s, physicists were able to unify quantum mechanics, electro-
magnetic field theory, and special relativity (the nongravitational part of
general relativity) to create quantum electrodynamics (QED), the first exam-
ple of a relativistic quantum field theory. In the 1970s, physicists extended
this model to create relativistic quantum field theories to describe two new
(subatomic-scale) interactions discovered in previous decades and integrated
them with QED into a coherent theory of subatomic particle physics called
the Standard Model. This model has been quite successful, predicting new
phenomena and particles that have been subsequently observed. The m odel’s
latest triumph was the discovery of the predicted “Higgs boson” in 2012.
Currently, general relativity, which covers gravity and other physical The current structure
phenomena at distance scales larger than molecules, and the Standard Model, of physics
which works in principle at all distance scales but does not and cannot cover
gravity, stand as the squabbling twin grand theories of physics. Though no
known experimental result defies explanation by one or the other, physicists
Deep underlying SYMMETRIES in

the nature of physical interactions
CONSERVATION LAWS
**THE STANDARD MODEL** **GENERAL RELATIVITY**

(interwoven relativistic quantum field (describes gravity and the motion of
theories for everything but gravity) objects bigger than molecules)
(Classical) ELECTROMAG- SPECIAL RELATIVITY

QUANTUM MECHANICS
NETIC FIELD THEORY (approximately valid in the
(approximately valid at low
(approximately valid for weak presence of weak gravitational
particle energies)
fields and large distances) fields)
STATISTICAL MECHANICS NEWTONIAN MECHANICS

(describes complex objects (approximately valid for massive
constructed of many objects moving much slower than
interacting particles) light in weak gravitational fields)
Figure C1.1
The current grand theories of
physics (starred) and the five are dissatisfied with each theory (for different reasons) and especially dis-
approximate models more often tressed that we need two deeply incompatible theories instead of one. While
used in practice.
many unifying models have been proposed (string theory and loop quantum
gravity are examples), these models lack both the level of development and
the firm experimental basis to inspire general acceptance. The physics com-
munity is thus presently in the curious position of being devoted to two
grand theories we already know to be wrong (or at best incomplete).
In practice, however, physicists rarely use either to explain any but the most
exotic phenomena. Instead, they use one of five simpler theories: newtonian
mechanics, special relativity, electromagnetic field theory, quantum mechanics,
and statistical mechanics. Each has a more limited range of applicability than
the two grand theories, but is typically much easier to use within that range.
These theories, their limitations, and their relationships to the grand theories
and each other are illustrated in figure C1.1.
The importance of symmetries This diagram also emphasizes the importance of symmetry principles
in physics in physics. Early in the 1900s, mathematician Emmy Noether showed that,
given plausible assumptions about the form that physical laws must have, a
symmetry principle stating that “the laws of physics are unaffected if you do
such-and-such” automatically implies an associated conservation law. For
example, the time-independence of the laws of physics (whatever those laws
might be) implies that a quantity that we call energy is conserved (that is, does
not change in time) in an isolated set of objects obeying those laws.
Conservation laws, therefore, stand independently and behind the
particular models of physics, as figure C1.1 illustrates. For example, con-
servation of energy is a feature of newtonian mechanics, electromagnetic
field theory, special relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics
because all these theories involve physical laws that (1) have forms consistent
with Noether’s theorem and (2) are assumed to be time independent. Each
theory has a different way of defining energy, but all agree that it is conserved.
Symmetry principles are also important because both our current grand
models of physics (the Standard Model and general relativity) propose and
unravel the consequences of new and nonobvious symmetry principles. The
section of this text on special relativity illustrates this by displaying how rela-
tivity’s mind-blowing features are in fact simple logical consequences of the
symmetry principle that “the laws of physics are unaffected by one’s state
of (uniform) motion.” Linking other symmetry principles with their conse-
quences is (unfortunately) not quite so simple (and is beyond the level of this
course), but is not qualitatively different.
Now, given the structure of physics illustrated in figure C1.1, it might Why one must learn the five
seem logical to begin studying physics by starting with the two fundamental simpler theories first
theories (or even the symmetry principles) and then working downward to
the five approximate theories. However, this is impractical because the fun-
damental theories, in spite of their awesome breadth and beauty, are (1) very
sophisticated mathematically and conceptually, (2) unnecessarily complicat-
ed to use in most contexts, and (3) necessarily expressed using the language
and concepts of the five simpler theories. One must therefore start by learn-
ing those simpler theories. The other five volumes of this textbook will pro-
vide you with a very basic introduction to all five of these simpler theories,
as well as exploring many of the supporting models that help broaden their
range. This unit begins the process by looking at the conservation laws (in
the context of newtonian mechanics) that underlie all these theories.
In the remainder of this chapter, though, we will explore the model-
building process in more detail and develop some general tools that help us
avoid errors and maximize what we can gain from even limited knowledge.
C1.3 A Model-Building Example
This book is designed partly to teach you the kind of creative model-building One learns the art of model
that working scientists do daily. The model-building process cannot be re- building through practice
duced to formulaic procedures that one can follow like a recipe. It is an art
that requires knowledge, intelligence, creativity, and most of all, practice. You
can no more learn this art simply by reading books or attending lectures than
you can learn to play the piano simply by attending concerts.
So let’s practice! The exercise below poses a simple question you can An example that illustrates the
answer using some basic trigonometry and geometry, grade-school science, model-building process
and a bit of creative model building. Spend at least 10 minutes but no more
than 15 minutes trying to answer the question before turning the page.
Exercise C1X.1
About 240 B.C.E., Eratosthenes made the first good estimate of the earth’s size
as follows. Caravan travelers told him that in the village of Syene, one could
see the sun reflected in a deep well at noon on the summer solstice, meaning
that it was directly overhead. Eratosthenes noted that at the same time on
the same day in Alexandria (5000 Greek stadia to the north, as estimated by
camel travel time), a vertical stick cast a shadow about 1/8 of its length. What
is the earth’s radius in stadia? (Hint: Draw a picture. In 240 B.C.E., the Greeks
knew that the earth was spherical and the sun was very far away.)
Example C1.1 Model If the sun is sufficiently far from the earth, light rays traveling from
the sun to Alexandria (point A) and Syene (point S) will be almost parallel.
Let’s assume they are exactly parallel and that the earth is perfectly spherical.
The figure below shows a cross-sectional view of the situation from the east.
CLOSE-UP: θ earth
shadow
stick
parallel rays A θ
from the sun stick d θ
C
S r
earth’s
circumference
=c
Because alternate interior angles are equal, the angle θ between the stick and
the sun’s rays at Alexandria is the same as the angle θ between lines AC and
SC, where C is the earth’s center. The stick is vertical by assumption, so it is
perpendicular to its shadow. Thus, the stick, the shadow, and the ray passing
the stick’s end form a right triangle (see the “close-up” above). If the shadow
is 1/8 the stick’s length, then tan θ = 1/8, so θ = tan-1(1/8) = 7.1°. The dis-
tance d between Alexandria and Syene is to the earth’s circumference c as θ is
to 360°, so c/d = 360°/θ. Note also that c = 2πr, where r is the earth’s radius.
Math Therefore
2π 2π θ ( )
  c = ___
r = ___   360°
  d ____   
 
(5000 stadia)(360°)
   = _________________
  
2π(7.1°)
  = 40,000 stadia (C1.1)
Check The exact length of Eratosthene’s stadion is historically ambiguous,

but if he meant the “itinerary stadion” (the one used for road trips), then
1 stadion = 0.157 km and r is 6300 km, pretty close to the modern value.
If you got something like this, congratulations! If you had trouble get-
ting a useful result in 15 minutes, that’s normal. Doing a moderately realistic
problem like this is hard, not usually because the math or concepts are hard
(both are pretty basic here), but because constructing the model is hard. How
does one know what approximations to make? How does one create a sche-
matic diagram of a situation (like the one shown) that usefully exposes its es-
sential features? How do you frame things so that the mathematics is simple?
You may even be annoyed with my solution: “Well,” you might say, “if
I had known it was acceptable to make the false assumption that rays from the
sun are parallel, then the solution would have been easy!” That is precisely
the point! It is not only acceptable but also usually necessary to make simpli-
fications to solve a problem at all. The trick is simplifying just enough to make
the problem tractable without making the result uselessly crude. There are
no “correct” answers in such a case, only poorer and better models that yield
poorer or better results (and if a poor result is the best one can do, it is still
better than nothing!). This is where the creativity and artistry comes in. My
goal is to help you learn to simplify (that is, to be productively and creatively
lazy) imaginatively, boldly, and exuberantly!
With this in mind, let’s examine more closely the simplifications and The simplifications and
a ssumptions behind the model in example C1.1. The solution assumes that assumptions involved in
the sun is sufficiently distant that light rays from it are parallel at the earth: if example C1.1’s model
this is not so, the two angles marked θ in the diagram are not equal. No one
knew the distance to the sun in Eratosthenes’s time, so his assumption was
quite bold, but we now know that two rays from a single point on the sun that
arrive at Syene and Alexandria, respectively, are not parallel, but actually make
an angle of about 0.00035° with each other. Solving this p roblem “more cor-
rectly” by taking this into account yields an r that is smaller by about 0.005%.
However, this is truly insignificant compared with other simplifications
we are making. The sun’s angular diameter when viewed from the earth
is about 0.5°, so there is not just one ray that grazes the top of the stick and
connects it with the shadow on the ground, but rather a bundle of rays that
could make angles with each other of as much as 0.53°. This means that
the end of the stick’s shadow will be blurred, making its length and thus the
angle θ uncertain by about ±0.26°. Also the hills and valleys between Syene
and Alexandria make the road distance d longer than the distance that would
be measured on a perfect sphere. Moreover, Alexandria is not due north of
Syene, as the drawing assumes it is. The earth is also not exactly spherical (its
polar radius is smaller than its equatorial radius by about 11 km).
I could state yet more subtle assumptions, but I think you get the point.
Reality is complicated, and the model simply ignores those complications.
Now, it turns out if you multiply or divide uncertain or erroneous quanti- The “weakest link rule” for
ties, the result has (roughly) the same percent uncertainty as the most uncertain uncertain quantities
of the quantities. This weakest-link rule is also (roughly) true for tangents
or sines of small angles. (Check it out for yourself: see problem C1D.1.) In
this case, the uncertainty in θ is roughly ±4% (±0.26°/7.1°) because of the
angular width of the sun, and the uncertainty in the distance d is likely to be
more than ±10%, since it is determined by camel travel time! The weakest-
link rule implies, therefore, that we are not going to know the radius of the
earth to better than about ±10% no matter how good our model is. Making a
far more complicated model to correct the approximations described above is
not going to make the slightest bit of practical difference: we are simply not
given good enough information to calculate the earth’s radius more precisely.
The problem (as stated) therefore does not deserve a better model!
Part of the art of model building is knowing when a model is “good The art of “good enough”
enough.” Eratosthenes’s model was not merely “good enough;” it was pure
genius at the time, since no other method of determining the earth’s radius
was remotely as good. (Sometimes even a crude result is a big step forward!)
One learns the art of “good enough” mostly by practice. Indeed, I hope this
course will give you (among other things) a bag of useful tricks that are often
“good enough.” Treating lines from a distant point as parallel is one such
trick. The weakest-link rule about the uncertainty of multiplied or divided
quantities is another. Practice with tricks like these puts them into your bag.
Another important trick is recognizing the importance of a good dia- Good diagrams are essential
gram. Drawing (and carefully labeling) the drawing in example C1.1 was
probably the single most important thing I did to solve the problem. Most of
the “Model” in my solution merely restates the diagram verbally. A good
diagram is often the most important trick for solving a physics problem.
Indeed, solutions to all but the most trivial problems will involve the The three sections of almost
three sections appearing in the example solution: a model section where one any physics problem solution
draws a schematic diagram and/or discusses approximations and assump-
tions, a math section where one does the mathematics implied by the model
to solve for the desired result, and a check section where one checks the result
to see if it makes sense.
Don’t neglect either the Beginners often neglect the “check” section, but you will learn by
“check” or “model” parts e xperience not to (if only to avoid submitting embarrassingly knuckle-headed
results). However, in this course (since it is about practicing model-building),
the model section is the most crucial part of any solution you submit. A model
need not be much more than a well-labeled diagram and/or a few comments
about assumptions. I will provide some examples to emulate as we go on.
The value of making mistakes Note that making mistakes (and then correcting them) is an honorable part
of the learning process. Werner Heisenberg, a great physicist of the early 1900s,
said that “An expert is [someone] who knows… the worst errors that can be
made in a subject… and [thus] how to avoid them.” This is true in my experi-
ence, and is something one can often only learn by making those mistakes.
C1.4 Trick Bag: Unit Awareness
Why unit awareness is An essential item for your bag of tricks is being aware of units. Units attach
important physical meaning to bare numbers and communicating the magnitude of a
measured quantity requires using an agreed-upon unit for that quantity.
The importance of this was starkly illustrated in 1999 when NASA’s
$125-million Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in Mars’s atmosphere because
the spacecraft’s builders had been sending thruster data in English units
(pounds) to a NASA navigation team expecting data in metric units (new-
tons). One commentator to the Los Angeles Times stated, “[This] is going to be
a cautionary tale to the end of time.” (He got that right.)
SI units and prefixes To help avoid such catastrophic confusion, in this text I will most o ften
use SI units (from the French Système Internationale), the modern version of
metric units. An international committee has worked since 1960 to provide
clear and reproducible definitions for standard physical units. The entire sys-
tem is based on seven base units, each with a standard abbreviation: the meter
(abbreviation: m) for distance, the second (s) for time, the kilogram (kg) for
mass, the kelvin (K) for temperature, the mole (mol) for counting molecules,
the ampere (A) for electric current, and the candela (cd) for luminous inten-
STANDARD SI PREFIXES
sity (we will not use the candela in this course). The committee has defined
Power Prefix Symbol each unit (except the kilogram) in such a way that a scientist can in principle
18
10 exa E recreate the unit in his or her own laboratory.
10 15
peta P The SI committee has also defined derived units that are combinations
12
of the base units. The units we will use are the joule (1 J ≡ 1 kg·m2/s2) for
10 tera T energy, the watt (1 W ≡ 1 J/s) for power, the newton (1 N ≡ 1 kg·m/s2) for
9
10 giga G force, the pascal (1 Pa ≡ 1 N/m2) for pressure, the coulomb (1 C ≡ 1 A·s)
10 6
mega M for electric charge, the volt (1 V ≡ 1 J/C) for electrical energy per unit charge,
3 the ohm (1 Ω ≡ 1 V/A) for electrical resistance, and the hertz (1 Hz ≡ 1 wave
10 kilo k
cycle/s). Future chapters will describe what these derived units mean.
10–2 centi c The SI committee has also defined a set of standard prefixes and pre-
–3
10 milli m fix abbreviations (see table C1.1) that one attaches to a unit to multiply it
10 –6
micro µ by selected powers of 10. Thus, 1 millimeter (abbreviation: mm) is equal to
–9 10–3 m, 1 gigawatt (GW, pronounced with the g as in “get”) is 109 W, and
10 nano n
1 nanosecond (ns) = 10–9 s. You may already be familiar with some of the larger
–12
10 pico p prefixes from computer terminology (e.g., TB for terabyte = 1012 bytes, GHz
10–15
femto f for gigahertz = 109 hertz). My experience is that English-speakers have the
10–18 atto a most trouble distinguishing milli (= 10–3) from micro (= 10–6) because “milli”
sounds like “millionth” even though it means “thousandth.” I recommend
Table C1.1 memorizing the prefixes at least from pico to tera.
Standard SI prefixes for powers of Units for angles (the radian and the degree) are standard but (for histori-
10. (You can also find this table on cal reasons) are not considered formal SI units. I will sometimes also mention
the inside front cover.) English units like the mile (mi), foot (ft), and pound (lb) (a unit of force).
C1.5 Trick Bag: Unit Conversions 11
1027 m edge of visible 1018 s age of universe 1054 kg visible universe

