Twenty-minute helpLong helpSponsors
All help supports the work of the charitable non-profit association that organizes the publication.
One-minute help
You can help this project in several ways:
- tell your friends about the text,
- contribute misprints or suggestions to the feedback wiki,
- mention the text in your blog or your favourite forum,
-
add the site to
or stumble it 
, - add the site to reddit or add it to slashdot,
- add the site to connotea or
, - add the site to Mister Wong or add it to Clipmarks,
- mention the site in Facebook or mention it in Myspace,
- add the site to Blinklist or add it to Folkd,
- add the site to Furl or add it to Linkarena,
- add the site to Technorati,
add the site to more English language social bookmarking services,- add the site to even more social bookmarking services in various languages with Shareomatic.
To do more, read on.
Help with a belt trick animation
I am looking for an expert in 3d graphics to develop an animation that shows clearly how two belts behave as fermions under exchange, complementing the now standard visualisation that a belt behaves like a fermion under rotations. Together with the usual belt trick, the animation would thus show the spin-statistics theorem. The ideas and the original physical behaviour to be shown are straightforward, but the graphic work will take a bit of patience. The resulting animation would extend the applet shown at http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/21/21.html to a situation with two belt buckles and four belts. If you are interested, get in touch with me. The resulting animation would be unique world-wide, and I would build it into the text.
Twenty-minute help
Do you want to actively support the spread of free physics education across the continents? The following contributions would be particularly welcome:
- Take and send in images of striking moving phenomena.
- Propose solutions to challenges marked as "ny".
- Take and send in pictures about motion in biology.
- Find a reference for the difficulties encountered when trying to observe classical tachyons.
- Organize a copy of ISO 80000 to check the used mathematical symbols.
- Show me how to add a search mask on a html page that allows to search the pdf.
- Write an article about the site in a newspaper or journal.
- Supply photos and graphics for wave interference, polarization, diffraction, refraction, wave damping, and wave dispersion.
- Take and send in a photograph of how a candle flame reacts to a rubbed comb or, better, of how it splits in a high electric field.
- Send in a quality CAD image of a Foucault gyroscope.
- Provide figures of the most important topological defects.
- Provide feedback on using Schwinger's quantum theory book in teaching or learning.
- Provide a research reference for the diffusive speed of light in the solar interior.
- Supply details on the mathematics of tree growth: the laws about their proportions, the height of their trunks, the significance of the principle of minimum effort, etc.
- Mail in a 'welcome' page in your mother language, translating this English page. (Include the the word 'welcome' and the date. If you can, include the meta tags in the HTML code.)
- Convince Adobe to eliminate an ugly and old bug: in Adobe Reader, horizontal line thicknesses are shown on screen irregularly in wrong, usually exaggerated thicknesses. That makes tables look horrible. The bug has been noted and communicated to Adobe by many since version 1 of the program; it is still present in version 9. (This one will receive a special reward.)
If you can help on any of these topics or you think some issue not included in the text should be added, suggest it in the wiki or email me at christoph@motionmountain.net; I'll consider it for the next edition. All help is welcome.
Longer help
- If you can help to transform latex into html and then into epub format, let me know.
Gold sponsors
- From 2006 to 2010, Benoît Clenet translated over 1000 pages into the French language. Benoît, thank you very much for this fantastic effort!
- Since Mai 2007, this project is supported by the Klaus Tschira Foundation. Edition 21 was the first result of their support.
Bronze sponsors
- Alessandro Gori translated the chapter on special relativity into the Italian language,
- José Manuel López López translated the chapter on special relativity into the Spanish language,
- Vincent Isoz with OWS.ch and Evert Meulie have provided free pdf download of the book from 2005 to 2008,
- the Digital City of Eindhoven provides free html web hosting since 1997,
- Marco Fulle, Roberto Carniel and Jürg Alean provided volcano images from www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli,
- Gilles Réigner provided tide photographs from his site www.gillesregnier.com,
- Shinywhitebox provided a copy of its IShowU screen capture software for animations,
- Daugerresearch provided a copy of its Atom in a Box software to visualize atomic orbitals,
- Klaus Jost provided a photograph of a white shark from his website www.jostimages.com,
- Lucas Barbosa and José Antonio Díaz Navas produced animations specifically for this text,
- Two figures from www.messmittelonline.de have been included by kind permission,
- Luca Gastaldi, Antonio Martos and Ulrich Kolberg produced images specifically for this text,
- Rüdiger Paschotta provided images from his Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology found at www.rp-photonics.com/encyclopedia.html,
- Content and editing help came from Mikael Johansson, Bruno Barberi Gnecco, Lothar Beyer, including the numerous improvements by Bert Sierra, the detailed suggestions by Claudio Farinati, the many improvements by Eric Sheldon, the advice of Andrew Young, the continuous help and advice of Jonatan Kelu, the corrections of Elmar Bartel, and in particular the extensive, passionate and conscientious help of Adrian Kubala,
- Heiko Oberdiek, Michael Zedler, Achim Blumensath and Donald Arseneau helped extensively with fonts and typesetting,
- Ulrich Dirr and Johannes Küster provided professional typographic consulting,
- Bildhaft provided web design,
- my wife Britta provided suggestions and constant support.
