This is the first edition [revised on March 13, 2014] of two volumes of notes prepared by David J. Raymond for a physics course at New Mexico Tech. The course used the principles of optics, waves and relativity, rather than classical mechanics, as a foundation for teaching introductory physics. The topics covered are: waves in one, two and three dimensions; geometrical optics; special relativity; acceleration and general relativity; matter waves; Newton's Laws; symmetry and bound states; dynamics of multiple particles; rotational dynamics; and harmonic oscillators. This textbook is available as a PDF file under a GNU Free Documentation License.

Thisbookgrewoutof anongoing e?orttomodernizeColgate University’s three-term,introductory,calculus-level physicscourse. Thebookisforthe ?rst term of this course and is intended to help ?rst-year college students make a good transition from high-school physics to university physics. Thebookconcentrates onthephysicsthatexplainswhywebelievethat atoms exist and have the properties we ascribe to them. This story line, which motivates much of our professional research, has helped us limit the material presented to a more humane and more realistic amount than is presented in many beginning university physics courses. The theme of atoms also supports the presentation of more non-Newtonian topics and ideas than is customary in the ?rst term of calculus-level physics. We think it is important and desirable to introduce students sooner than usual to some of the major ideas that shape contemporary physicists’ views of the nature and behavior of matter. Here in the second decade of the twenty-?rst century such a goal seems particularly appropriate. The quantum nature of atoms and light and the mysteries associated with quantum behavior clearly interest our students. By adding and - phasizing more modern content, we seek not only to present some of the physics that engages contemporary physicists but also to attract students to take more physics. Only a few of our beginning physics students come to us sharply focused on physics or astronomy. Nearly all of them, h- ever, have taken physics in high school and found it interesting.

This book explores precisely how mathematics allows us to model and predict the behaviour of physical systems, to an amazing degree of accuracy. One of the oldest explanations for this is that, in some profound way, the structure of the world is mathematical. The ancient Pythagoreans stated that “everything is number”. However, while exploring the Pythagorean method, this book chooses to add a second principle of the universe: the mind. This work defends the proposition that mind and mathematical structure are the grounds of reality.