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 PHYSICS
SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS
for

w ith M o d ern Physics

D O U G L A S C. G I A N C O L I

PEARSON

Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458

 E lectromagnetic I n d u c t io n
and Faraday' s Law 758
29-1 Induced EMF 759
29-2 Faraday’s Law of Induction; Lenz’s Law 760
29-3 EMF Induced in a Moving Conductor 765
29-4 Electric Generators 766
*29-5 Back EMF and Counter Torque;
Eddy Currents 768
29-6 Transformers and Transmission of Power 770
29-7 A Changing Magnetic Flux Produces an
Electric Field 773
*29-8 Applications of Induction:
Sound Systems, Computer Memory,
Seismograph, GFCI 775
SUMMARY 111 QUESTIONS 111
PROBLEMS 778 GENERAL PROBLEMS 782

Inductance , E lectromagnetic
27 M a g n e t is m 707
30-1
O scillations, and AC C ircuits 7 8 5
Mutual Inductance 786
27-1 Magnets and Magnetic Fields 707 30-2 Self-Inductance 788
27-2 Electric Currents Produce Magnetic Fields 710 30-3 Energy Stored in a Magnetic Field 790
27-3 Force on an Electric Current in a 30-4 LR Circuits 790
Magnetic Field; Definition of B 710
30-5 LC Circuits and Electromagnetic
27-4 Force on an Electric Charge Moving Oscillations 793
in a Magnetic Field 714
30-6 LC Oscillations with Resistance
27-5 Torque on a Current Loop; Magnetic (.LRC Circuit) 795
Dipole Moment 718
30-7 AC Circuits with AC Source 796
*27-6 Applications: Motors, Loudspeakers,
Galvanometers 720 30-8 LRC Series AC Circuit 799
27-7 Discovery and Properties of the 30-9 Resonance in AC Circuits 802
Electron 721 *30-10 Impedance Matching 802
27-8 The Hall Effect 723 *30-11 Three-Phase AC 803
*27-9 Mass Spectrometer 724 SUMMARY 804 QUESTIONS 804
PROBLEMS 805 GENERAL PROBLEMS 809
SUMMARY 725 QUESTIONS 726
PROBLEMS 727 GENERAL PROBLEMS 730
M axwell' s E quations and
E lectromagnetic W aves 812
S ources o f M agnetic F ield 733
31-1 Changing Electric Fields Produce
28-1 Magnetic Field Due to a Straight Wire 734 Magnetic Fields; Ampere’s Law and
28-2 Force between Two Parallel Wires 735 Displacement Current 813
28-3 Definitions of the Ampere and the 31-2 Gauss’s Law for Magnetism 816
Coulomb 736 31-3 Maxwell’s Equations 817
28-4 Ampere’s Law 737 31-4 Production of Electromagnetic Waves 817
28-5 Magnetic Field of a Solenoid and 31-5 Electromagnetic Waves, and
a Toroid 741 Their Speed, from Maxwell’s Equations 819
28-6 Biot-Savart Law 743 31-6 Light as an Electromagnetic Wave
28-7 Magnetic Materials—Ferromagnetism 746 and the Electromagnetic Spectrum 823
*28-8 Electromagnets and 31-7 Measuring the Speed of Light 825
Solenoids—Applications 747 31-8 Energy in EM Waves; the Poynting Vector 826
*28-9 Magnetic Fields in Magnetic Materials; 31-9 Radiation Pressure 828
Hysteresis 748 31-10 Radio and Television;
*28-10 Paramagnetism and Diamagnetism 749 Wireless Communication 829
SUMMARY 750 QUESTIONS 751 SUMMARY 832 QUESTIONS 832
PROBLEMS 751 GENERAL PROBLEMS 755 PROBLEMS 833 GENERAL PROBLEMS 835

viii CONTENTS
 Lig h t : R eflection
32 and R efraction 837
32-1 The Ray Model of Light 838
32-2 Reflection; Image Formation by a
Plane Mirror 838
32-3 Formation of Images by Spherical
Mirrors 842
32-4 Index of Refraction 850
32-5 Refraction: Snell’s Law 850
32-6 Visible Spectrum and Dispersion 852
32-7 Total Internal Reflection; Fiber Optics 854
*32-8 Refraction at a Spherical Surface 856
SUMMARY 858 QUESTIONS 859
PROBLEMS 860 GENERAL PROBLEMS 864

T he W ave N ature Light ;