universe ≈1026 m = 13.7 Gy = 433 Ps
1024 m 1015 s 1048 kg
1021 m galaxy diameter 1012 s 31,700 yr 1042 kg our galaxy
1018 m nearer stars 109 s 31.7 yr 1036 kg

1015 m 106 s 11.6 days 1030 kg the sun
solar system diameter
1012 m 103 s 16.7 min 1024 kg the earth
109 m 1s 1018 kg
earth diameter
= 12,760 km period of a typi- a hill
106 m 10–3 s cal sound wave 1012 kg
103 m 10–6 s 106 kg ≈ 1000 tons
1m 1 m = 3.28 ft 10–9 s light travels 1 kg 1 kg = 2.2 lb
one foot
10–3 m 10–12 s 10–6 kg a mosquito
period of a typical
10–6 m small cell 10–15 s light wave 10–12 kg a cell
10–9 m 10–18 s light crosses 10–18 kg

atom diameter
a molecule
10–12 m 10–21 s 10–24 kg
light crosses an atom
10–15 m nucleus diameter 10–24 s a nucleus 10–30 kg an electron
Figure C1.2
Some rough benchmarks for distances in meters, times in seconds, and masses in kilograms. (Note that the scales here are
logarithmic: equal distances on the scale correspond to multiplication by equal powers of ten.)
Being aware of units is also valuable even when working with symbolic Being aware of units in sym-
equations. One cannot add or subtract quantities with different units (though bolic expressions is also good
multiplying and dividing such quantities are fine). So an expression that (for
example) contains 1 + m (where m is a mass) is absurd. If you find yourself
writing such an equation, you should know that you have made a mistake.
Also, for the record, all mathematical functions [such as sin(x), tan–1(x),
x
e , ln x] all require a unitless argument and produce a unitless result. For his-
torical reasons, angles in both degrees and radians are considered unitless.
One way to spot silly results is to know some SI benchmarks (see Know some benchmarks!
figure C1.2). For example, if a question asks you how high you can throw a ball
and you get a distance larger than a galaxy, maybe something is wrong, hmm?
Check figure C1.2 if a calculation’s results seem off. It is also cool to be able to
say to your friends at the end of the school year “See you in about 9 megasec-
onds” and have them understand. (OK, maybe that is just a bit geeky.)
C1.5 Trick Bag: Unit Conversions
In many realistic physics problems, you are likely to have to change units. The “unit operator” method
One of the most handy tools in your bag of tricks is a foolproof way to con- for unit conversion
vert units. My favorite technique is the unit operator method. For example,
suppose that you know that your hair grows at a rate of 6 inches per year
and you’d like to know what this is in nanometers per second. We start by
writing down the equations that define the relationships between the units
(which you can find inside the front cover):
1 nm = 10-9 m, 1 m = 3.28 ft, 1 ft = 12 in, 1 y = 3.16 × 107 s (C1.2)
Since 1 m is equivalent to 3.28 ft, the ratio of these quantities is 1:
(  
1m
______ )
3.28 ft
1 nm
   = 1 and similarly, 1 = ______ (
  -9    = _____
10 m
  ) ( )(
1 ft
12 in
1y
   = ___________
 
3.17 × 107 s
   ) (C1.3)
Such a ratio is thus called a unit operator. Since we can multiply anything by
1 without changing it, we can multiply our original rate by 1 in the form of
these unit operators. If you then rearrange factors and cancel the units that
appear in both the numerator and denominator, we get the desired result:
6 in
____
( )   
     ·1·1·1·1 = ____

y ( )( )( )(
6 in _____
    
y 12 
│
⨉ ______
1 ft

in
    
⧹ 1 m  _______
     -9
)(
    
⨉ 10 m  3.16 × 107 s
3.28 ft ⧹
1 y
1 nm ___________ │
)
  
   
   
6
= ______________________  nm
  ____  nm
  = 4.8 ____   (C1.4)
12(3.28)(10-9)(3.16 × 107) s s
Note that we can treat all of the units as if they were simply algebraic symbols
that we can cancel if they appear in both the numerator and denominator!
Why this method is so great This unit operator method is great because if I didn’t have the right
power for one of the unit operators or put it upside down by accident, the
units would not cancel and I would have a mess of leftover units that would
signal that I had done something wrong. This method is absolutely foolproof as
long as you make sure that unwanted units really do cancel out. (Foolproof
is good!)
How do I know when a unit operator is “right side up?” [After all, 1 =
(1 m/3.28 ft) and 1 = (3.28 ft/1 m) both!] “Right side up” for a unit operator
is whichever way gets the units to cancel as you need. It’s like the joke where
a student asks a sculptor how to make a good statue of a person. The sculptor
replies, “Just remove whatever parts of the rock don’t look like the person.” In
the unit conversion task, just arrange your unit operators so that they remove
any units that don’t look like the final units you need.
C1.6 Trick Bag: Dimensional Analysis
Dimensional analysis is a very cool trick because you can often use it to esti-
mate an answer or guess a formula even if you know almost nothing about
the physics involved. This will amaze your friends (convincing them that you
know more than you do) and is a sign to other physicists that you belong.
The trick is based on the fact that the units on both sides of any equation
must be consistent. We can often combine this with simple plausibility argu-
ments to find a formula for a desired quantity even if we haven’t a clue about
how to actually derive that formula. This often represents the simplest model
one can construct (one based on only the most fundamental assumptions).
Consider the following problem as an example. The radius R of a black
hole is the radius inside which all light is trapped by the black hole’s gravita-
tional field. What is this radius for a black hole with a given mass M?
(1) Think about what the Don’t panic just because we don’t know any general relativity! Think:
desired quantity might what could R depend on? It could plausibly depend on the black hole’s
depend on mass M, the speed of light c, and the universal gravitational constant G that
characterizes the strength of the gravitational field created by a given mass
(we will study this constant more later). No other physical quantity appears
to be relevant. So let’s assume that only these quantities will appear in the
formula for R. This is the first assumption in our model.
(2) Assume a power-law Secondly, let’s assume that the formula has the form
formula
R = KG j Mk cn (C1.5)
C1.6 Trick Bag: Dimensional Analysis 13
where K is some as-yet-unknown unitless constant and j, k, and n are as-yet-

unknown powers (not necessarily integers). This is a big assumption, but not
completely bonkers. For example, as the black hole’s mass M goes to zero, we
would expect the trapping radius R goes to zero. Similarly, if G
W 0 (meaning
that the gravitational field created by a given mass goes to zero), R should
also go to zero. Both expectations are consistent with the formula.
Let {a} represent the SI units of the quantity a. Thus, {R} = m, {M} = kg, (3) Require unit consistency
{c} = m/s (since c is a speed), and {G} = m3/(kg·s2) (see the inside front c over).
So if the units in equation C1.5 are to be consistent, we must have
( ) ()
3 j
  m 2   (kg)k __
  m   = m3j+nkgk-j s-2j-n
n
m = {R} = {K}{G}j {M}k {c}n = _____ (C1.6)
kg·s s
Since we do not have any units of kilograms on the left side of equation C1.6,
we must have k – j = 0, or k = j. Since we also do not have units of seconds on
the left, we must have –n – 2j = 0, or n = –2j. We have one power of meters
on the left side, so 3j + n = 1 or (substituting n = –2j from above) 3j – 2j = 1,
so j = 1. So our formula must be
GM 
R = KG jM kc n = KG1M1c-2 = K  ____ (C1.7)
c2
The constant K we have included (for greater generality) does not have (4) Assume that any unitless
any units, so this method cannot determine its value. If we assume that K = 1, constant is approximately 1
then the radius of a black hole with a mass equal to that of the sun is
 GM
( ) 1.99 × 1030 kg
m3    _______________
@
R = ____   = 6.67 × 10 -11 _____

