It is still common for American college students to read literature by Dostoyevsky, Austen, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Homer. But it is not so common for these same students to read the scientific writings of Newton, Galileo, Pascal, Ptolemy, or Heisenberg.

Why is this? One obvious reason is that these scientific writings are challenging. But are they truly more challenging than those of Dostoyevsky or Homer? Perhaps a truer reason is that students lack a guide—one who can lead them through the challenges that are unique to works of science, or "natural philosophy," as it was once called.

My hope is that this website, which provides a guided tour of my book A Student's Guide through the Great Physics Texts, will be of interest to students, physicists, philosophers, and those generally interested in the nature of science.

My book, which is titled A Student's Guide (ASG for short) Through the Great Physics Texts, is divided into four volumes: the first volume provides an introduction to astronomy; the second focuses on the sciences of space, time and motion, as developed by Galileo, Newton and Einstein; the third develops the electromagnetic theory of light in (primarily) the 19th century; and the fourth provides an introduction to modern physics, starting with Fourier's "Theory of heat" and ending with the development of the quantum theory of the atom in the 1930s.

If you would like information about my other projects and activities, check out my personal website. And if you would like to know more about my philosophy of teaching—why I teach physics in the way that I do—check out the preface to my book (pdf file)