y j i i 'w n in H r . th e n h ( « l K- p l4 A ‘J .11 lltL> N irti

34 I nterference
of
900
rm I t u p r o d lM U a v ic tu a l im u jw . h W h 34-1 Waves Versus Particles; Huygens’
> ^ C L S m n i r i t o n n f rw irt
j f n ( . ^ m p j f j s o n u l p jT L { J J ^
IMIw c j* « ictmed.
ift CK K tly U I V f ^ a l p u ir L Principle and Diffraction 901
/viewed at ihe near point wirfiSL'**vcn >™ ‘w the <*jw.-i_ 34-2 Huygens’ Principle and the Law of
object subtends at the eye is much /a!k rarl(h>in Refraction 902
magniricttliim or mttgnifying power, rr‘
angle subtended by an object when u s i n X ^ S j f c ^ c r,JhlJ ,lf lHc 34-3 Interference—Young’s Double-Slit
unaided eye, with the object at the nea^P^^u^itn^duMnicih.L: Experiment 903
normal eye): »" ,h4: lN - fDr * *34-4 Intensity in the Double-Slit
Interference Pattern 906
M (»-£i 34-5 Interference in Thin Films 909
vritc jWin [Linn L»1lilt t«*l *34-6 Michelson Interferometer 914
w here 0 and flr ars shown in Fig. 3 3 -3 3 . ' “ h/tl" (Hj(. 3? .l.lij, wliL’ii;
length by noting that 0 = h / N (Fig, 3.1- lc*#tc wialt k>rtandflrcijiml *34-7 Luminous Intensity 915
* « .he heigh, of Ihe object and we J -3J SUMMARY 915 QUESTIONS 916
^buir suits and lungems, ff the eye is
j^t infinity and the ot>ji.>el will h> PROBLEMS 916 GENERAL PROBLEMS 918
^ / and fl' = h / f .
D iffraction
35 and P olarization 921
35-1 Diffraction by a Single Slit or Disk 922
*35-2 Intensity in Single-Slit Diffraction
Pattern 924
*35-3 Diffraction in the Double-Slit Experiment 927
Lenses a nd O ptical 35-4 Limits of Resolution; Circular Apertures 929
33 I nstruments 866 35-5 Resolution of Telescopes and
Microscopes; the A Limit 931
33-1 Thin Lenses; Ray Tracing 867 *35-6 Resolution of the Human Eye
33-2 The Thin Lens Equation; Magnification 870 and Useful Magnification 932
33-3 Combinations of Lenses 874 35-7 Diffraction Grating 933
*33-4 Lensmaker’s Equation 876 35-8 The Spectrometer and Spectroscopy 935
33-5 Cameras: Film and Digital 878 *35-9 Peak Widths and Resolving Power for a
33-6 The Human Eye; Corrective Lenses 882 Diffraction Grating 937
33-7 Magnifying Glass 885 35-10 X-Rays and X-Ray Diffraction 938
33-8 Telescopes 887 35-11 Polarization 940
*33-9 Compound Microscope 890 *35-12 Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) 943
*33-10 Aberrations of Lenses and Mirrors 891 *35-13 Scattering of Light by the Atmosphere 945
SUMMARY 892 QUESTIONS 893 s u m m a r y 945 q u e s t io n s 946
PROBLEMS 894 GENERAL PROBLEMS 897 PROBLEMS 946 GENERAL PROBLEMS 949

CONTENTS ix
Volume 3
36 S pecial T heory of R elativity 951
36-1 Galilean-Newtonian Relativity 952
*36-2 The Michelson-Morley Experiment 954
36-3 Postulates of the Special Theory of Relativity 957
36-4 Simultaneity 958
36-5 Time Dilation and the Twin Paradox 960
36-6 Length Contraction 964
36-7 Four-Dimensional Space-Time 967
36-8 Galilean and Lorentz Transformations 968
36-9 Relativistic Momentum and Mass 971
36-10 The Ultimate Speed 974
36-11 E = me2; Mass and Energy 974
*36-12 Doppler Shift for Light 978
36-13 The Impact of Special Relativity 980
SUMMARY 981 QUESTIONS 981
PROBLEMS 982 GENERAL PROBLEMS 985

E arly Q uantum T heory and

37 M odels o f the A tom 987
Q uantum M echanics
37-1 Blackbody Radiation;
Planck’s Quantum Hypothesis 987
39 A toms
of
1044
37-2 Photon Theory; Photoelectric Effect 989 39-1 Quantum-Mechanical View of Atoms 1045
37-3 Photon Energy, Mass, and Momentum 993 39-2 Hydrogen Atom: Schrodinger Equation
37-4 Compton Effect 994 and Quantum Numbers 1045
37-5 Photon Interactions; Pair Production 996 39-3 Hydrogen Atom Wave Functions 1049
37-6 Wave-Particle Duality; the Principle of 39-4 Complex Atoms; the Exclusion Principle 1052
Complementarity 997 39-5 Periodic Table of Elements 1053
37-7 Wave Nature of Matter 997 39-6 X-Ray Spectra and Atomic Number 1054
*37-8 Electron Microscopes 1000 *39-7 Magnetic Dipole Moment;
37-9 Early Models of the Atom 1000 Total Angular Momentum 1057
37-10 Atomic Spectra: Key to Atomic Structure 1001 39-8 Fluorescence and Phosphorescence 1060
37-11 The Bohr Model 1003 39-9 Lasers 1061
37-12 deBroglie’s Hypothesis Applied to Atoms 1009 *39-10 Holography 1064
SUMMARY 1010 QUESTIONS 1011
SUMMARY 1066 QUESTIONS 1066
PROBLEMS 1012 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1014
PROBLEMS 1067 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1069

