DR. DAVID GOODSTEIN
Physicist, Author
Former Professor, Vice-Provost
California Institute of Technology
"Science in general and physics in particular
are the very backbones of our knowledge of
the universe. What could be more
important than that?”
- Dr. David Goodstein
BOOKS
STATES OF MATTER
A comprehensive view of the states of matter, solids, liquids and gases, based on various models and statistical mechanics.
OUT OF GAS
The world will eventually run out of the Earth’s reserves of petroleum., although some nasty techniques like fracking and deep water drilling extended our time. This book is a careful look at what will happen when we do run out of gas.
THERMAL PHYSICS
The first chapter gives a full expiation how statistical mechanics gives rise to thermodynamics, in particular, how entropy comes out of counting states. Subsequent chapters apply these results to various models of real systems.
ON FACT AND FRAUD
An examination of various cases of apparent fraud in science, finding some innocent and some guilty, starting with Millikan's famous oil drop experiment (not guilty),
FEYNMAN'S LOST LECTURE
The lecture, The Motion of the Earth Around the Sun, discovered by Caltech archivist Judy Goodstein, consisted of only two pages of Feynman’s notes. David Goodstein worked out how Feynman derived the correct formula using only geometry.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ENERGY PROBLEM
Goodstein and economist Micheal Intriligator writing alternate chapters look into the liked problem of climate change and the coming end of conventional energy sources.
THE MECHANICAL UNIVERSE
In the 1980s Dr. David Goodstein was the director and host of The Mechanical Universe, an educational television series on physics that has been adapted for high school use and translated into many other languages. The series has been broadcast on hundreds of public broadcasting stations and has garnered more than a dozen prestigious awards, including the 1987 Japan Prize for television.
Below are The Apple and The Moon (Episode 8) and The Lorentz Transformation (Episode 42). To see the full series, click here.