      
     = 1470 m (C1.8)
c 2
 · s⨉ (3.00 × 10 m
kg 2 8
@/s⨉ )2
Therefore, this super-simple model predicts that if our sun were to become a
black hole, its radius would be about 1.5 km.
Now you might think this result completely untrustworthy because of
all the assumptions we have made. Even granting the plausibility of the
argument that the result must depend only on G, M, and c, what justifies the
outrageous assumptions we made in equation C1.5 and in setting K = 1?
Such assumptions turn out to be surprisingly trustworthy. The universe
seems to prefer simple formulas to complicated ones, and unitless constants
appearing in physics formulas usually turn out to be like 1/3, π, or 5/8, not
something very large or very small. Therefore taking the unitless constant to
be equal to 1 has an uncannily good chance of yielding a reasonable estimate
(within a factor of 10 or so). It doesn’t always work, but it often does, and
when it does, one can get a good first estimate with spectacularly little effort.
In this particular case, the full derivation using general relativity shows
that a black hole’s radius is really R = 2GM/c2. Thus, we got everything abso-
lutely right except that K = 2, not 1. Not bad for such a simple model!
For historical reasons, this method is called dimensional analysis (long
ago, but not today, a quantity’s units were called its “dimensions”).
Now you practice. (After making a good effort, check the chapter’s end.)
Exercise C1X.2
When the core of a massive star exceeds about 1.4 solar masses near the end
of its life, reactions in its interior suddenly remove the very particles that have
been supporting it against its own gravitational field. What is left of the core
then falls basically freely inward from rest at a radius of about 10,000 km to
a final radius that is negligible in comparison. (This violent collapse usually
ignites a supernova explosion). How long does this collapse process take?
TWO-MINUTE PROBLEMS
C1T.1 According to the definition of “science” given in C1T.5 One can raise a quantity q to a power a when a has
this chapter, astrology is not a science. What does it lack? units. T or F?
A. A community of scholars devoted to its study
B. Agreement that models must be logically consistent C1T.6 The following formulas are supposed to describe
C. Use of reproducible experiments to test models the speed v of a sphere sinking in a thick fluid. C is a unit-
D. A grand theory embracing the discipline less constant, ρ is the fluid’s density in kg/m3, A is the
sphere’s cross-sectional area, m is its mass, and g is the
C1T.2 According to the definition of “science” given in this gravitational field strength in N/kg. Which could be right?
chapter, which of the following do you think are sciences? A. v = CAρg
Choose the letter of the first discipline on the list that you B. v = Cmg/ρA
think is not a science. (The answer is open to debate!) C. v = (Cmg/ρA)2
A. Geology D. v = (Cmg/ρA)1/2
B. Psychology E. None of these can be correct.
C. Economics
D. Anthropology C1T.7 The speed v of sound waves in a gas like air might
E. Political Science plausibly depend on the gas’s pressure P (which has units
F. Philosophy of N/m2), the gas’s density ρ (which has units of kg/m3)
T. All are sciences and its temperature T (which has units of K), and some
unitless constant C. Assuming that no other quantities are
C1T.3 Which of the following expressions gives the cor- relevant, which of the following formulas might possibly
rect units for the volt in terms of base SI units? correctly give the speed of sound in a gas?
A. 1 V = 1 kg·m2C–1s A. v = CPρT
B. 1 V = 1 kg·m2A–1s–3 B. v = CTP/ρ
C. 1 V = 1 kg·m·A–1s–1 C. v = CP/ρ ____
D. 1 V = 1 kg·m2s–2C–2 D. v = C____
P/ρ 
E. 1 V = 1 J/C E. v = Cρ/P 
F. Some other expression (specify).
F. v = C(P/ρ)2
T. None of these can be correct.
C1T.4 Assume that D and R have units of meters, T has
units of seconds, m and M have units of kilograms, v has
C1T.8 The two stars in a binary star system revolve around
units of meters per second, and g has units of m/s2. Which
each other with a certain period T. Which of the quantities
of the following equations has self-consistent units?
listed below is not likely to be a part of the formula for this
A. D = mR2
revolution period?
B. m = M[1 + R2]
A. m1, m2 (the masses of the stars in the system)
C. D = [1 – m/M]gT2
B. r (the distance between the binary stars)
D. g = mv2/R
C. ℏ (Planck’s constant, which is generally associated
E. D = v2/RT
with phenomena involving quantum mechanics)
F. None of these can be correct.
D. G (the universal gravitational constant)
HOMEWORK PROBLEMS
Basic Skills C1B.4 The speed of the earth in its orbit around the sun
is 18 km/s. Find this speed (a) in miles per hour and
C1B.1 If you text to a friend “I’ll be over in 0.50 ks,” how (b) in knots, where 1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour, and
many minutes will your friend wait? (Use unit operators.) 1 nautical mile = 1852 m. (Use unit operators.)
C1B.5 What is a month in seconds (approximately)?
C1B.2 What is the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight?
(One furlong = _ 18 mi = length of a medieval farm furrow, C1B.6 Water’s density is 1000 kg/m3. Use unit operators
and one fortnight = 14 days. Use unit operators.) to show that a cube of water 10 cm on a side has a mass of
1 kg, and 1 cm3 of water has a mass of 1 g. (This used to be
C1B.3 A light year (1 ly) is the distance that light travels in the definition of the kilogram, but the difficulty of precise-
one year. Find this distance in miles. (Use unit operators.) ly measuring volumes made this standard impractical.)
Homework Problems 15
C1B.7 A friend says that the range D of a projectile fired at a have different densities and thus masses m that don’t scale
speed v at an angle θ above the horizontal is D = v sin 2θ/g, simply with L. Experimentally, the period T of such a pen-
where g has units of m/s2. (a) Explain why this can’t be dulum does not depend on the angle of swing for small
right. (b) Propose a modification so that D still depends on oscillations. Find an approximate formula for the period T,
v and g but could be right. and estimate T for a 1-m rod. (Hints: You should not as-
sume, but rather show by dimensional analysis that the
C1B.8 Do problem C1T.6 and explain your answer. rod’s mass is irrelevant. The gravitational field strength g
has units of m/s2.)
C1B.9 Do problem C1T.7 and explain your answer.
C1M.8 The radius r of a hydrogen atom (which consists of a
Modeling proton and a comparatively lightweight electron) can only
depend on the (equal) magnitudes e of the proton’s and
C1M.1 Can “What is justice?” be investigated scientifically? the electron’s charge, the Coulomb constant 1/4πε0 that
If you think not, does this mean that “justice” does not e xist characterizes the strength of the electrostatic attraction
or is not worth thinking about? If you think so, can you between the proton and electron, the mass m of the orbit-
scientifically verify your belief? Defend your responses. ing electron, and (because quantum mechanics is likely
involved) Planck’s constant in the form h/2π = ℏ. (Since
C1M.2 The text describes that historically, physics became the proton remains essentially at rest, its mass turns out to
a “science” when the physics community accepted New- be irrelevant.)
ton’s mechanics as its “grand theory.” What do you think is (a) Assuming that r depends only on the stated quantities,
or was the corresponding grand theory that made biology use dimensional analysis and the information given
a science? Chemistry? Geology? Defend your responses. inside the front cover of the text to find a plausible for-
mula for the radius of a hydrogen atom.
C1M.3 As a fraction of the stick’s length, what is the length (b) Calculate a numerical estimate of the radius.
of a vertical stick’s shadow in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at (c) Explain why this is only an estimate.
noon on the summer solstice? (Saint Petersburg is 3230 km
almost due north from Alexandria.) C1M.9 Consider an object of mass m hanging from the end
of a spring whose other end is attached to a fixed point. The
C1M.4 Consider an object of mass m moving in a circle of object will oscillate vertically with some period T, which
radius r with a constant speed v. What is a possible for- might depend on the object’s mass, the spring’s stiffness
mula for the object’s acceleration a (in m/s2)? constant ks (in N/m), which expresses how much force the
spring exerts when it is stretched a certain distance, and
C1M.5 A planet’s “escape speed” is the speed ve which an the gravitational field strength g (in m/s2) at the earth’s
object must have at the planet’s surface to be able to escape surface (since the object is moving up and down in the
the planet’s gravitational embrace and coast to an infinite earth’s gravitational field). We find e xperimentally that the
distance. This speed depends on the planet’s mass M, its period does not depend on either the object’s maximum
radius R, and the universal gravitational constant G. Up to speed or how far it moves up and down.
an overall constant, what must the formula for ve be? (a) Up to a unitless constant, what is the formula for the
period in terms of ks, m, and g?
C1M.6 Imagine slicing a thick disk of radius R in half along (b) On the basis of your calculation, if the object oscillates
its diameter. If you stand the half-disk on its curved edge with a period of 1.0 s on the earth’s surface, what is its
and nudge it, it will rock back and forth. If the rocking is not period on the moon’s surface?
too extreme, the time T required for a complete back-and-
forth oscillation turns out to be nearly independent of the C1M.10 The critical density of the universe ρc is the density
angle through which the disk rocks. The only other things that the universe must have for the gravitational attrac-
that T might plausibly depend on are the disk’s radius R, tion between its parts to be strong enough to prevent it
its mass M, and the local gravitational field strength g (in from expanding forever. This density must depend on the
m/s2), since gravity is what is causing the rocking motion. Hubble constant H, which specifies the universe’s current
(If you think about it, the disk’s thickness is only relevant expansion rate (as a fractional expansion per unit time, so
in that a thicker disk has more mass than a thinner one, so its units are 1/s). It might also depend on the speed of light
we already have this covered if we consider dependence c, which in combination with H tells us the radius of the
on M.) Use dimensional analysis to find a reasonable for- universe we currently can receive light from, and thus how
mula for this rocking time up to a unitless constant. much of the universe might contribute to the attraction.
(a) What is a third quantity that plausibly appears in this
C1M.7 Consider various pendula, each consisting of a rod formula and why?
hanging in the earth’s gravitational field from a pivot at its (b) Up to a unitless constant, what is the formula for the
end and that is free to swing around that pivot. The rods universe’s critical density ρc?
have identical shapes, but different lengths L (and diam- (c) Ignoring the unitless constant, what is the critical den-
eters proportional to those lengths). The rods also might sity for our universe? (H = 2.28 × 10–18 s–1)
Derivations C1R.3 Suppose you are standing on a southeast-facing

beach on the Hawaiian island Kauai on a clear day. Can
C1D.1 In this problem, you will prove an important result you see the top of Mauna Kea on Hawaii (the Big Island)?
about the calculation of uncertainties. (Assume that the air between you and Mauna Kea is per-
(a) Let a and b be quantities with small errors δa and δb fectly transparent. You will have to look up some informa-
respectively. The error in f = ab is then tion on the Internet to solve this problem.)
δ f = (a + δ a)(b + δ b) − ab (C1.9) C1R.4 Suppose you are floating in a boat on the Bay of
Show that if δa << a and δb << b, then Bengal on a clear day. Can you see Mt. Everest from your
boat? (Assume that the air between you and Mt. Everest is
δ f δ a ___ δb perfectly transparent. You will have to look up some infor-
 __ ≈ ___
   +     (C1.10)
f a b mation on the Internet to solve this problem.)
Therefore, the fractional (and thus the percent) error in f
is approximately δa/a or δb/b, whichever is larger. (The C1R.5 Suppose we launch a projectile at an initial angle θ
statistical version of this argument that applies if we do above a flat horizontal surface. If there is no friction, the
not know the exact values of δa and δb but know they are projectile’s range D (the distance between the point where
distributed according to a bell curve makes the domina- it is fired and the point where it returns to the ground) can
tion of the larger ratio even more extreme.) only depend on θ, the projectile’s initial speed v0, its mass
(b) Repeat this calculation for f = a/b, and show that m, and the earth’s gravitational field strength g. Assume
although the δb/b term becomes negative in equation that the angle-dependence is a simple trigonometric func-
C1.10, the same conclusion applies. (Using pure alge- tion of θ or a multiple of θ, and that no unitless constants
bra is trickier here: you can use calculus if you prefer.) appear in the equation. Use dimensional analysis to
(c) An approximation we will use often in this course is “derive” a plausible form for this equation. Then, consider
that when an angle θ in radians is much less one, then how the trigonometric function must behave when θ = 0°
sin θ ≈ θ and tan θ ≈ θ. How large must θ be for these and θ = 90° in order to come up with a plausible guess for
approximations to be inaccurate by more than 1%? this formula.*
(d) Show that if f = sin θ and f = tan θ, then δf/f ≈ δθ/θ for
sufficiently small angles. C1R.6 Consider a compact “bob” of mass m connected to
the end of a rigid rod with length L and negligible mass.
The rod’s other end is connected to a pivot so that the
Rich-Context rod and bob can swing in a vertical plane in the earth’s
gravitational field (the rod and bob therefore form a rigid
C1R.1 (Practice with units.) Estimate the total mass of pendulum). Imagine that the bob is released from rest at a
the earth’s atmosphere. (There are a number of ways to position such that the rod makes an initial angle θ with the
do this, but one of the most accurate involves noting that vertical. The bob’s speed v as it passes through the lowest
atmospheric pressure is the force that the air exerts on a point in its trajectory can only depend on m, L, θ, and the
square meter of surface, and the force in newtons that the earth’s gravitational field strength g.
atmosphere exerts on a square meter of ground is equal to (a) Assume that the formula for v has the form
the weight mg of a column of air above that square meter, a b c
where m is the mass of the column, and g is the gravita- v =KmLgf(θ) (C1.11)
tional field strength in m/s2.) where K is a unitless constant and f(θ) is a unitless
function of the unitless variable θ. Use dimensional
C1R.2 Working in groups, make a list of at least ten ques- analysis to determine the exponents a, b, and c.
tions of practical importance in peoples’ lives that cannot (b) Because f(θ) is unitless, we cannot use dimensional analy-
be answered scientifically (at least at present). Discuss sis to determine it. Assuming that f(θ) is a simple trigono-
whether it might be possible in the future to address these metric function of θ (or a multiple of θ), consider how this
questions scientifically, or whether at least some of the function must behave at θ = 0° and θ = 180° to come up
questions cannot even in principle be addressed scientifi- with a plausible guess for this formula.*
cally according to the definition of “science” presented in
this chapter. If you believe that certain questions cannot be
addressed scientifically even in principle, is it worth study-
ing or thinking about such questions at all? If you b elieve *This method of examining extreme cases where you can
that all questions can be answered scientifically, then dis- intuit the right answer is called the method of extremes and
cuss how you would prove that assertion scientifically. is another very useful addition to your bag of tricks.)
Answers to Exercises 17
C1R.7 You are investigating what appears to be a tragic from the body as it roasted in the sunlight. The two others
accident on the surface of Mercury. Three people were said they had become separated from the third in the dark,
prospecting in a rover which broke down about 30 km east and did not want to wait because of the dawn approach-
of safety in the underground base of Hermes, which lies ing within minutes. The dead prospector’s suit electronics
roughly on Mercury’s equator. Dawn was approaching were mostly fried by the long Mercurian day, but forensics
within minutes, the survivors said, so the trio set out on was barely able to recover a bit of data and concluded that
foot to escape the coming sunrise (being caught by sunrise the suit failed 11.0 ± 0.5 h before the survivors arrived at
on Mercury will kill a person within minutes, even in the Hermes. On the basis of this information, you arrest the
best modern spacesuit). Two made it to Hermes just as the survivors (as they are preparing to depart again to work
sun rose there, but the desiccated remains of the third was the very lucrative vein of rare earth metals that they had
recovered (after nightfall 88 earth days later) not far from discovered) and charge them with murder. Why? (Hint:
the rover. That prospector’s suit was punctured in many Look on the Internet for information about Mercury, espe-
places, but that could have been because of gases escaping cially with regard to its rate of rotation.)
ANSWERS TO EXERCISES
( )
3 i
C1X.1 (See example C1.1.)   m 2   (kg)j (m)k
s = {T} = {G}i {M}j {R}k = _____
kg·s
C1X.2 The free-fall time T depends only on the star’s From this, we quickly
_______see that i = –1/2, j = i, m = –3i =
mass M, its initial radius R, and the universal gravitational 3/2, so T = KR3/GM . Setting K = 1 and putting in the
constant G. If we hypothesize an equation of the form numbers yields T on the order of 2 s, shockingly short for
T = KGIMJRk, then unit consistency requires that such a huge object.
C2 Particles and
Interactions
Chapter Overview
Section C2.1: The Principles of Modern Mechanics
A theory of mechanics is a model of how an object’s motion is affected by its interac-
tions with other objects. These principles express the essence of modern mechanics:
1. We can model any physical object as a set of interacting point-like particles.
2. A noninteracting particle moves at a constant speed in a straight line.
3. An interaction is a physical relationship between exactly two particles that, in the
absence of other interactions, changes the motion of each.
4. An interaction does this by transferring momentum from one to the other.
5. A macroscopic object consisting of many particles responds to external interac-
tions as if it were a single particle located at its center of mass.
The last principle follows from the previous four, as we will see in chapter C4.
Section C2.2: Describing an Object’s Motion