38 Q uantum M echanics 1017

40 M olecules and S olids 1071
38-1 Quantum Mechanics—A New Theory 1018
38-2 The Wave Function and Its Interpretation; 40-1 Bonding in Molecules 1071
the Double-Slit Experiment 1018 40-2 Potential-Energy Diagrams
38-3 The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 1020 for Molecules 1074
38-4 Philosophic Implications; Probability 40-3 Weak (van der Waals) Bonds 1077
Versus Determinism 1024 40-4 Molecular Spectra 1080
38-5 The Schrodinger Equation in One 40-5 Bonding in Solids 1085
Dimension—Time-Independent Form 1025 40-6 Free-Electron Theory of Metals;
*38-6 Time-Dependent Schrodinger Equation 1027 Fermi Energy 1086
38-7 Free Particles; Plane Waves and Wave Packets 1028 40-7 Band Theory of Solids 1090
38-8 Particle in an Infinitely Deep 40-8 Semiconductors and Doping 1093
Square Well Potential (a Rigid Box) 1030
40-9 Semiconductor Diodes 1094
38-9 Finite Potential Well 1035
38-10 Tunneling through a Barrier 1036 40-10 Transistors and Integrated Circuits (Chips) 1097
SUMMARY 1039 QUESTIONS 1039 SUMMARY 1098 QUESTIONS 1099
PROBLEMS 1040 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1042 PROBLEMS 1099 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1102
X CONTENTS
 N uclear P hysics
41 R adioactivity
and
1104 43 E lementary Particles 1164
41-1 Structure and Properties of the Nucleus 1105 43-1 High-Energy Particles and Accelerators 1165
41-2 Binding Energy and Nuclear Forces 1108 43-2 Beginnings of Elementary Particle
41-3 Radioactivity 1110 Physics—Particle Exchange 1171
41-4 Alpha Decay 1111 43-3 Particles and Antiparticles 1174
41-5 Beta Decay 1114 43-4 Particle Interactions and Conservation Laws 1175
41-6 Gamma Decay 1116 43-5 Neutrinos—Recent Results 1177
41-7 Conservation of Nucleon Number 43-6 Particle Classification 1178
and Other Conservation Laws 1117 43-7 Particle Stability and Resonances 1180
41-8 Half-Life and Rate of Decay 1117 43-8 Strangeness? Charm? Towards a New Model 1181
41-9 Decay Series 1121 43-9 Quarks 1182
41-10 Radioactive Dating 1122 43-10 The Standard Model: QCD and
41-11 Detection of Radiation 1124 Electroweak Theory 1184
SUMMARY 1126 QUESTIONS 1126 43-11 Grand Unified Theories 1187
PROBLEMS 1127 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1129
43-12 Strings and Supersymmetry 1189
SUMMARY 1189 QUESTIONS 1190
N uclear E nergy; E ffects
42 and U ses o f R adiation 1131
PROBLEMS 1190 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1191

42-1 Nuclear Reactions and the

Transmutation of Elements 1132
42-2 Cross Section 1135
42-3 Nuclear Fission; Nuclear Reactors 1136
42-4 Nuclear Fusion 1141
42-5 Passage of Radiation Through Matter;
Radiation Damage 1146 A strophysics and C osmology 1193
42-6 Measurement of Radiation—Dosimetry 1147
*42-7 Radiation Therapy 1150 44-1 Stars and Galaxies 1194
44-2 Stellar Evolution: Nucleosynthesis,
*42-8 Tracers in Research and Medicine 1151 and the Birth and Death of Stars 1197
*42-9 Imaging by Tomography: CAT Scans 44-3 Distance Measurements 1203
and Emission Tomography 1153
44-4 General Relativity: Gravity and the
*42-10 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR); Curvature of Space 1205
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 1156
44-5 The Expanding Universe: Redshift and
SUMMARY 1159 QUESTIONS 1159
Hubble’s Law 1209
PROBLEMS 1160 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1162
44-6 The Big Bang and the Cosmic
Microwave Background 1213
44-7 The Standard Cosmological Model:
Early History of the Universe 1216
44-8 Inflation 1219
44-9 Dark Matter and Dark Energy 1221
44-10 Large-Scale Structure of the Universe 1224
44-11 Finally ... 1224
SUMMARY 1225 QUESTIONS 1226
PROBLEMS 1226 GENERAL PROBLEMS 1227
A ppendices
A M athem atical F o r m u l a s A -1
B D erivatives a n d I n te g r a ls A -6
C M o r e o n D im e n s io n a l A nalysis A -8
D G ravitational F o r c e d u e t o a
S p h e r ic a l M a ss D ist r ib u t io n A -9
E D ifferential Fo r m o f M axwell's E q uations A - 1 2
F S elected I s o t o p e s A -14
A n sw e r s t o O d d - N u m b e r e d P ro bl em s A - 18
In d e x A -4 7
P h o t o C r e d it s A -7 2
CONTENTS xi
A pplications (s e le c te d )

