This book is written for anybody who is curious about nature and motion. Curiosity about how people, animals, things, images and space move leads to many adventures. This volume presents the best of them in the domain of everyday life.

Carefully observing everyday motion allows us to deduce six essential statements: everyday motion is continuous, conserved, relative, reversible, mirror-invariant – and lazy. Yes, nature is indeed lazy: in every motion, it minimizes change. This text explores how these six results are deduced and how they fit with all those observations that seem to contradict them. In the structure of modern physics, shown in Figure 1, the results on everyday motion form the major part of the starting point at the bottom. The present volume is the first of a six-volume overview of physics. It resulted from a threefold aim I have pursued since 1990: to present motion in a way that is simple, up to date and captivating.

In order to be simple, the text focuses on concepts, while keeping mathematics to the necessary minimum. Understanding the concepts of physics is given precedence over using formulae in calculations. The whole text is within the reach of an undergraduate.

In order to be up to date, the text is enriched by the many gems – both theoretical and empirical – that are scattered throughout the scientific literature.

In order to be captivating, the text tries to startle the reader as much as possible. Reading a book on general physics should be like going to a magic show. We watch, we are astonished, we do not believe our eyes, we think, and finally we understand the trick. When we look at nature, we often have the same experience. Indeed, every page presents at least one surprise or provocation for the reader to think about. Numerous interesting challenges are proposed.

The motto of the text, die Menschen stärken, die Sachen klären, a famous statement by Hartmut von Hentig on pedagogy, translates as: ‘To fortify people, to clarify things.’ Clarifying things – and adhering only to the truth – requires courage, as changing the habits of thought produces fear, often hidden by anger. But by overcoming our fears we grow in strength. And we experience intense and beautiful emotions. All great adventures in life allow this, and exploring motion is one of them. Enjoy it!

Bernoulli's principle relates the pressure of a fluid to its elevation and its speed. Bernoulli's equation can be used to approximate these parameters in water, air or any fluid that has very low viscosity. Students learn about the relationships between the components of the Bernoulli equation through real-life engineering examples and practice problems.

Students construct three-dimensional models of water catchment basins using everyday objects to form hills, mountains, valleys and water sources. They experiment to see where rain travels and collects, and survey water pathways to see how they can be altered by natural and human activities. Students discuss how engineers design structures that impact water collection, as well as systems that clean and distribute water.

This textbook on Coastal Dynamics focuses on the interrelation between physical wave, flow and sediment transport phenomena and the resulting morphodynamics of a wide variety of coastal systems. The textbook is unique in that it explicitly connects the dynamics of open coasts and tidal basins; not only is the interaction between open coasts and tidal basins of basic importance for the evolution of most coastal systems, but describing the similarities between their physical processes is highly instructive as well. This textbook emphasizes these similarities to the benefit of understanding shared processes such as nonlinearities in flow and sediment transport. Some prior knowledge with respect to the dynamics of flow, waves and sediment transport is recommended.

Students explore the densities and viscosities of fluids as they create a colorful 'rainbow' using household liquids. While letting the fluids in the rainbow settle, students conduct 'The Great Viscosity Race,' another short experiment that illustrates the difference between viscosity and density. Later, students record the density rainbow with sketches and/or photography.

This feature, adapted from Interactive NOVA: "Earth," follows the path of energy as it is transferred via the food chain from one type of organism to another.

This course covers: Fundamental concepts; fluid statics; fluid dynamics; Bernoulli's equation; control-volume analysis; basic flow equations of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy; differential analysis; potential flow; viscous incompressible flow.

Students discover fluid dynamics related to buoyancy through experimentation and optional photography. Using one set of fluids, they make light fluids rise through denser fluids. Using another set, they make dense fluids sink through a lighter fluid. In both cases, they see and record beautiful fluid motion. Activities are also suitable as class demonstrations. The natural beauty of fluid flow opens the door to seeing the beauty of physics in general.

Students learn about energy flow in food webs, including the roles of the sun, producers, consumers and decomposers in the energy cycle. They model a food web and create diagrams of food webs using their own drawings and/or images from nature or wildlife magazines. Students investigate the links between the sun, plants and animals, building their understanding of the web of nutrient dependency and energy transfer.