We can quantify an object’s “motion” by describing its velocity v W, which expresses
both an object’s speed (defined to be │ds/dt│ ≡   
  lim │∆s/∆t│, where ∆s is the distance
∆t 0
traveled in time ∆t) and its direction of motion. W
Section C2.3: Vector Operations

Velocity is an example of a vector quantity that has both a magnitude and a direction.
We can represent such quantities using arrows whose length is proportional to the
vector’s magnitude. We use the “arrow-over” notation (e.g., u W) to distinguish symbols
representing vectors from symbols representing ordinary numbers. I always use the nota-
tion │u
W│ to represent the magnitude of the vector u , which is an ordinary number.
W
We can construct an arrow representing the vector sum of two arbitrary arrows u W
and w
by placing the tail of w
W at the tip of u
W ; the sum is then an arrow from the tail of u
W W
to the tip of w . We define a vector’s negative to be an arrow with the same magni-
W
tude (length) but opposite direction. We can subtract w W from u
W by adding – w
W. Finally,
multiplying u by a number b yields a vector bu
W W whose magnitude is │b││u W│ and whose
direction is either the same as or opposite to u depending on the sign of b.
W
Section C2.4: Momentum and Impulse

We define an object’s mass m so that the (newtonian) momentum pW it contains when
moving with velocity vW is
W = mv
p W (C2.2)
• Purpose: This equation expresses the total newtonian momentum p W that an

object contains in terms of that object’s velocity v
W and mass m.
• Limitations: This equation is an approximation that is good for objects whose
speeds are much smaller than that of light. (To preserve the momentum-transfer
principle at higher speeds, we have to redefine what we mean by “velocity.”)
18
The net change in an object’s momentum during an interval of time is the vector sum
of impulses (momentum transfers) delivered by all interactions during that interval:
W = [∆p
∆p W]A + [∆p
W]B + ⋯ (C2.3)
• Purpose: This equation links the net change ∆p

W (during a given time interval)
in the momentum that an object contains to the impulses [∆ pW ]A, [∆ pW ]B, … that
interactions A, B, … deliver during that interval.
• Limitations: This is a core formula in the momentum-transfer model, and thus
applies in all areas of physics.
Section C2.5: Force and Weight

The force an interaction exerts on an object is the rate at which it delivers momentum:
[∆p
W]A _____[dp
W]A
F   lim _____
WA ≡   
    ≡     (C2.5)
∆tW0 ∆t dt
• Purpose: This equation defines the force F W
A that interaction A exerts on an
object, where [∆p
W]A is the impulse that the interaction delivers to the object
during a sufficiently short time interval ∆t.
• Limitations: For the ratio [∆pW]A/∆t to accurately express the rate of momen-
tum flow, ∆t must be small enough that neither the direction nor the magni-
WA changes significantly during the interval.
tude of F
• Note: The SI unit of force is the newton, where 1 N = 1 kg·m/s2.
In physics, mass and weight are distinct concepts. Mass is an ordinary number (in
kilograms) expressing an object’s reluctance to change its velocity when receiving a
given impulse. An object’s weight FW
g is the gravitational force vector (in newtons) an
object experiences at a certain point in space. Experimentally, though, we find that
W
g = mg
F W (C2.6)
• Purpose: This equation describes the relationship between an object’s mass

m and its weight F W
g at a given point in space near a massive object: g
W is the Macroscopic Interactions
gravitational field vector at that point in space.
• Limitations: This equation technically is an approximation that is good when Gravitational
an object is moving much slower than the speed of light. Long-Range
• Notes: Near the earth’s surface, g W points toward the earth’s center and has a Electrostatic
Interactions
magnitude │gW│ = 9.8 N/kg = 9.8 m/s2. Magnetic
Compression
Section C2.6: Interaction Categories Contact
Tension
This section discusses the evidence for the existence of contact interactions between Interactions
two macroscopic objects in physical contact and contrasts these with long-range in- Friction
teractions that can act between separated objects. Figure C2.8 shows a useful classi-
fication scheme for macroscopic interactions (different categories are more helpful for Figure C2.8
classifying interactions between elementary particles in the Standard Model). A diagram that illustrates a useful
way of categorizing macroscopic
Section C2.7: Momentum Transfer interactions.
This section discusses experimental evidence supporting the momentum transfer
principle of mechanics.
19
20 Chapter C2 Particles and Interactions
C2.1 The Principles of Modern Mechanics
Mechanics is the area of physics that explores how physical interactions

between objects affect their motion. This is of daily concern to every person:
no one can long survive in the world without constructing mental models
about how objects move and interact. But the commonsense models people
develop from daily life, though effective in specific limited circumstances,
tend to be narrow in scope and mutually (even self-) contradictory. Physicists
have worked for centuries to sift and combine these models into a vision that
is as broad as possible while remaining self-consistent. The contemporary
picture of mechanics presented in this chapter is a big and often counterintui-
tive step away from commonsense models, but it has its own bold simplicity
and has proved to be both extremely powerful and broadly applicable.
The principles of modern The following four principles express the model’s essence:
mechanics
1. We can model any object as a set of interacting point-like particles.
2. A noninteracting particle moves at a constant speed in a straight line.
3. An interaction is a physical relationship between exactly two particles
that, in the absence of other interactions, changes the motion of each.
4. An interaction does this by transferring something called momentum
from one particle to the other.
These four principles mostly restate Isaac Newton’s 1687 model of mechan-
ics in modern language that is consistent with (and inspired by) the Standard
Model mentioned in chapter C1. In this chapter, we will take a preliminary
look at each of these principles in turn, so we can better understand the out-
lines of this model. A careful look is necessary, because this model’s elegant
two-particle picture seems almost hopelessly abstracted from the complex
universe of our daily experience. Because of this, our intuition can balk at
what might seem like absurd implications.
All matter is constructed of For example, consider the first statement. It seems at least a big leap (if
point-like particles not downright silly) to imagine that something as solid and substantial as
(say) a rock is really a bunch of interacting point-like particles, something more
like a swarm of tiny bees. Yet this is one of the core claims of the Standard
Model, which states that all ordinary matter* is constructed of elementary
particles that have no known internal structure or volume.
You may know that atoms are constructed of protons, neutrons, and elec-
trons. The electron is an elementary particle, and is the most important example
of a particle category that the Standard Model calls leptons. The proton, on the
other hand, is not an elementary particle, but rather is constructed of elementary
particles that the Standard Model calls quarks: specifically, two “up” quarks
and a “down” quark. Likewise, a neutron consists of two “down” quarks and
an “up” quark. The atom has a well-defined volume (in spite of being con-
structed of particles with no volume) because the interactions between the
atom’s quarks and leptons (in combination with the rules of quantum mechan-
ics) arrange these particles into structures that resist being merged with similar
structures in the same volume of space. A rock’s solidity thus actually expresses
the strength of the interactions that hold these particles in relatively fixed and
spatially separated structures, which are depicted in figure C2.1.
The Standard Model describes the character of the fundamental interac-
tions between these elementary quarks and leptons in great depth (something
outlined in more detail in appendix CA and which we will also study more
*The “ordinary matter” described by the Standard Model includes exotic forms of
matter that only exist briefly in particle accelerator experiments, but does not include
either “dark matter” or “dark energy,” which (together) comprise more than 95% of
the universe but about which we know almost nothing else.
C2.2 Describing an Object’s Motion 21
2m
2 × 10-15 m < 10-18 m

2 × 10-16 m
2 × 10-10 m
Atoms Protons, neutrons, Quarks exchanging (Limits of the

and electrons gluons Standard Model)
Macroscopic object Figure C2.1
An overview of the structure of matter as imagined by the Standard Model of
particle physics.
in unit Q). But trying to understand the behavior of macroscopic objects