Chapter 1 Escape velocity from Earth or Moon 201 Chapter 15

The 8000-m peaks 8 Stair climbing power 202 Echolocation by animals 400
Estimating volume of a lake 10 Power needs of car 202-3 Earthquake waves 401,403,416
Height by triangulation 11 Cardiac treadmill (Prl04) 213 Chapter 16
Radius of the Earth 11 Chapter 9 Distance from lightning 425
Heartbeats in a lifetime 12 Tennis serve 216 Autofocus camera 426
Particulate pollution (Pr30) 15 Rocket propulsion 219,236-8 Wide range of human hearing 427-8,431
Global positioning satellites (Pr39) 16 Rifle recoil 220 Loudspeaker response 428
Lung capacity (Pr65) 17 Karate blow 221 Stringed instruments 432-3
Chapter 2 Billiards/bowling 223,228 Wind instruments 433-6
Airport runway design 29 Nuclear collisions 225,228 Tuning with beats 439
Automobile air bags 31 Ballistic pendulum 226 Doppler blood flow meter 442,453
Braking distances 32 Conveyor belt 237 Sonar: sonic boom AAA
CD error correction (PrlO) 44 Gravitational slingshot (Prl05) 246 Ultrasound medical imaging 445-6
CD playing time (Prl3) 45 Crashworthiness (Prl09) 247 Motion sensor (Pr5) 448
Golfing uphill or down (Pr79) 48 Asteroids, planets (PrllO, 112,113) 247
Rapid transit (Pr83) 49 Chapter 10 Chapter 17
Hard drive and bit speed 253 Hot air balloon 454
Chapter 3 Expansion joints, highways 456,460,463
Kicked football 66,69 Wrench/tire iron 256
Flywheel energy 266,281 Gas tank overflow 462
Ball sports (Problems) 77,81,82 Life under ice 462
Extreme sports (Pr41) 77 Yo-yo 271
Car braking forces 272-3 Cold and hot tire pressure 468
Chapter 4 Molecules in a breath 469
Rocket acceleration 90 Bicycle odometer calibration (Ql) 275
Tightrope walker (Q ll) 275 Thermostat (Q10) 471
What force accelerates a car? 90 Scuba/snorkeling (Pr38,47,82,85) 473,475
Triceps muscle and throwing
How we walk 90 Chapter 18
(Pr38,39) 278
Elevator and counterweight 99 Chemical reactions, temperature
CD speed (Pr84) 281
Mechanical advantage of pulley 100 dependence 481
Bicycle gears (Pr89) 281
Bear sling (Q24) 104 Superfluidity 483
High-speed elevators (Prl9) 105 Chapter 11
Rotating skaters, divers 284,286,309 Evaporation cools 484,505
Mountain climbing (Pr31,82,83) 106,110 Humidity, weather 485-6
City planning, cars on hills (Pr71) 109 Neutron star collapse 287
Auto wheel balancing 296 Chromatography 490
Bicyclists (Pr72,73) 109 Pressure cooker (Pr35) 493
“Doomsday” asteroid (Pr84) 110 Top and gyroscope 299-300
Coriolis effect 301-2 Chapter 19
Chapter 5 Hurricanes 302 Working off the calories 498
Push or pull a sled? 116 SUV possible rollover (Pr67) 308 Cold floors 516
Centrifugation 122 Triple axel jump (Pr79) 309 Heat loss through windows 516
Not skidding on a curve 126-7 Bat’s “sweet spot” (Pr82) 310 How clothes insulate 516-7
Banked highways 127 i?-values for thermal insulation 517
Simulated gravity (Q18, Pr48) 131,134 Chapter 12
Tragic collapse 311,323 Convective house heating 517
“Rotor-ride” (Pr82) 136 Human radiative heat loss 518
Lever’s mechanical advantage 313
Chapter 6 Cantilever 315 Room comfort and metabolism 519
Oil/mineral exploration 144,420 Biceps muscle force 315 Radiation from Sun 519
Artificial Earth satellites 146 Human balance with loads 318 Medical thermography 519
Geosynchronous satellites 147 Trusses and bridges 324-6,335 Astronomy—size of a star 520
Weightlessness 148 Architecture: arches and domes 327-8 Thermos bottle (Q30) 521
Free fall in athletics 149 Forces on vertebrae (Pr87) 337 Weather, air parcel, adiabatic lapse
Planet discovery, extrasolar planets 152 Chapter 13 rate (Pr56) 525
Black holes 156 Lifting water 345,348 Chapter 20
Asteroids (Pr44,78) 159,162 Hydraulic lift, brakes 346 Steam engine 530
Navstar GPS (Pr58) 160 Pressure gauges 346-7 Internal combustion engine 531,535-6
Black hole, galaxy center Hydrometer 351 Car efficiency 532
(Pr61,64) 160,161 Helium balloon lift 352,368 Refrigerators, air conditioners 537-8
Tides (Pr75) 162 Blood flow 353,357,361 Heat pump 538
Chapter 7 Airplane wings, lift 356 Biological evolution, development 545
Car stopping distance of v2 174 Sailing against the wind 357 Thermal pollution, global warming 549-51
Lever(Pr6) 177 Baseball curve 357 Energy resources 550
Spiderman (Pr54) 179 Blood to the brain, TIA 357 Diesel engine (Pr7) 553
Bicycling on hills, gears (Pr85) 181 Blood flow and heart disease 359 Chapter 21
Child safety in car (Pr87) 181 Surface tension, capillarity 359-60 Static electricity 560,589 (Pr78)
Rock climber’s rope (Pr90) 182 Walking on water 360 Photocopiers 569,582-3
Chapter 8 Pumps and the heart 361 Electric shielding, safety 577
Downhill ski runs 183 Reynolds number (Pr69) 366 DNA structure and replication 581-2
Rollercoaster 191,198 Chapter 14 Biological cells: electric forces
Pole vault 192-3 Car shock absorbers 383 and kinetic theory 581-2,617
Toy dart gun 193 Resonance damage 386 Laser & inkjet printers 583
x ii APPLICATIONS
Chapter 23 Ground fault circuit interrupter Chapter 36
Breakdown voltage 612 (GFCI) 776 Space travel 963
Lightning rods, corona 612 Betatron (Pr55) 782 Global positioning system (GPS) 964
CRT, oscilloscopes, Search coil (Pr68) 783 Chapter 37