Iron sponsors
Content: Numerous readers have provided material for this text: a warm thank-you to every one of them. Important material was provided by Bert Peeters, Anna Wierzbicka, William Beaty, Jim Carr, John Merrit, John Baez, Frank DiFilippo, Jonathan Scott, Jon Thaler, Luca Bombelli, Douglas Singleton, George McQuarry, Tilman Hausherr, Brian Oberquell, Peer Zalm, Martin van der Mark, Vladimir Surdin, Julia Simon, Antonio Fermani, Don Page, Stephen Haley, Peter Mayr, Allan Hayes, Igor Ivanov, Doug Renselle, Wim de Muynck, Steve Carlip, Tom Bruce, Ryan Budney, Gary Ruben, Chris Hillman, Olivier Glassey, Jochen Greiner, squark, Martin Hardcastle, Mark Biggar, Pavel Kuzin, Douglas Brebner, Luciano Lombardi, Franco Bagnoli, Lukas Fabian Moser, Dejan Corovic, Steve Carlip, Corrado Massa, Tom Helmond, Gary Gibbons, Heinrich Neumaier, Peter Brown, Paul Vannoni, John Haber, Saverio Pascazio, Klaus Finkenzeller, Leo Volin, Jeff Aronson, Roggie Boone, Lawrence Tuppen, Quentin David Jones, Arnaldo Uguzzoni, Frans van Nieuwpoort, Alan Mahoney, Britta Schiller, Petr Danecek, Ingo Thies, Vitaliy Solomatin, Carl Offner, Nuno Proença, Elena Colazingari, Paula Henderson, Daniel Darre, Wolfgang Rankl, John Heumann, Joseph Kiss, Martha Weiss, Antonio González, Antonio Martos, John Heumann, André Slabber, Ferdinand Bautista, Zoltán Gácsi, Pat Furrie, Michael Reppisch, Enrico Pasi, Thomas Köppe, Martin Rivas, Herman Beeksma, Tom Helmond, John Brandes, Vlad Tarko, Nadia Murillo, Ciprian Dobra, Romano Perini, Harald van Lintel, Andrea Conti, François Belfort, Dirk Van de Moortel, Heinrich Neumaier, Jaroslaw Królikowski, John Dahlman, Fathi Namouni, Paul Townsend, Sergei Emelin, Freeman Dyson, S.R.Madhu Rao, David Parks, Jürgen Janek, Daniel Huber, Alfons Buchmann, William Purves, Pietro Redondi, Sergei Kopeikin, Helmut Wunderling, plus a number of people who chose to remain unnamed.
Animations and films: All included films are copyrighted; they were provided by Martin Elsässer, Jarmo Hietarinta, Lim Tee Tai, Thomas Weiland, Daniel Schroeder, Roger Sabbadini, Dean Dauger, Greg Egan, Jake Socha, Lucas Barbosa, José Antonio Díaz Navas and Ute Kraus.
Photographs: Almost all photographs, in total more than 200, shown in the text and on the website are copyrighted; permission to use them has been kindly provided by each copyright holder. The names are mentioned below each picture, in the index of names, and on the picture credit page in the appendix.
Software: The textbook was typeset using its own LaTeX class file, the MinionPro package and over 60 existing LaTeX packages, using Gerben Wierda's gwtex distribution and Andrew Trevorrow's OzTeX. Numerous limitations and bugs in the tex distribution, in LaTeX, in LaTeX packages, in programming editors, and even in Adobe Acrobat had to be corrected to typeset the text. The software tools were refined with the repeated and valuable support of Donald Arseneau; help came also from Ulrike Fischer, Piet van Oostrum, Gerben Wierda, Klaus Böhncke, Craig Upright, Herbert Voss, Andrew Trevorrow, Danie Els, Sebastian Rahtz, Don Story, Vincent Darley, Johan Linde, Joseph Hertzlinger, Rick Zaccone, John Warkentin, Ulrich Diez, Uwe Siart, Will Robertson, Joseph Wright, Enrico Gregorio, Rolf Niepraschk, Alexander Grahn and Michael Zedler.
Website: The programming of the html pages owes much to the help of Greg Smith and Michael Beretka. Chris Garbers helped for the wiki and many other issues. Ipad tests are due to Rick Shoal. The website uses several PHP scripts from the PHPJunkyard and from Phil Connell. Translations of the html pages are due to Daniel Gutmanas, Romano Perini, Matous Ringel, Marek Gajdos, Irwan Prasetya Gunawan, Jarosław Królikowski, Johnny Chadda, Martin Clausen, Dimitar Genchev, Ryan, Kasper Olsen, Helga Trapp, Thomas Wahlstrøm, Gorka Ochoa, Ambrož Demšar, Roman Beslik, Paul Townsend, Kristjan Kannike and Hirooka Megumi.
Colour sponsors
The many readers who sent feedback, suggestions and criticism helped making this text into what it is today. Thank you for the support! You add the colour to this project.