(that is, anything larger than an atom) in terms of the interactions between
quarks and leptons is like trying to infer the behavior of an ecosystem from
the rules that describe possible interactions between pairs of organisms: it
might be possible in principle, but is likely to be very difficult. Fortunately,
physics is much simpler than ecosystem analysis in this regard:
5. Any macroscopic object responds to external interactions as if it were a We can model a macroscopic
single particle located at its center of mass. object as if it were a particle!
This principle means that we can completely ignore the countless internal
interactions between an object’s elementary particles, and instead treat the
entire object as if it were itself just a simple point-like particle!
This statement is not really an independent principle: it follows from
four principles already stated. But because I will postpone the proof (and
the precise definitions of “center of mass” and “external interaction”) until
chapter C4, we will simply treat it here as a fifth principle of modern mechan-
ics. This principle is, however, extremely valuable: it is really what makes the
physics of macroscopic objects practical at all.
For the purposes of this chapter, the only thing we need to know about
an object’s “center of mass” is that it is a well-defined mathematical point
that we can calculate in principle, and that the center of mass of a symmetri-
cal object (such as a spherical ball) is located at the object’s geometric center.
C2.2 Describing an Object’s Motion
Interpreting the second and third principles in the preceding list requires that
we know how to quantitatively describe a particle’s “motion.” The first step in
such a description is to carefully define what we mean by a particle’s velocity.
You probably already know that an object’s speed expresses the rate at The definition of speed
which the object (or more technically, its center of mass) is moving through
space. Mathematically, an object’s speed at a given instant of time is the tiny
distance ∆s the object travels during a tiny time interval divided by that
interval’s duration ∆t, evaluated in the limit that ∆t goes to zero:
speed ≡    | | | |
∆tW0 ∆t
  ds 
  ∆s  ≡ ___
  lim ___
dt
(C2.1)
(The triple equality means “is defined to be,” and the absolute value reminds
us that a speed is defined to be a positive number.) Note that physicists rarely
perform the limit-taking process when making practical measurements: the
v = 65 mi/h east
(a) speed = 65 mi/h (b) (c) v = 35 mi/h east
Figure C2.2
(a) A car’s speed is a simple number. (b) We can represent the car’s velocity by an arrow that also specifies the car’s direction
of motion and (c) whose length is proportional to the car’s speed.
simple ratio ∆s/∆t is a satisfactory approximation for the object’s speed,

as long as ∆t is sufficiently short so that the object’s speed and direction
of motion do not change significantly during the interval. Indeed, a mod-
ern electronic car speedometer simply measures the time required for the
car’s wheel to turn once and displays a value equal to the wheel’s circumfer-
ence divided by that interval (which at highway speeds is a reasonably short
0.06 s or so).
The definition of velocity Velocity vW extends the concept of an object’s speed by also specifying
the object’s direction of motion. For example, a car’s speed at a given instant
of time might be 65 mi/h, but its velocity at that time might be 65 mi/h east.
As figure C2.2 illustrates, we can visually represent an object’s velocity at
an instant by an arrow whose length is proportional to the object’s speed
and whose direction indicates the object’s direction of motion at that instant.
(Note that for a rigid object like a car, we don’t have to know the precise posi-
tion of its center of mass to measure its velocity. All points on a nonrotating
rigid object move together with the same speed and direction, so the velocity
of any point on such an object is the same as that of its center of mass.)
Describing an object’s “motion” therefore means specifying the v elocity of
the object’s center of mass as a function of time. An object’s motion “changes”
if there is a change in the numerical value of its center-of-mass velocity or its
direction (or both).
Newton’s first law The second principle of modern mechanics asserts that “a noninteracting
particle moves in a straight line at a constant speed,” meaning that both the
numerical value and the direction of its velocity are constant. This statement,
which physicists also call Newton’s first law, boldly asserts that motion at
a constant velocity is entirely natural and requires no explanation. This was
a crazy statement when Newton first proposed it in 1687 because most of
Newton’s predecessors thought (and taught) that only rest was natural, and
that a moving object such as a flying arrow required some kind of continuing
“push” to keep it moving (even though the source of this “push” remained
elusive). Newton instead declared that constant-velocity motion is totally
natural: what requires explanation is rather the changes in the arrow’s motion
(for example, why the arrow’s trajectory bends toward the ground).
This may seem like a straightforward idea to you, but research into
human cognition about physics conclusively shows that almost everyone’s
initial commonsense understanding of motion sides with Newton’s prede-
cessors, not with Newton. While you may already have accepted the some-
what counterintuitive idea that constant-velocity motion is natural, I can
assure you that you will find that most people who are learning physics will
persist (sometimes tenaciously) in believing that only being at rest is natural.
The third and fourth principles of modern mechanics state that an inter-
action between two particles changes the motion (that is, the velocity) of each
by transferring something called momentum. To fully understand the quanti-
tative implications of these ideas, we first need to delve more deeply into the
mathematics of arrow-like quantities such as velocity.
C2.3 Vector Operations 23
C2.3 Vector Operations
“Velocity” is an example of a quantity mathematicians call a vector (from a

Latin root meaning “to carry”). “Momentum” is another such quantity. So,
in order to understand the third and fourth principles of modern mechanics,
we must learn something about how to calculate with vectors.
An arbitrary vector quantity u W has both an (always nonnegative) numer- Vectors and vector notation
ical magnitude │u W│ AND a direction, in contrast to an ordinary number,
which has a numerical value but no direction. In this text, a symbol with a
little arrow over it (for example, u W or v
W) will always refer to a vector quantity,
and a symbol without an arrow (for example, ∆t or m) will always refer to an
ordinary number. Since a vector’s magnitude is an ordinary number, people
often use the same letter with and without the arrow to represent a vector
and its magnitude, respectively (for example, v W and v for an object’s veloc-
ity and its speed, respectively). However, in one-dimensional contexts, peo-
ple often also use a simple letter to refer to a vector’s component in a certain
direction (a concept I will define in chapter C3). Since a vector magnitude is
strictly nonnegative but a vector component can be negative, this notation
can be confusing. In this book, I will (unless I clearly state otherwise) reliably
use the notation │u W│ for the magnitude of a vector u and a different notation
W
(to be defined in chapter C3) for a signed component of u W. Thus, the symbol
for velocity is always v W, the symbol for speed is │v W│, and a bare v does not
refer to anything unless I explicitly specify otherwise.
To talk about changes in a vector quantity, we must define what we mean Vector addition
by “adding” and “subtracting” vectors. We can express the core geomet-
ric meaning of these operations by visually representing each vector by an
arrow whose direction specifies the vector’s direction and whose length is
proportional to the vector’s magnitude. In this representation, we construct
the arrow corresponding to the vector sum u W + w
W of two abstract vectors u W
and w W by drawing the arrows representing u W and w W in sequence so that the
tip of uW touches the tail of wW; the sum is then an arrow going from the tail of
W to the tip of w
u (see figure C2.3a).
W
We define the negative -u W of a vector arrow u to be an arrow with the
W The negative of a vector
same length but the opposite direction. Figure C2.3b shows that the sum of
such arrows is the zero vector (an arrow with zero length and undefined
direction), just as the sum of an ordinary number and its negative yields zero.
Just as with ordinary numbers, we define subtracting w from u
W to be the
W Vector subtraction
same as adding the negative of w : u
W W - w
W ≡ uW + (-wW), as shown in figure C2.3c.
When doing these constructions, note that we are free to move a vector We are free to move vectors
arrow around (or place a copy of the vector arrow somewhere else) as long as around
the moved arrow or copy has the same direction and length as the original. A
vector in itself does not have a “location,” only a direction and a magnitude.
Two arrows that have the same direction and length therefore both represent
the same underlying vector, no matter where we might place them.
w -w
u u -u u-w≡
u + (-w) u
u+w
(a) (b) (c)
Figure C2.3
(a) The sum of vector arrows u
and w
W . (b) The sum of an arrow u
W and its negative -u
W W is an arrow with zero length.
(c) We subtract a vector by adding its negative.
Multiplying a vector by an Finally, we can multiply a vector by a number. Abstractly, if u W is a vec-

ordinary number tor and b is an ordinary number, then we define their product bu W to be a vec-
tor which has a magnitude │b u W│ ≡ │b││u
W│ and which points in either the same
direction as u (if b is positive) or the opposite direction (if b is negative). So
W
if we represent u W by an arrow, then multiplying it by a number b simply
“stretches” the arrow by a factor of │b│ and also reverses it if b is negative. The
W and its magnitude │b u
units of both the vector bu W│ are equal to the product of
the units of u
W and those of b. Note that this operation is consistent with the
operation of negation: negating a vector is the same as multiplying it by –1.
Note also that dividing a vector by b is the same as multiplying it by 1/b.
Vectors play such an important role in physics that I will devote an entire
chapter (C3) to developing techniques for numerically performing these oper-
ations. However, understanding the geometric meaning of these operations is
a crucial first step and is sufficient for now.
The following exercises provide some practice with these operations.
s
Exercise C2X.1
Given the arrows r W and s W to the left, construct in the space to the left the sum
arrow r W + s W and the difference arrows r W - s W and s W - r W (using a ruler might
r
help). Do the two differences yield the same arrow?
Exercise C2X.2
Is vector addition commutative? That is, is u
+ w
W the same as w
W + u
W ? Circle
W
w one: Yes No. Defend your answer by constructing the sum w W + u
W for the
vectors u
W and w
W shown to the left and comparing your result with the arrow
u W shown. (Do your construction to the right and below the drawing.)
W + w
u u+w
C2.4 Momentum and Impulse
We are finally in a position to define “momentum.” We find empirically that

the amount of momentum an object contains at a given instant of time is pro-
portional to the object’s velocity vector at that instant:
The definition of a moving

W ≡ mvW
p (C2.2)
object’s momentum
• Purpose: This equation expresses the total newtonian momentum p W
that an object contains in terms of that object’s velocity v
W and mass m.
• Limitations: This equation is an approximation that is good for objects
whose speeds are much smaller than that of light. To preserve the
momentum-transfer principle at higher speeds, we have to redefine
what we mean by “velocity” in this equation (see unit R).
Since (as we will shortly see) an object’s mass m is a positive ordinary number
by definition, an object’s momentum vector p W at a given time always points
in the same direction as the object’s velocity (that is, in the direction the object
is moving) and has a numerical magnitude of │p W│= m│vW│. Note that since
velocity and speed have the same SI units of m/s, and the SI unit of mass is
the kilogram (kg), the SI units of momentum are kg·m/s.
C2.4 Momentum and Impulse 25
We could take p W ≡ mvW as being the definition of momentum, but modern This equation actually defines
physics instead actually defines momentum as “the vector quantity associated an object’s mass
with a particle’s motion that an interaction transfers” and interprets p W ≡ mvW
as defining an object’s mass (as the constant of proportionality between the
object’s velocity and its momentum). An object’s mass thus expresses how
reluctant it is to change velocity when it accepts a given momentum transfer.
Problem C2D.1 presents a formal and operational definition of mass consis-
tent with this approach.
Empirically, however, we find that a macroscopic object’s mass defined
this way is almost exactly proportional to the number of protons and neu-
trons it contains (within about ±0.2%). So from a practical viewpoint, we can
think of an object’s mass as expressing how much “stuff” it contains.
Equation C2.2 then expresses how much momentum an object contains
when it is moving at a given velocity. However, “momentum” is more than
simply something an object contains. Our fourth principle of modern mechan-
ics also states that momentum is something an interaction can transfer.
An analogy might help us understand the broader meaning of “momen- A financial analogy
tum.” Momentum in the abstract is analogous to the concept of “money.” The
momentum a given object contains at a given time is analogous to the balance in a
given person’s bank account at a given time. Two peoples’ bank accounts “inter-
act” if one person sends a payment order to the other: in such an interaction, the
payment amount is added to one person’s account balance and subtracted from
the other’s. This process “transfers money” from one account to the other.
This analogy makes it clear that the momentum p W = mv
W that an object
contains and the momentum that it receives from various interactions are
related but still distinct concepts, just as an account balance and a payment
order are distinct concepts that nonetheless both fall into the general category
of representing “money.” To help keep this straight, we will give momentum
transfers a distinct name and symbol. Physicists call the amount of momen-
tum that an object receives during an interaction the impulse delivered by that
interaction. In this text, I will use the notation [∆p W]A to represent the impulse The bracket notation [ ]A
that interaction A delivers to an object during a specified time interval. Read means “the contribution that
the brackets [ ]A in this notation to mean “the contribution that interaction A interaction A makes to …”
makes to” whatever the brackets enclose. This is very important, as I will use
this bracket notation in the future to represent analogous transfers of energy
and angular momentum.
Now, just as the net change in an account’s balance during a given month
is equal to the numerical sum of withdrawals and deposits, the net change
Δp
W = pWfinal − p
Winitial (during a given interval) in the momentum that a given
object contains is the (vector) sum of all the impulses the object has received
during that time interval:
An object’s change in momen-

∆pW = [∆p
W ]A + [∆p
W ]B + ⋯ (C2.3) tum is the vector sum of the
impulses it receives
• Purpose: This equation links the net change ∆p W (during a given time
interval) in the momentum that an object contains to the impulses [∆pW]A,
[∆p
W]B, … that interactions A, B, … deliver during that interval.
• Limitations: This is a core formula in the momentum-transfer model,
and thus applies in all areas of physics.
This net change must be a vector sum because momentum is a vector quantity.
Of course, just because the money analogy suggests this formula does not
make it true. The question is, does this model match what we really observe?
3 p3.5 4
p4.5 5
p2.5 ∆p3 ∆p4