TV monitors 620-1,723 Inductive battery charger (Pr81) 784 Photocells 992
Photocell (Pr75) 626 Chapter 30 Photodiodes 992
Geiger counter (Pr83) 627 Spark plug 785 Photosynthesis 993
Van de Graaff (Pr84) 627,607 Pacemaker 787 Measuring bone density 995
Chapter 24 Surge protector 792 Electron microscopes 1000
Capacitor uses 628,631 LC oscillators, resonance 794,802 Chapter 38
Very high capacitance 631 Capacitors as filters 799 Tunneling through a QM barrier 1038
Computer key 631 Loudspeaker cross-over 799 Scanning tunneling electron
Camera flash 636 Impedance matching 802-3 microscope 1038-9
Heart defibrillator 638 Three-phase AC 803
DRAM (PrlO, 57) 644,647 0-value (Pr86,87) 810 Chapter 39
Electrostatic air cleaner (Pr20) 645 Fluorescence analysis 1060
Chapter 31 Fluorescent bulbs 1060
CMOS circuits (Pr53) 647 Antennas 824,831
Chapter 25 Phosphorescence, watch dials 1061
Phone call lag time 825 Lasers 1061-5
Light bulb 651,653,660 Solar sail 829
Battery construction 653 DVD and CD players 1063
Optical tweezers 829
Loudspeaker wires 659 Barcodes 1063
Wireless: AM/FM, TV, tuning,
Resistance thermometer 660 cell phones, remotes 829-32 Laser surgery 1064
Heating elements, bulb filament 660 Holography 1064-5
Chapter 32 Chapter 40
Why bulbs burn out at turn on 661
How tall a mirror do you need 840-1 Cell energy—activation energy, ATP 1075-7
Lightning bolt 662
Close up and wide-view
Household circuits, shorts 662-3 Weak bonds in cells, DNA 1077-8
mirrors 842,849,859
Fuses, circuit breakers 662-3,747,776 Protein synthesis 1079-80
Where you can see yourself in a
Extension cord danger 663 Transparency 1092
concave mirror 848
Nervous system, conduction 669-70 Semiconductor diodes, transistors 1094-8
Optical illusions 851,903
Strain gauge (Pr 24) 673 Rectifier circuits 1096
Apparent depth in water 852
Chapter 26 Rainbows 853 LED displays; photodiodes 1096
Car battery charging, jump start 686,687 Colors underwater 854 Integrated circuits (Chips) 1098
RC applications: flashers, wipers 691 Prism binoculars 855 Chapter 41
Heart pacemaker 692,787 Fiber optics in Smoke detectors 1114
Electric hazards 692-4 telecommunications 855-6,865 Carbon-14 dating 1122-3
Proper grounding 693-4 Medical endoscopes 856 Archeological, geological dating 1123-4
Heart fibrillation 692 Highway reflectors (Pr86) 865 Oldest Earth rocks and earliest life 1124
Meters, analog and digital 695-7
Chapter 33 Chapter 42
Potentiometers and bridges (Pr) 704,705
Where you can see a lens image 869 Nuclear reactors and power plants 1138^40
Chapter 27 Cameras, digital and film 878 Manhattan Project 1141
Compass and declination 709 Camera adjustments 879-80 Stellar fusion 1142-3
Aurora borealis 717 Pixels and resolution 881 Fusion energy reactors 1131,1144-6
Motors, loudspeakers, galvonometers 720-1 Human eye 882-5,892 Biological radiation damage 1146-7
Mass spectrometer 724-5 Corrective lenses 883-5 Radiation dosimetry 1147-9
Electromagnetic pumping (Q14) 726 Contact lenses 885 Radon 1148,1150
Cyclotron (Pr66) 731 Seeing under water 885 Human radiation exposure 1148-9
Beam steering (Pr67) 731 Magnifying glass 885-7 Radiation sickness 1149
Chapter 28 Telescopes 887-9,931-2 Radiation therapy 1150-1
Coaxial cable 740,789 Microscopes 890-1,931,933 Proton therapy 1151
Solenoid switches: car starters, Chapter 34 Tracers in medicine and biology 1151-2
doorbell 747 Bubbles, reflected color 900,912-3 X-ray imaging 1153
Circuit breakers, magnetic 747,776 CAT scans 1153-5
Mirages 903
Relay (Q16) 751 Emission tomography: PET
Atom trap (Pr73) 757 Colors in thin soap film, details 912-3
Lens coatings 913-4 and SPET 1156
Chapter 29 Multiple coating (Pr52) 919 NMR and MRI 1156-9
Induction stove 762 Chapter 43
EM blood-flow meter 765 Chapter 35
Lens and mirror resolution 929-30 Antimatter 1174-5,1188
Power plant generators 766-7
Car alternators 768 Hubble Space Telescope 930 Chapter 44
Motor overload 769 Eye resolution, Stars and galaxies 1194-9
Airport metal detector 770 useful magnification 930,932-3 Star evolution 1200-2
Eddy current damping 770 Radiotelescopes 931 Supernovae 1201,1202,1203
Transformers and uses, power 770-3 Telescope resolution, Arule 931 Star distances 1194,1203^1
Car ignition, bulb ballast 772,773 Spectroscopy 935-6 Black holes 1202,1208-9
Microphone 775 X-ray diffraction in biology 939 Curved space 1207-8
Read/write on disks and tape 775 Polarized sunglasses 942 Big Bang 1212,1213-6
Digital coding 775 LCDs—liquid crystal displays 943-4 Evolution of universe 1216-9
Credit card swipe 776 Sky color 945 Dark matter and dark energy 1221-3
APPLICATIONS x iii
 Preface
I was motivated from the beginning to write a textbook different from others that
present physics as a sequence of facts, like a Sears catalog: “here are the facts and
you better learn them.” Instead of that approach in which topics are begun
formally and dogmatically, I have sought to begin each topic with concrete
observations and experiences students can relate to: start with specifics and only then
go to the great generalizations and the more formal aspects of a topic, showing why
we believe what we believe. This approach reflects how science is actually practiced.

