Physics: Concepts and Connections - Softcover

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Art Hobson started life in Philadelphia in 1934. His family moved to Manhattan, Kansas, in 1946, where he developed a passion for the trombone and jazz. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas in Denton in 1955, was drafted and served in U.S. Army bands and the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Europe during 1955-57, and then spent many months in New York City looking for steady employment as a musician. He soon decided that it might be better to switch to a different field.

As a believer in the unity of art and science, Art found it congenial to move from music to physics. In 1964 he received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Kansas State University and joined the physics faculty at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he remains. His publications include Concepts in Statistical Mechanics (a research monograph), Physics and Human Affairs (an earlier textbook), The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles (an arms control study by a team of physicists, co-authored and co-edited by Art), and numerous papers on theoretical physics, the control and reduction of nuclear weapons, and physics education. He served for nine years as editor of the quarterly newsletter Physics and Society and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1992 "for numerous contributions in the area of physics and society."

In 1975, Art developed a new kind of physics course for nonscientists, one that connected physics to our society and culture. The course grew in size and popularity, and in 1989 he received the College of Arts and Science's Master Teacher Award for this achievement. This book is an outgrowth of that course.

The previous two editions of this book were dedicated to Art's two children, whom he raised as a single father. He is delighted to have married Marie Riley, to whom this edition is dedicated, in 1997. Although he retired in 1999, he still pedals his bicycle to the university every day and is as over-involved as ever. He and Marie love to travel and often combine business trips to foreign lands with vacations. His latest hobby is learning German. He loves skiing, the theater, concerts, the beach, reading, writing, and bicycling. Although he's lost his trombone "chops," he values his arts background, remains an avid lover of jazz, and even pounds out an occasional tune on the piano.