2
p5.5
p3.5 ∆p5 6
p1.5
1
p6.5
Figure C2.4
A thrown ball interacts gravitationally with the earth alone and receives from that interaction the same con-
stant downward impulse during equal successive time intervals. Credit: M. Oldstone-Moore and T. Moore.
C2.5 Force and Weight
Figure C2.4 shows a time-lapse photograph of a thrown ball made by taking

a movie of the ball’s motion and merging selected movie frames into a single
photograph. The successive ball images show the ball’s positions at instants
0.10 s apart. Now, an arrow drawn between two successive images (say, the
ones marked 2 and 3) points in the direction that the ball moves during the
intervening interval and has a length │∆s│ = │v W│∆t that is proportional to
the ball’s speed, so such an arrow can represent the ball’s velocity v W during
that interval. Since the ball’s mass m is fixed, such an arrow can also represent
the ball’s momentum p W = m v
W. Such an arrow technically most closely approx-
imates the ball’s velocity (and thus its momentum) at the interval’s midpoint,
so the colored arrow labeled p W 2.5 in figure C2.4 most accurately represents the
ball’s momentum at an instant halfway between the instants where the ball is
at positions 2 and 3, respectively. We can interpret p W 3.5, p
W4.5, … similarly.
Now, note that the ball’s velocity is not constant. The third principle of
our mechanics model thus implies that the ball must be interacting with
something else. What is causing the ball to follow a curved path? You know
the answer: the ball is interacting gravitationally with the earth.
According to the fourth principle, this interaction transfers some momen-
tum to the ball during a given time interval. We can determine how much
by comparing the ball’s initial and final momenta. The dashed arrow labeled
W3.5 on figure C2.4 is simply a moved copy of the colored arrow with the same
p
label. You can see from the way I have drawn the various arrows that