Why a Fourth Edition?

Two recent trends in physics texbooks are disturbing: (1) their revision cycles
have become short—they are being revised every 3 or 4 years; (2) the books are
getting larger, some over 1500 pages. I don’t see how either trend can be of
benefit to students. My response: (1) It has been 8 years since the previous
edition of this book. (2) This book makes use of physics education research,
although it avoids the detail a Professor may need to say in class but in a book shuts
down the reader. And this book still remains among the shortest.
This new edition introduces some important new pedagogic tools. It contains
new physics (such as in cosmology) and many new appealing applications (list on
previous page). Pages and page breaks have been carefully formatted to make the
physics easier to follow: no turning a page in the middle of a derivation or Example.
Great efforts were made to make the book attractive so students will want to read it.
Some of the new features are listed below.

What's New
Chapter-Opening Questions: Each Chapter begins with a multiple-choice question,
whose responses include common misconceptions. Students are asked to answer
before starting the Chapter, to get them involved in the material and to get any
preconceived notions out on the table. The issues reappear later in the Chapter,
usually as Exercises, after the material has been covered. The Chapter-Opening
Questions also show students the power and usefulness of Physics.
APPROACH paragraph in worked-out numerical Examples . A short introductory
paragraph before the Solution, outlining an approach and the steps we can take to
get started. Brief NOTES after the Solution may remark on the Solution, may give
an alternate approach, or mention an application.
Step-by-Step Examples: After many Problem Solving Strategies (more than 20 in
the book), the next Example is done step-by-step following precisely the steps just
seen.
Exercises within the text, after an Example or derivation, give students a chance to
see if they have understood enough to answer a simple question or do a simple
calculation. Many are multiple choice.
Greater clarity : No topic, no paragraph in this book was overlooked in the search
to improve the clarity and conciseness of the presentation. Phrases and sentences
that may slow down the principal argument have been eliminated: keep to the
essentials at first, give the elaborations later.
F, y, B Vector notation, arrows: The symbols for vector quantities in the text and Figures
now have a tiny arrow over them, so they are similar to what we write by hand.
Cosmological Revolution: With generous help from top experts in the field,
readers have the latest results.

xiv PREFACE
Page layout: more than in the previous edition, serious attention has been paid to
how each page is formatted. Examples and all important derivations and
arguments are on facing pages. Students then don’t have to turn back and forth.
Throughout, readers see, on two facing pages, an important slice of physics.
New Applications'. LCDs, digital cameras and electronic sensors (CCD, CMOS),
electric hazards, GFCIs, photocopiers, inkjet and laser printers, metal detectors,
underwater vision, curve balls, airplane wings, DNA, how we actually see images.
(Turn back a page to see a longer list.)
Examples modified: more math steps are spelled out, and many new Examples
added. About 10% of all Examples are Estimation Examples.
This Book is Shorter than other complete full-service books at this level. Shorter
explanations are easier to understand and more likely to be read.

Content and Organizational Changes

• Rotational Motion: Chapters 10 and 11 have been reorganized. All of angular
momentum is now in Chapter 11.
• First law of thermodynamics, in Chapter 19, has been rewritten and extended.
The full form is given: AK + A U + AEint = Q — W, where internal energy is
Ete, and U is potential energy; the form Q — W is kept so that dW = P dV.
• Kinematics and Dynamics of Circular Motion are now treated together in
Chapter 5.
• Work and Energy, Chapters 7 and 8, have been carefully revised.
• Work done by friction is discussed now with energy conservation (energy
terms due to friction).
• Chapters on Inductance and AC Circuits have been combined into one:
Chapter 30.
• Graphical Analysis and Numerical Integration is a new optional Section 2-9.
Problems requiring a computer or graphing calculator are found at the end
of most Chapters.
• Length of an object is a script £ rather than normal /, which looks like 1 or I
Versions of this Book
(moment of inertia, current), as in F = IIB. Capital L is for angular Complete version: 44 Chapters
momentum, latent heat, inductance, dimensions of length [L\. including 9 Chapters of modern
• Newton’s law of gravitation remains in Chapter 6. Why? Because the 1/r2 physics.
law is too important to relegate to a late chapter that might not be covered
Classic version: 37 Chapters
at all late in the semester; furthermore, it is one of the basic forces in nature.
including one each on relativity
In Chapter 8 we can treat real gravitational potential energy and have a fine
and quantum theory.
instance of using U = - JF • di.
• New Appendices include the differential form of Maxwell’s equations and 3 Volume version: Available
more on dimensional analysis. separately or packaged together
• Problem Solving Strategies are found on pages 30, 58, 64, 96,102,125,166, (Vols. 1 & 2 or all 3 Volumes):
198,229,261,314,504,551,571, 685,716,740,763,849, 871, and 913. Volume 1: Chapters 1-20 on
mechanics, including fluids,
Organization oscillations, waves, plus heat
and thermodynamics.
Some instructors may find that this book contains more material than can be
Volume 2: Chapters 21-35 on
covered in their courses. The text offers great flexibility. Sections marked with a
electricity and magnetism, plus
star * are considered optional. These contain slightly more advanced physics
light and optics.
material, or material not usually covered in typical courses and/or interesting
applications; they contain no material needed in later Chapters (except perhaps in Volume 3: Chapters 36-44 on
later optional Sections). For a brief course, all optional material could be dropped modern physics: relativity,
as well as major parts of Chapters 1, 13, 16, 26, 30, and 35, and selected parts of quantum theory, atomic physics,
Chapters 9,12,19,20, 33, and the modern physics Chapters. Topics not covered in condensed matter, nuclear
class can be a valuable resource for later study by students. Indeed, this text can physics, elementary particles,
serve as a useful reference for years because of its wide range of coverage. cosmology and astrophysics.

PREFACE XV
 Thanks
Many physics professors provided input or direct feedback on every aspect of this
textbook. They are listed below, and I owe each a debt of gratitude.