Students learn about water poverty and how water engineers can develop appropriate solutions to a problem that is plaguing nearly a sixth of the world's population. Students follow the engineering design process to design a gravity-fed water system. They choose between different system parameters such as pipe sizes, elevation differentials between entry and exit pipes, pipe lengths and tube locations to find a design that provides the maximum flow and minimum water turbidity (cloudiness) at the point of use. In this activity, students play the role of water engineers by designing and building model gravity-fed water systems, learning the key elements necessary for viable projects that help improve the lives people in developing communities.

Students' eyes are opened to the value of creative, expressive and succinct visual presentation of data, findings and concepts. Student pairs design, redesign and perform simple experiments to test the differences in thermal conductivity (heat flow) through different media (foil and thin steel). Then students create visual diagrams of their findings that can be understood by anyone with little background on the subject, applying their newly learned art vocabulary and concepts to clearly communicate their results. The principles of visual design include contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity; the elements of visual design include an awareness of the use of lines, color, texture, shape, size, value and space. If students already have data available from other experiments, have them jump right into the diagram creation and critique portions of the activity.

While learning about volcanoes, magma and lava flows, students learn about the properties of liquid movement, coming to understand viscosity and other factors that increase and decrease liquid flow. They also learn about lava composition and its risk to human settlements.

This course, is designed to be a descriptive and analytical overview of water organs, availability, location and flow. It will be examined in the light of problems, possibilities and policy and consider historical perspectives.

In this course we will look at ways to change the narrative on school libraries from questioning the need for them or how to renovate the industrial era models of a single, shared resource environment to a learner-centered model.  We will work on how to move beyond traditional concepts, personal biases and even past current Learning Commons and Maker Spaces to creating learning environments where resources are ubiquitously accessible to students in virtual and physical formats.    We will look at the enormous complexity of this model in a K-12 school and why not exploring unique, alternative concepts may be hastening the elimination of school librarians.

In this course we will look at ways to change the narrative on school libraries from questioning the need for them or how to renovate the industrial era models of a single, shared resource environment to a learner-centered model.  We will work on how to move beyond traditional concepts, personal biases and even past current Learning Commons and Maker Spaces to creating learning environments where resources are ubiquitously accessible to students in virtual and physical formats.    We will look at the enormous complexity of this model in a K-12 school and why not exploring unique, alternative concepts may be hastening the elimination of school librarians.

In the third module we will consider tools for students to use to plan new school library spaces.  This module along with Module 4 will expose students to structured ways to develop new ideas for not just renovating space but taking it in new directions.   These modules are transitional, a way to move toward renaissance rather than mere renovation.  Hopefully, they will provide a framework to explore ideas beyond their experience and the experiences of other planning team members.  After critically evaluating the advantages and limitations of either a Learning Commons or a Maker Space and considering futuristic ideas, let’s focus on what might be an interim solution.  What might be an affordable alternative that school libraries could be considering to enrich progressive, alternative educational models?   We need to consider how to embed inquiry into new learning models while maximizing the space, the resources and the mentoring skills of a trained librarian. The goal of Modules 3 and 4 are to provide students with objective ways to step away from their preconceived library space designs and think about new concepts based on the user.   We have moved space planning from a focus on housing the physical content to planning around the learning activities such as collaboration or team projects.  The next logical step is to take a humanistic approach; planning for users. 

This course introduces thermodynamic principles; open and closed systems representative of engineering problems; and first and second law of thermodynamics with applications to engineering systems and design. Topics include: thermodynamic concepts, thermodynamic properties, the first law of thermodynamics, first law analysis for a control volume, the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, and second law analysis for a control volume.

Students learn how volume, viscosity and slope are factors that affect the surface area that lava covers. Using clear transparency grids and liquid soap, students conduct experiments, make measurements and collect data. They also brainstorm possible solutions to lava flow problems as if they were geochemical engineers, and come to understand how the properties of lava are applicable to other liquids.

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.Senior Contributing AuthorsRose M. Spielman, Formerly of Quinnipiac UniversityContributing AuthorsKathryn Dumper, Bainbridge State CollegeWilliam Jenkins, Mercer UniversityArlene Lacombe, Saint Joseph's UniversityMarilyn Lovett, Livingstone CollegeMarion Perlmutter, University of Michigan