p
W2.5 + ∆p W 3.5 ⇒ ∆p
W3 = p W 3.5 - p
W3 = p W 2.5 (C2.4)
so the black arrow labeled ∆p W3 represents the change in the ball’s momentum
during the 0.10-s interval between instants t2.5 and t3.5 (which is thus centered
on the instant t3). Similarly, ∆p
W4, ∆p
W5, … represent the same for later intervals.
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strongly—to put it mildly—all attempts to penetrate into their
strongholds. There can be little doubt that at this period they had
been contemplating for a long time an invasion of Egypt, and were
only waiting for a suitable opportunity to occur of putting it into
execution. In the circumstances, they naturally did not want
Europeans to enter their country for fear that they should get to know
too much. Moreover their fanaticism against Europeans had been
considerably augmented by the advance of the French into their
country from the south.
Even now most people seem hardly to realise the real character
of the Senussia; for one constantly hears them alluded to as a “tribe”
or merely as a set of unusually devout Moslems, who have chosen
to take up their abode in the most inaccessible parts of Africa, in
order to devote themselves to their religious life, without fear of
interruption from outsiders. The fact is, that they are in reality
dervishes, whose character, at that time at any rate, was of a most
uncompromising nature towards all non-Mohammedans and was
especially hostile towards Europeans, particularly those occupying
any Moslem territories. Moreover they were not confined only to the
Libyan Desert, but formed one of the most powerful of the dervish
orders, with followers spread throughout practically the whole
Moslem world from Sumatra to Morocco.
As I expected to come a good deal in contact with them in the
Libyan Desert, after leaving the Algerian Sahara, I spent a
considerable time in the public libraries of Algeria and Tunis, in
collecting such information as was available on the Senussia and
other dervishes of North Africa.
For the benefit of those unacquainted with the subject it may be
as well to explain the nature of these dervish orders. They resemble
in some ways the monastic communities of Christianity, and are
usually organised on much the same lines. Their zawias, or
monasteries, vary in size from unpretentious buildings, little better
than mud huts, to huge establishments, which in size and
architecture favourably compare with the finest institutions of their
kind in Europe.
Each dervish order has its own peculiar ritual. Many of them are
entirely non-political and of a purely religious character; but there are
others, such for instance as the notorious Rahmania and Senussia,
who are of a strongly political character, usually hostile to
Europeans. Frequently, however, their influence is not apparent, as
they keep discreetly in the background; but it has been repeatedly
shown that it has been intriguing sects such as these, who have
been at the bottom of the numerous risings and difficulties that
Europeans have had to contend with in dealing with their Moslem
subjects.
Other political orders—such as the Tijania—are actually
favourable towards Europeans; while others again lend their support
to some particular branch of the community, acting for instance, as in
the case of the Ziania, as protectors to travellers or, as the Kerzazia
do, supporting the dwellers in the oases against the attacks of the
bedawin who surround them, and so forth.
As these dervish orders are largely dependant upon the refar, or
tribute, that they exact from their followers, for their support, with few
exceptions, each sect does its utmost to increase the number of its
adherents and to prevent them from joining any other order. This
naturally leads to a considerable rivalry between them, and when
two of them pursue an exactly opposite policy—as for instance in the
case of the Tijania and the Senussia—this rivalry develops into a
deadly feud. It is the impossibility of inducing rival dervishes to
combine, more perhaps than anything else, that makes that wild
dream of Pan-islam, by which all Mohammedans are to unite to get
rid of their European rulers, such a hopelessly impossible scheme.
A very large proportion of the Moslem natives of North Africa
belong to one, or more, of these orders. But it is seldom that a native
can be found to discuss at all freely the particular one to which he
belongs. A knowledge, however, of them and of the peculiarities by
which the followers of each sect can be identified, is most useful.
The information that I picked up on this subject before going to Libya
I found of the greatest possible value, as it often enabled me to
gauge the probable attitude towards me of the men with whom I
came in contact, and even to put a spoke in their wheel, before they
even realised that I had any ground for suspicion.
On leaving Tunis, I went on to Egypt, where, before actually
setting out for the desert, I spent some time in Cairo, putting the
finishing touches to my equipment and picking up what information I
could about the part into which I was going. It is extraordinary how
many of my informants regarded the desert as “a land of romance.”
No doubt in many cases distance lends enchantment to the view,
and covers it with a certain amount of glamour; but a very slight
experience of these arid wastes is calculated completely to shatter
the spell. Romance is merely the degenerate offspring of imagination
and ignorance. There can be few parts of the world where one is so
much up against hard cold facts as one is in the desert.
On the whole, the information that I was able to collect was of a
very unsatisfactory character. I could learn practically nothing at all
definite about the desert—at least nothing that seemed to be
reliable, except that the dunes of the interior of the desert were quite
impassable.
But I soon found out that though I was learning nothing, other
people were. The truth of the local saying that “you can’t keep
anything quiet in Egypt” was several times forced upon me in rather
startling ways. Most of the news that natives learn probably leaks out
through the reckless way in which some Europeans talk in the
presence of their English-speaking servants. But even allowing for
careless conversation of this kind, it is astonishing how quickly news
sometimes travels. This rapid transmission of secret news is a well-
known thing in North Africa, and one that has always to be reckoned
with. In Algeria they call it the “arab telegraph,” and many
extraordinary cases of it are recorded.
As a result of my enquiries I was able to draw up a sort of
programme for my work in the desert, the main objects in which were
as follows:—
(1) To cross that field of impassable dunes.
(2) If I succeeded in doing so, to cross the desert from north-east to
south-west.
(3) Failing the latter scheme, to survey as much as possible of other
unknown parts of the desert.
(4) To collect as much information as possible from the natives about
the unknown portions of the desert that I was unable to visit
myself.
Before leaving Cairo, I engaged two servants. My knowledge of
Arabic at that time was scanty, and what there was of it was of the
Algerian variety—a vile patois that is almost a different language to
that spoken in the desert—an interpreter was consequently almost a
necessity. I took one—Khalil Salah Gaber by name—from a man
who was just leaving the country. He was loud in his praises of
Khalil, stating that he was an extremely good interpreter and “very
tactful.”
Since then I have always been distinctly suspicious of people who
are noted for their tact—there are so many degrees of it. Tactful,
diplomatic, tricky, dishonest, criminal, all express different shades of
the same quality, and Khalil’s tact turned out to be of the most
superlative character!
I also engaged a man called Dahab Suleyman Gindi as cook.
Dahab—unlike Khalil, who was a fellah or one of the Egyptian
peasants—was a Berberine, the race from which the best native
servants are drawn. He was a small, elderly, rather feeble-looking
man with an honest straightforward appearance, who not only turned
out to be a very fair cook, but who also made himself useful at times
as an interpreter, as he knew a certain amount of English.
After my preparations were completed, I stayed on for a while to
see something of the sights of Cairo. Its cosmopolitan all-nation
crowd made it an interesting enough place for a short stay. But after
one had spent a little time there, and done all the usual sights, dirty,
noisy Cairo and the other tourist resorts began to pall upon one.
After all, they are only a sort of popular edition of the country,
published by Thomas Cook and Son. Beyond lay the real Egypt and
desert, a land where afrits, ghuls, genii and all the other creatures of
the native superstitions are matters of everyday occurrence; where
lost oases and enchanted cities lie in the desert sands, where the
natives are still unspoiled by contact with Europeans, and where
most of the men are pleasing, and, though the prospect is vile, that
could not destroy the attraction that lay in the fact that about a million
square miles of it were quite unknown, and waiting to be explored.
Before I had been very long in Cairo, I had had enough of it—it
was so much like an Earl’s Court exhibition—and at the end of my
stay, I cleared out for the desert with a feeling of relief.
The train for Kharga Oasis left Cairo at 8 p.m. After a long dusty
journey I found myself deposited at the terminus in the Nile Valley of
the little narrow gauge railway that runs across the desert for some
hundred miles to Kharga Oasis.
There is a proper station at this junction now, but at that time, in
1909, the line had only been recently opened, and the junction
consisted merely of a siding, a ramshackle little wooden hut for the
station-master, and a truly appalling stink of dead dog, the last being
due to the fact that owing to an attack of rabies in the district, the
authorities had been laying down poisoned meat to destroy the
pariah dogs of the neighbourhood, who all seemed to have chosen
the vicinity of the station as the spot on which to spend their last
moments.
Having shot out my baggage at the side of the permanent way,
the train disappeared into the distance and left me with about half a
ton of kit to get up to Qara, the base of the oasis railway, where I had
been told I could get put up. After a delay of nearly an hour, during
which time, as it was bitterly cold, I began to feel the truth of the
native saying that “all travel is a foretaste of hell,” some trollies put in
an appearance. Moslems, it may be mentioned, believe that there
are seven hells, each worse than the last—and they say they are all
feminine!
As soon as the trollies had been loaded up, a start was made for
Qara, some five miles away, where I spent the next few days, while
collecting the camels for my caravan.
To assist me in buying the beasts, I engaged a local Arab, known
as Sheykh Suleyman Awad, a grim, grizzled old scoundrel of whom I
saw a good deal later on. In his youth he had had a great reputation
as a gada—a term corresponding pretty closely to our “sportsman,”
and much coveted by the younger bedawin.
He had gained this reputation in a manner rather characteristic of
these Arabs. Once, when a young man, he was having an altercation
with a couple of fellahin, who after showering other terms of abuse
upon him, finally wound up by calling him a “woman.” An insult such
as this from a couple of mere fellahin, a race much despised by the
Arabs, was too much altogether for Suleyman, who promptly shot
them both. It was a neat little repartee, but Suleyman had to do time
for it.
The bedawin in that part of Egypt are semi-sedentary, living
encamped in the Nile Valley on the edge of the cultivation. Most of
them live in tents woven of thick camel and goat hair, others in huts
of busa—dried stalks of maize, etc.—a few of the more wealthy
Arabs have houses, built of the usual mud bricks, and own small
areas of land which they cultivate. At certain seasons of the year,
they migrate into the oases, returning again to their camping places
in the Nile Valley in the spring, to avoid the camel fly that puts in its
appearance in the oases at that season, and is capable of causing
nearly as much mortality among the camels as the tsetse fly does
among horses in other parts of Africa.
After spending a day or two trying to buy camels round Qara, I at
length secured five first-rate beasts in the market at Berdis.
Each Arab tribe has its own camel brand or wasm, the origins of
which are lost in the mists of antiquity. Some of these marks,
however, are identical in shape with the letters of the old Libyan
alphabet of North Africa, and with its near relation the Tifinagh, or
alphabet of the modern Tawareks, and it is possible that there may
be some connection between them.
The camels I bought at Berdis came from the Sudan. They were
large fawn-coloured beasts with a fairly smooth coat, and all showed
the same brand—a vertical line on the near side of the head by the
nostril, and a similar line in the bend of the neck. They belonged, I
believe, to the Ababda tribe.
Sheykh Suleyman eventually produced a decent-looking camel
from somewhere, which I bought, and that, with the five I had
procured from Berdis, constituted my whole caravan—and an
excellent lot of beasts they were.
I engaged a couple of drivers to look after them—Musa, a young
fellow of about eighteen years of age, and a little jet-black Sudani,
called Abd er Rahman Musa Said, who turned out to be a first-rate
man, and stayed with me the whole time I spent in the desert. Both
of these men belonged to Sheykh Suleyman’s tribe.
The choice of a guide is a serious question, as the success or
otherwise of an expedition depends very largely upon him, and I
found considerable difficulty in finding a suitable man. I nearly
engaged one who applied, as he seemed to be the only one of the
candidates who knew anything at all about the desert beyond the
Egyptian frontier. But Nimr—Sheykh Suleyman’s brother—sent me
word by Abd er Rahman, that he was not to be relied on as he
“followed the Sheykh”—the usual way among natives of describing a
man who was a member of the Senussia, and as he refused a
cigarette I offered him, I declined to employ him. Smoking, it may be
noticed is forbidden to the followers of Sheykh Senussi, and the offer
of a cigarette is consequently a useful—though not always infallible
—test of membership of this fanatical fraternity.
My suspicions were confirmed on the following morning, when this
man came in to hear my answer to his application. The camel he
rode was branded on the neck with the wasm of the Senussia—a
kind of conventionalised form of the Arabic word “Allah” ( )—a
damning piece of evidence showing not only that he belonged to the
sect, but that his mount was supplied by the Senussia itself. He was
probably one of their agents.
I was beginning to despair of finding a guide, when I received a
telegram from the mudir (native governor) of Assiut, to whom I had
applied for a reliable man, saying that he had got one for me, and
asking whether I wished to see him.
The man arrived the next day. I took a fancy to him at once, which
even his many peccadilloes never quite destroyed. His appearance
was distinctly in his favour. He was a big man, nearly six feet high,
which is very tall indeed for an Arab. He looked about sixty years old,
and carried himself with that “grand air” which so many of the
bedawin show, and which goes so well with the flowing robes of the
East. Unlike most bedawin he was spotlessly clean.
His name he said was Qway Hassan Qway. It is quite impossible
to convey an accurate idea of the pronunciation of Arabic names by
mere European systems of writing, but his first name as he
pronounced it, sounded like “choir” with a sort of gulping “g”
instituted for the “ch.” He added the gratuitous piece of information
that his grandfather had been a bey—a sort of military title
corresponding roughly to a knighthood. He was clearly not in the
habit of hiding his light under a bushel. But as he was very highly
recommended by the mudir, and I liked the look of him, I engaged
him.
“Guide” is perhaps hardly the correct term to describe the capacity
in which he was expected to act, for he did not even profess to have
any knowledge of the desert beyond the Egyptian frontier. But as it
seemed hopeless to attempt to find anyone who did, I employed him
as a man of great experience in desert travelling, who would act as
head of the caravan and help me with his advice in any difficulty that
arose.
I took him round and introduced him to my other men. At my
suggestion he arranged with Sheykh Suleyman to hire a riding camel
from him, as he said that he had not one of his own that was strong
enough for a hard desert journey.
In spite of his engaging manners, for some reason that was not
apparent, both Sheykh Suleyman and Abd er Rahman obviously
took a strong dislike to him. I was rather pleased at this, as a little
friction in one’s caravan makes the men easier to manage. At the
time, I put it down to his belonging to a different tribe; but, judging
from what afterwards occurred, I fancy it was really due to their
knowing something against him, which, native-like, they did not see
fit to tell me.
Qway being thus provided for, I dispatched my caravan by road to
Kharga Oasis, and followed them myself a day or two afterwards by
the bi-weekly train.
CHAPTER II
F OR the first few miles the line ran over the floor of the Nile Valley.
Some twenty-eight miles from Qara, we emerged from the wady
through which the railway ran on to the plateau above. Jebel, the
word generally used in Egypt to signify desert, means literally
mountain; the desert near the Nile Valley consisting of the plateau
through which the Nile has cut its course.
The view on the plateau was impressive in its utter barrenness—
no single plant, not even dried grass, was to be seen. Though the
actual surface of the desert was very uneven, the general level was
extremely uniform. The whole plateau consisted of limestone, in the
slight hollows and inequalities of which patches of sand and gravel
had collected. Here and there very low limestone hills, or rather
mounds, were to be seen, none of them probably exceeding twenty
feet in height. Everywhere on the plateau the effect of the sand
erosion was most marked. The various types of surface produced
being known to the natives as rusuf, kharafish, kharashef and
battikh, or “water melon” desert, the nature of which will best be seen
from the photographs.
The descent from the plateau into the depression in which Kharga
Oasis lies, lay, like the ascent from the Nile Valley on to the plateau,
through a wady. Kharga Oasis was at that time very little known to
Europeans. Until the advent in the district of the company who had
constructed the railway, the oasis had only been visited, I believe, by
a few scientists and Government officials.
The desert beyond it had been so little explored that, within about
a day’s journey from the oasis, I found a perfect labyrinth—several
hundred square miles in extent—of little depressions, two or three
hundred feet in depth, opening out of each other, that completely
honeycombed what had previously been considered to be a part of
the solid limestone plateau. Unfortunately, I was never able entirely
to explore this curious district. It almost certainly contains at least
two wells, or perhaps small oases—’Ain Hamur and ’Ain Embarres.
It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not seen them a clear
idea of these oases in the Libyan Desert. Kharga is an oblong tract
of country measuring roughly a hundred and forty miles from north to
south by twenty from east to west. It is bounded on the east, north
and west by huge cliffs or hills. Only about a hundred and fiftieth of
its area, in the neighbourhood of the various villages, hamlets and
farms scattered over its surface, is under cultivation. These
cultivated areas are irrigated by artesian wells, many of which date
back to a very remote period. But Kharga Oasis and its antiquities
have already been described by two or three writers, so no lengthy
account of them is necessary. It contains a number of temples and
other ruins, the most important of which is the Temple of Hibis.
The temple has an excellent mummy story connected with it.
Those engaged in excavating the temples and tombs of Egypt—an
occupation locally known as “body snatching”—are well aware that in
their work they always have “the dead agin them,” and there are few
places where this has been so well exemplified as in the Temple of
Hibis.
At the time of my arrival in Kharga it was being restored by an
American archæologist, named W———. Before it was taken in
hand, sand had drifted by the wind up against the walls, until it
reached very nearly to their summit. In order to find out the extent of
the buildings, W——— caused a trench to be dug parallel to one of
the main walls.
Before this was completed, his men told him that they did not wish
to continue working in that part, giving as their reason that a sheykh,
i.e. a holy man, had been buried there, and since he was of
exceptional holiness, lights had been seen hovering over his grave
at night, and a man who had dug there before had fallen ill.
After some difficulty W——— succeeded in inducing the men to
continue their work. But a sacred mummy is an uncanny thing to
tackle. Sure enough, after his men had been digging a little longer,
some earth slipped down into the trench, and with it came half the
mummy, the other half remaining in the ground by the side of the
trench. The men “downed tools” at once, and stood aghast at this
calamity. The mummy’s feelings must have been seriously outraged
for he lost no time in getting to work—the native who had actually
dug him up was subject to fits, and had one and died that night.
The next morning the mummy had disappeared and all the men
were back at work again, just as though nothing had happened. After
some little time W——— began to make cautious enquiries as to
what had happened to the mummy; but he elicited no information
whatever. His enquiries were met with a blank stare of surprise
—“mummy? What mummy? There had been no mummy there.”
When a native knows nothing like that, it is quite hopeless to try and
get anything out of him.
W———’s men went on with their work as though nothing had
happened. One of them had atoned for the little accident to the
mummy, so they knew that the rest of them were safe . . . but they
seemed solicitous about W———’s health, and W——— soon found
that he had not done with that mummy. Before the end of the
season, he and the European working with him, who had had most
to do with the mummy, went down with very bad Kharga fever—a
virulent form of malaria—from which W——— himself nearly died.
Some time afterwards he discovered that his men had gone down
before him, on the night the mummy had been dug up, and had
collected his remains and given him a decent Mohammedan burial.
He found out where he was buried and built a really magnificent
tomb-top over his grave. It must be nearly ten feet long, six feet wide
and two feet high. It was built of the very best mud bricks the oasis
could produce—and he even whitewashed it. Since then the mummy
has been pacified and has left W——— in peace.
When I found out where the mummy was buried, I bakhshished
him, by shoving a five-piastre piece into the ground by the side of his
grave—a proceeding that met with Dahab’s highest approval—and I
had a more successful trip that year than any other. But it doesn’t
say much for the intelligence of the mummy, for that five-piastre
piece was a bad one.
For the benefit of the sceptical, I wish to add that this story is true
—absolutely true—any native in Kharga will tell you that—besides
there is the whited sepulchre to prove it; so for a mummy story it is
very true indeed.
After a stay of some days in Kharga to allow the caravan to come
through from the Nile Valley, we started off for our journey to Dakhla
Oasis. Our road at first ran roughly from east to west. Shortly after
our start it passed through a patch some two miles wide of curious
clay ridges. These, which seemed all to be under twenty feet high,
were evidently formed by the erosion of the earth by the wind-driven
sand, for they all ran from north to south, in the direction of the
prevailing wind. Just before reaching the western side of the oasis,
our road passed through a gap in a belt of sand dunes, which, like
the clay ridges, also ran in the same north to south direction of the
prevailing wind.
These sand belts consist of long narrow areas covered with
dunes, running across the desert in almost straight lines, roughly
from north to south. This Abu Moharik belt, through which our road
ran, has a length which cannot be much less than four hundred
miles; but, though it varies somewhat in width at different points
along its course, its average breadth is probably not much more than
five miles, that is to say, about an eightieth of its total length. These
belts consist almost entirely of more or less crescent-shaped dunes.
In places the sand hills of which they are composed are scattered
and stand isolated from each other, with areas of sand-free desert
between them. In other parts the dunes are more closely packed;
many of the crescents join together to form large clusters, and the
spaces between the dunes are also sometimes covered with sand.
Beyond the dune belt, we turned sharply towards the south and
soon came on to the northern end of the cultivated area surrounding
Kharga village. From Kharga we journeyed southward to the village
of Bulaq, passing on our way the sandstone temples of Qasr el
Guehda—or Wehda, as it is often locally pronounced—and Qasr
Zaiyan. Both were surrounded by a mudbrick enclosure filled with
the remains of a labyrinth of small ruined brick buildings and
contained some hieroglyphics and some fine capitals to the pillars.
Shortly after leaving Qasr Zaiyan, we entered a sandy patch
covered with vegetation consisting of graceful branched Dom palms,
acacias, palm scrub and grasses, in which some of the cattle of the
breed, for which the oasis was noted, were grazing. Half an hour’s
journey through this scrub-covered area brought us to the palm
groves and village of Bulaq, on the south side of which I pitched my
camp. Bulaq, though one of the largest villages of the oasis, with a
population of about one thousand, is quite uninteresting. Its palm
groves and cultivated land lie on its eastern side; on the north, south
and west it is bounded by open sandy desert. It is chiefly noted as
being the main centre in the oasis for the manufacture of mats and
baskets, made chiefly from the leaves of the numerous Dom palms
growing in the neighbourhood.
After breakfast the next day we struck camp and set off due west
across the dune belt. It took us only an hour and a quarter to
negotiate. Between the dunes were many interspaces entirely free
from sand, so by keeping as much as possible to these and winding
about, so as to cross the sand hills at their lowest points, we
managed to get through the belt and emerged on to a gravelly sand-
free desert beyond.
This, my first experience of the dunes of the Libyan Desert, was
distinctly encouraging. Not only were the sand hills much smaller
than I had been led to suppose, but their surface was crusted hard,
and we crossed them with little difficulty; on emerging on the farther
side, I set out for Dakhla Oasis, feeling far more hopeful of being
able to cross the heavy sand to the west of that oasis than I had ever
been before.
After crossing the dune belt, we altered our course and turned up
nearly due north so as to make for the well of ’Ain Amur. The desert
over which we were travelling was of pebbly sand, with an
occasional rocky hill or ridge of black sandstone, and presented few
points of interest. We camped at five, and I had a good opportunity
of studying the peculiarities of my men, and of the kit they had
brought with them for the journey.
Qway’s equipment was about as near perfection for the desert as
it was possible to get it. His camel saddle was a rabiat, over this was
a red leather cushion on which he sat. On this he placed his hurj, or
pair of saddle-bags, of strong carpet-like stuff, one of which hung
down on either side; above this lay a folded red blanket, and over
this again he spread his furwa, or black sheepskin—an
indispensable part of a camel rider’s equipment, which he not only
places over his saddle, where it forms a soft and comfortable seat,
but on which he sits when dismounted, lies on or covers himself with
at night and throws over his shoulders on a cold day. Over the
camel’s withers in front of the saddle was a second small pad, also
of red leather, on which to rest his legs as he crossed them in front of
him as he rode, hanging from his rabiat on either side was a sack of
grain for his camel, the pockets of his hurj resting on the top of the
sacks.
Slung on to his saddle was a most miscellaneous collection of
articles. A Martini-Henry rifle I had lent him, with a text from the
Koran engraved on it in gold lettering, lay along his camel’s back
under his hurj on one side, and was balanced by a red parasol on
the other. A goat-skin for carrying water, a small crock full of cheese,
his camel’s nose-bag, or mukhlia, in which, when leaving an oasis he
generally carried a few eggs packed in straw that he had managed
to cadge from some village as we passed, his ’agal, or camel hobble,
and a skin of flour, were all tied on to some part or other of his
saddle.
In his hurj Qway carried a most extraordinary collection of things:
a small circular mirror and a pair of folding nail scissors, with which
at the end of a day’s march he frequently spent some time in
trimming his beard and moustache—he was always spotlessly clean
and neat—a clothes-brush, with which he always brushed his best
clothes; his best shoes; an awl with the point stuck into a cork for
operating on the camels; a packing needle and one or two sewing
needles, with their points similarly protected, a little bag containing
thread and buttons; a lump of soap; part of a cone of sugar; tea, salt,
red pepper, pills and one or two other mysterious Arab medicines, all
carefully tied up separately in different pieces of rag, some cartridges
I had given him for his rifle, any onions he had been able to cadge in
the last oasis, and a quantity of dried dates, constituted only a few of
the miscellaneous assortment of things that his camel bags
contained.
The kit of the camel drivers, who were of course on foot, was
much more simple. Between them they brought a skin of flour, an
enamelled iron basin to make their dough in; a slightly dished iron
plate (saj) to bake their bread on, and two or three small tin
canisters, in which they carried sugar, salt and tea, when they had
any, and which were thrown into the ordinary sack in which they
carried the small amount of surplus clothing they possessed.
Dahab carried his belongings in a bag rolled up in a rug on which
he slept, his kit being of a very workmanlike nature. Khalil’s outfit,
however, was largely of an ornamental character, including such
trifles as a pink satiny pillow thickly studded with gold stars and
covered with a pillow-case trimmed with lace!
In the rough usage inseparable from a desert journey everyone’s
clothing becomes more or less damaged. The other men during our
halts got their clothes patched and mended, but Khalil never repaired
the numerous rents that soon began to appear in his garments. He
ultimately became such a scarecrow that when, on one extremely
hot day, he seated himself on a rock during our noontide halt, he
sprang up again a great deal quicker than he sat down, the reason
being that the rock was greatly heated, and, to put it poetically, he
had not been “divided from the desert by the sewn.”
While in the Valley, Khalil had been quite a success, for he made
a very fair interpreter. But no sooner did he get into the desert, than
he appeared at once in his true character, of a dragoman of the
deepest die. He was a sore trial, until I got rid of him.
The first few days in the desert with a new caravan are always
trying. The men have not got into their work, and the camels, being
strangers to each other, spend most of their time in fighting. A
savage camel is a dangerous beast and it is of no use playing with
him. The right place to hit him is his neck. Hit him hard with
something heavy, and go on doing it and he becomes partially
stunned and is then amenable to reason. Still, as the gifted author of
“Eothen” put it, “you soon learn to love a camel for the sake of her
gentle womanish ways.”
The Arabs have different names that they apply to camels
according to their age—a one-year-old beast is called ibn esh
Sha’ar, or sometimes ibn es Sena; a two-year-old, ibn Lebun; a
three-year-old, Heg; a four-year-old, Thenni; a five-year-old, Jedda;
a six-year-old, Raba’a; a seven-year-old, Sedis; and an eight-year-
old, Fahal. The names apply to both male and female beasts. After
eight years a male is called jemel (camel) simply, and the female
naga.
On some very bad roads, where there is much rock surface to be
crossed, many of the caravan guides carry an awl, string and pieces
of leather, for the purpose of resoling a camel’s foot should the whole
skin of it peel off, as it sometimes will. Qway resoled a foot of one of
my camels once that went dead lame from this cause.
The operation was a simple one and seemed to be quite painless.
He bored holes diagonally upwards through the thick skin on the
edge of the sole of the foot, cut out a piece of leather slightly larger
than the camel’s footprint, and then passed pieces of string through
the holes he had bored, and through corresponding holes in the
piece of leather and tied the ends of the string together. One or two
of the strings got cut through by the rock and had to be replaced.
The camel, however, without much difficulty was able to hobble back
into the oasis, and after some weeks’ rest to allow the skin on the
sole of his foot to grow again, completely recovered.
Camels vary considerably in colour. Among those I bought in my
first season in Egypt were a beast of a rather unusual chestnut
colour and two other fawn-coloured brutes, one of which had a
shade of grey in its complexion, and the other was inclined towards a
roan tint. These were called by my men the red, blue and green
camels respectively.
The “green” beast was the one I used to ride. He was not a bad
mount, but as he had not been ridden before I bought him, and
guiding a camel by means of a single rein is always rather like trying
to steer a boa-constrictor with a string, my stick at first had to be
used pretty often.
In the afternoon of our third day, after leaving Kharga, we passed
a mass of eroded chalk jutting up above the sandy ground, which,
being a recognised landmark was known to natives from its shape as
Abu el Hul—“the Sphinx.” From there we proceeded to the well of
’Ain Amur, close to which I found a few patches of light blue sand.
A journey of a day and a half westwards over the tableland, on the
north cliff of which ’Ain Amur is placed, brought us to the top of the
slope from the level of the plateau to Dakhla Oasis.
This negeb, or descent, proved to be rather difficult to negotiate.
The sand had drifted up against the cliff we had to climb down, and
once on the bank of sand the camels, by walking diagonally down
the slope, were able to reach the bottom without difficulty. But at the
top of the sand bank, the rocks of which the cliff was composed,
overhung to form a sort of cornice, and the path on to the sand slope
below it lay through a cleft in the cornice, so narrow that the baggage
had to be lifted temporarily up from the camels’ backs to enable
them to pass through the passage.
It took us half an hour to negotiate this place; but having at length
managed it without any catastrophe, we camped in a bay in the cliff
soon after reaching the bottom.
Soon after sunset a wild goose flew over the camp on to the
plateau, coming from the south-west. Many were the speculations as
to where it had come from, as no water was known to exist in the
desert from which it came anywhere nearer than the Sudan.
CHAPTER III
A BOUT two in the afternoon of the following day we reached “Ain