Mario Affatigato, Coe College Jim LaBelle, Dartmouth College

Lorraine Allen, United States Coast Guard Academy
Zaven Altounian, McGill University
Bruce Barnett, Johns Hopkins University
Michael Barnett, Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Anand Batra, Howard University
Cornelius Bennhold, George Washington University
Bruce Birkett, University of California Berkeley
Dr. Robert Boivin, Auburn University
Subir Bose, University of Central Florida
David Branning, Trinity College
Meade Brooks, Collin County Community College
Bruce Bunker, University of Notre Dame
Grant Bunker, Illinois Institute of Technology
Wayne Carr, Stevens Institute of Technology
Charles Chiu, University of Texas Austin
Robert Coakley, University of Southern Maine
David Curott, University of North Alabama
Biman Das, SUNY Potsdam
Bob Davis, Taylor University
Kaushik De, University of Texas Arlington
Michael Dennin, University of California Irvine
Kathy Dimiduk, University of New Mexico
John DiNardo, Drexel University
Scott Dudley, United States Air Force Academy
John Essick, Reed College
Cassandra Fesen, Dartmouth College
Alex Filippenko, University of California Berkeley
Richard Firestone, Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Mike Fortner, Northern Illinois University
Tom Furtak, Colorado School of Mines
Edward Gibson, California State University Sacramento
John Hardy, Texas A&M
J. Erik Hendrickson, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire
Laurent Hodges, Iowa State University
David Hogg, New York University
Mark Hollabaugh, Normandale Community College
Andy Hollerman, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
William Holzapfel, University of California Berkeley
Bob Jacobsen, University of California Berkeley
TerukiKamon, Texas A&M
Daryao Khatri, University of the District of Columbia
Jay Kunze, Idaho State University
M.A.K. Lodhi, Texas Tech
Bruce Mason, University of Oklahoma
Dan Mazilu, Virginia Tech
Linda McDonald, North Park College
Bill McNairy, Duke University
Raj Mohanty, Boston University
Giuseppe Molesini, Istituto Nazionale di Ottica Florence
Lisa K. Morris, Washington State University
Blaine Norum, University of Virginia
Alexandria Oakes, Eastern Michigan University
Michael Ottinger, Missouri Western State University
Lyman Page, Princeton and WMAP
Bruce Partridge, Haverford College
R. Daryl Pedigo, University of Washington
Robert Pelcovitz, Brown University
Vahe Peroomian, UCLA
James Rabchuk, Western Illinois University
Michele Rallis, Ohio State University
Paul Richards, University of California Berkeley
Peter Riley, University of Texas Austin
Larry Rowan, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Cindy Schwarz, Vassar College
Peter Sheldon, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
Natalia A. Sidorovskaia, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
James Siegrist, UC Berkeley, Director Physics Division LBNL
George Smoot, University of California Berkeley
Mark Sprague, East Carolina University
Michael Strauss, University of Oklahoma
Laszlo Takac, University of Maryland Baltimore Co.
Franklin D.Trumpy, Des Moines Area Community College
Ray Turner, Clemson University
Som Tyagi, Drexel University
John Vasut, Baylor University
Robert Webb, Texas A&M
Robert Weidman, Michigan Technological University
Edward A. Whittaker, Stevens Institute of Technology
John Wolbeck, Orange County Community College
Stanley George Wojcicki, Stanford University
Edward Wright, UCLA
Todd Young, Wayne State College
William Younger, College of the Albemarle
Hsiao-Ling Zhou, Georgia State University

I owe special thanks to Prof. Bob Davis for much valuable input, and especially for
working out all the Problems and producing the Solutions Manual for all Problems, as
well as for providing the answers to odd-numbered Problems at the end of this book.
Many thanks also to J. Erik Hendrickson who collaborated with Bob Davis on the
solutions, and to the team they managed (Profs. Anand Batra, Meade Brooks, David
Currott, Blaine Norum, Michael Ottinger, Larry Rowan, Ray Turner, John Vasut,
William Younger). I am grateful to Profs. John Essick, Bruce Barnett, Robert Coakley,
Biman Das, Michael Dennin, Kathy Dimiduk, John DiNardo, Scott Dudley,
David Hogg, Cindy Schwarz, Ray Turner, and Som Tyagi, who inspired many of
the Examples, Questions, Problems, and significant clarifications.
Crucial for rooting out errors, as well as providing excellent suggestions, were
Profs. Kathy Dimiduk, Ray Turner, and Lorraine Allen. A huge thank you to them
and to Prof. Giuseppe Molesini for his suggestions and his exceptional photographs
for optics.

xvi PREFACE
 For Chapters 43 and 44 on Particle Physics and Cosmology and Astrophysics,
I was fortunate to receive generous input from some of the top experts in the field,
to whom I owe a debt of gratitude: George Smoot, Paul Richards, Alex Filippenko,
James Siegrist, and William Holzapfel (UC Berkeley), Lyman Page (Princeton and
WMAP), Edward Wright (UCLA and WMAP), and Michael Strauss (University
of Oklahoma).
I especially wish to thank Profs. Howard Shugart, Chair Frances Heilman, and
many others at the University of California, Berkeley, Physics Department for
helpful discussions, and for hospitality. Thanks also to Prof. Tito Arecchi and others
at the Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Florence, Italy.
Finally, I am grateful to the many people at Prentice Hall with whom I
worked on this project, especially Paul Corey, Karen Karlin, Christian Botting,
John Christiana, and Sean Hogan.
The final responsibility for all errors lies with me. I welcome comments,
corrections, and suggestions as soon as possible to benefit students for the next reprint.
D.C.G.
email: Paul.Corey@Pearson.com
Post: Paul Corey
One Lake Street
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

About the Author

Douglas C. Giancoli obtained his BA in physics (summa cum laude) from the
University of California, Berkeley, his MS in physics at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and his PhD in elementary particle physics at the University of Cali­
fornia, Berkeley. He spent 2 years as a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley’s Virus
lab developing skills in molecular biology and biophysics. His mentors include
Nobel winners Emilio Segre and Donald Glaser.
He has taught a wide range of undergraduate courses, traditional as well as
innovative ones, and continues to update his texbooks meticulously, seeking ways to
better provide an understanding of physics for students.
Doug’s favorite spare-time activity is the outdoors, especially climbing peaks
(here on a dolomite summit, Italy). He says climbing peaks is like learning physics:
it takes effort and the rewards are great.

