This book explores light and other types of waves, using this as a window into other aspects of physics. It emphasizes a conceptual understanding, using examples chosen from everyday life and the natural environment. For example, it explains how hummingbird feathers create shimmering colors, how musical instruments produce sound, and how atoms stick together to form molecules. It provides a unique perspective on physics by emphasizing commonalities among different types of waves, including string waves, water waves, sound waves, light waves, the matter waves of quantum mechanics, and the gravitational waves of general relativity. This book is targeted toward college non-science majors, advanced high school students, and adults who are curious about our physical world. It assumes familiarity with algebra but no further mathematics and is classroom-ready with many worked examples, exercises, exploratory puzzles, and appendices to support students from a variety of backgrounds.

Dr. Andrews has a wide-ranging scientific background. After college, he researched the effects of sunlight on the marine carbon cycle while working at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He then earned a PhD in chemistry from Stanford University (and a PhD minor in physics) with research on the effects of electric fields on molecular vibrations. He switched to systems biology for his postdoc positions, which were at the University of Cambridge and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In this work he developed novel computational methods for accurately simulating cell biology systems; as part of this work, he wrote software that is now widely used in the cell modeling research community. He also investigated information transfer during cell biology signaling, which has revealed several mechanisms that cells use to improve signaling fidelity. He is continuing this systems biology work, now as a research affiliate at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Andrews has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications on these research projects. Dr. Andrews is also passionate about teaching. He is an adjunct physics professor at Seattle University where his classes have included an introduction to mechanics, a senior-level statistical mechanics course, and a class on light and waves. This last class, which he developed from scratch, has been one of his particular interests and formed the genesis of the current book manuscript.

Autorentext

Dr. Andrews is a scientist with wide-ranging interests. He started his career in oceanography, earned a PhD in chemistry at Stanford University, and then transitioned into his current field of systems biology. He taught physics at Seattle University for several years, from which this book evolved, and is now a research scientist in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington. He has published over 50 research papers on molecular quantum mechanics, biological simulation methods, information transfer by biological cells, and other topics. He enjoys whitewater kayaking and cross-country skiing, and lives in Seattle with his family.