El Jemala,” the first well of Dakhla Oasis, situated near the edge
of a large area of scrub, which was said to be a favourite haunt of
gazelle. We halted here to water the camels. We then pushed on
past the village of Tenida, to Belat.
The ’omda (village head-man) came round during the afternoon,
bringing some of the leading men of the village with him to welcome
me to the oasis, and to invite me to dine with him, greeting me with
the picturesque formula invariably used in the desert to anyone
returning from a journey—“praise be to Allah for your safety.”
After dinner a man was brought in who had come from Mut, the
capital town of the oasis, bringing me a note from the mamur, or
native magistrate, welcoming me to his district, and saying that,
though he had heard I had come, no one had been able to
pronounce my name. He asked me to get someone to write it down
in Arabic. Dakhla Oasis, though it lies just within the Egyptian
frontier, had been visited by very few Europeans up to that time, and
my arrival in this out-of-the-way spot consequently created
somewhat of a stir in its little community.
I entrusted Khalil with the answer to the letter. The “ing” sound in
my name is one which no Arab-speaking native has ever been able
to master. At length, after much discussion, Khalil got the letter
written; the result being that I ever afterwards went in the oasis
under the name of “Harden Keen.”
From Belat we pushed on to Smint el Kharab, or ruined Smint,
where are some mud-built ruins, some of which have paintings on
their interior walls, apparently of Coptic origin. From Smint el Kharab
we pushed on to the village of Smint itself. Here we were of course
invited to lunch by the ’omda—an invitation of which I was for once
glad to avail myself, as we had made an early start, and the caravan,
which had been told to wait for me outside the village, had by some
misunderstanding, gone on to Mut.
My first impressions of the inhabitants of these oases, with their
cordial welcome, was certainly a most favourable one. Their
hospitality, however, I found at times somewhat overwhelming.
’OMDA’S HOUSE, TENIDA.
As to the nature of this hospitality there appears to be some

misunderstanding. In many cases one’s host is a private individual,
or, if he be an ’omda, entertains one in his private capacity. But
usually when invited to partake of a meal or to stay with an ’omda,
one is in reality the guest of the entire village, though the fact may
not be apparent. The ’omdas of Dakhla Oasis have the right to take
a small proportion of the flow of any new well sunk in their district, to
pay for the hospitality they show to the strangers that come to their
village. In cases where there are no new wells, they collect from the
heads of the different families the expenses that they have incurred

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moo13946_fm_Title Page.indd i 01/21/16 03:10 PM

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Gravitational field strength g =│g​

Useful Conversion Factors

1 meter = 1 m = 100 cm = 39.4 in = 3.28 ft 1 m/s = 2.24 mi/h = 3.28 ft/s

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Senior Vice President, Products & Markets: Kurt L. Strand

To All My Family, Near and Far

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

About the Author viii Chapter C3 38

Chapter C6 84 C9.3 One-Dimensional Potential Energy Diagrams 139

Chapter C13 204 Appendix CA 240

Periodic table 255

Chapter Overview 222

Comments about the Current Edition

Specific Comments About Unit C

The momentum-transfer model of interactions (introduced now in

A project of this magnitude cannot be accomplished alone. A list including

SmartBook is the first and only adaptive reading experience designed to

Learn Without Limits

Why Is This Text Different?

The Text as Primary Source

What is active reading? Active Reading

Class Activities and Homework

Section C1.2: The Development and Structure of Physics

Section C1.3: A Model-Building Example

Section C1.4: Trick Bag: Unit Awareness

Section C1.5: Trick Bag: Unit Conversions

Section C1.6: Trick Bag: Dimensional Analysis

C1.1 The Nature of Science

C1.2 The Development and Structure of Physics

Deep underlying SYMMETRIES in

**THE STANDARD MODEL** **GENERAL RELATIVITY**

(Classical) ELECTROMAG- SPECIAL RELATIVITY

STATISTICAL MECHANICS NEWTONIAN MECHANICS

C1.3 A Model-Building Example

Check The exact length of Eratosthene’s stadion is historically ambiguous,

C1.4 Trick Bag: Unit Awareness

1027 m edge of visible 1018 s age of universe 1054 kg visible universe

1021 m galaxy diameter 1012 s 31,700 yr 1042 kg our galaxy

1018 m nearer stars 109 s 31.7 yr 1036 kg

10–9 m 10–18 s light crosses 10–18 kg

C1.5 Trick Bag: Unit Conversions

Since 1 m is equivalent to 3.28 ft, the ratio of these quantities is 1:

C1.6 Trick Bag: Dimensional Analysis

where K is some as-yet-unknown unitless constant and j, k, and n are as-yet-

R = ____ ​ = ​ 6.67 × 10 -11 _____

Derivations C1R.3 Suppose you are standing on a southeast-facing

Section C2.2: Describing an Object’s Motion

Section C2.3: Vector Operations

Section C2.4: Momentum and Impulse

• Purpose: This equation expresses the total newtonian momentum p​ ​W that an

• Purpose: This equation links the net change ∆​p​

Section C2.5: Force and Weight

• Purpose: This equation describes the relationship between an object’s mass

C2.1 The Principles of Modern Mechanics

Mechanics is the area of physics that explores how physical interactions

2 × 10-15 m < 10-18 m

Atoms Protons, neutrons, Quarks exchanging (Limits of the

in unit Q). But trying to understand the behavior of macroscopic objects

C2.2 Describing an Object’s Motion

moo13946_fm_Title Page.indd i 01/21/16 03:10 PM

moo13946_fm_i-xvii.indd ii 01/23/16 11:45 AM

Gravitational field strength g =│g

THE STANDARD MODEL GENERAL RELATIVITY

R =   = 6.67 × 10 -11 _

• Purpose: This equation expresses the total newtonian momentum p W that an

• Purpose: This equation links the net change ∆p

Multiplying a vector by an Finally, we can multiply a vector by a number. Abstractly, if u W is a vec-