Online Supplements (partial list) Student Supplements (partial list)

MasteringPhysics™ (www.masteringphysics.com)
is a sophisticated online tutoring and homework system devel­
oped specially for courses using calculus-based physics.
Originally developed by David Pritchard and collaborators at
MIT, MasteringPhysics provides students with individualized online
tutoring by responding to their wrong answers and providing
hints for solving multi-step problems when they get stuck. It gives
them immediate and up-to-date assessment of their progress, and
shows where they need to practice more. MasteringPhysics
provides instructors with a fast and effective way to assign tried-
and-tested online homework assignments that comprise a range of
problem types. The powerful post-assignment diagnostics allow
instructors to assess the progress of their class as a whole as well
as individual students, and quickly identify areas of difficulty.
WebAssign (www.webassign.com)
CAPA and LON-CAPA (www.lon-capa.org)
Student Study Guide & Selected Solutions Manual (Volume I:
0-13-227324-1, Volumes U & III: 0-13-227325-X) by Frank Wolfs
Student Pocket Companion (0-13-227326-8) by Biman Das
Tutorials in Introductory Physics (0-13-097069-7)
by Lillian C. McDermott, Peter S. Schaffer, and the Physics
Education Group at the University of Washington
Physlet® Physics (0-13-101969-4)
by Wolfgang Christian and Mario Belloni
Ranking Task Exercises in Physics, Student Edition (0-13-144851-X)
by Thomas L. O’Kuma, David P. Maloney, and Curtis J. Hieggelke
E&M TIPERs: Electricity & Magnetism Tasks Inspired by Physics
Education Research (0-13-185499-2) by Curtis J. Hieggelke,
David P. Maloney, Stephen E. Kanim, and Thomas L. O ’Kuma
Mathematics for Physics with Calculus (0-13-191336-0)
by Biman Das

PREFACE xvii
 To Students
HOW TO STUDY
1. Read the Chapter. Learn new vocabulary and notation. Try to respond to
questions and exercises as they occur.
2. Attend all class meetings. Listen. Take notes, especially about aspects you do
not remember seeing in the book. Ask questions (everyone else wants to, but
maybe you will have the courage). You will get more out of class if you read
the Chapter first.
3. Read the Chapter again, paying attention to details. Follow derivations and
worked-out Examples. Absorb their logic. Answer Exercises and as many of
the end of Chapter Questions as you can.
4. Solve 10 to 20 end of Chapter Problems (or more), especially those assigned.
In doing Problems you find out what you learned and what you didn’t. Discuss
them with other students. Problem solving is one of the great learning tools.
Don’t just look for a formula—it won’t cut it.

NOTES ON THE FORMAT AND PROBLEM SOLVING

1. Sections marked with a star (*) are considered optional. They can be omitted
without interrupting the main flow of topics. No later material depends on
them except possibly later starred Sections. They may be fun to read, though.
2. The customary conventions are used: symbols for quantities (such as m for
mass) are italicized, whereas units (such as m for meter) are not italicized.
Symbols for vectors are shown in boldface with a small arrow above: F.
3. Few equations are valid in all situations. Where practical, the limitations of
important equations are stated in square brackets next to the equation. The
equations that represent the great laws of physics are displayed with a tan
background, as are a few other indispensable equations.
4. At the end of each Chapter is a set of Problems which are ranked as Level I, II, or
III, according to estimated difficulty. Level I Problems are easiest, Level II are
standard Problems, and Level III are “challenge problems.” These ranked
Problems are arranged by Section, but Problems for a given Section may depend
on earlier material too. There follows a group of General Problems, which are not
arranged by Section nor ranked as to difficulty. Problems that relate to optional
Sections are starred (*). Most Chapters have 1 or 2 Computer/Numerical
Problems at the end, requiring a computer or graphing calculator. Answers to
odd-numbered Problems are given at the end of the book.
5. Being able to solve Problems is a crucial part of learning physics, and provides
a powerful means for understanding the concepts and principles. This book
contains many aids to problem solving: (a) worked-out Examples and their
solutions in the text, which should be studied as an integral part of the text;
(b) some of the worked-out Examples are Estimation Examples, which show
how rough or approximate results can be obtained even if the given data are
sparse (see Section 1-6); (c) special Problem Solving Strategies placed
throughout the text to suggest a step-by-step approach to problem solving
for a particular topic—but remember that the basics remain the same;
most of these “Strategies” are followed by an Example that is solved by
explicitly following the suggested steps; (d) special problem-solving Sections;
(e) “Problem Solving” marginal notes which refer to hints within the text for
solving Problems; (f) Exercises within the text that you should work out imme­
diately, and then check your response against the answer given at the bottom of
the last page of that Chapter; (g) the Problems themselves at the end of each
Chapter (point 4 above).
6. Conceptual Examples pose a question which hopefully starts you to think and
come up with a response. Give yourself a little time to come up with your own
response before reading the Response given.
7. Math review, plus some additional topics, are found in Appendices. Useful data,
conversion factors, and math formulas are found inside the front and back covers.

xviii PREFACE
 USE OF COLOR

Vectors

A general vector
resultant vector (sum) is slightly thicker
components of any vector are dashed
Displacement (D, ?)
Velocity (v)
Acceleration (a)
Force (F)
Force on second or
third object in same figure
Momentum (p ormv)
Angular momentum (L)
Angular velocity (to)
Torque ( f )
Electric field (E)
Magnetic field (B)

Electricity and magnetism Electric circuit symbols

Electric field lines Wire, with switch S
S
Equipotential lines Resistor -v w v -

T T
1 l
Magnetic field lines Capacitor

Electric charge (+) + ) or • + Inductor -/n n n p -

Electric charge (-) Q or • - Battery

Ground x

Optics Other
Light rays — *— Energy level
Object (atom, etc.)
1 Measurement lines h—1.0 m—H
Real image 4
■ Path of a moving ------------
(dashed) ■
■ object

Virtual image 4 Direction of motion -------►

(dashed and paler) ■
■ or current
■

PREFACE
 Image of the Earth from a NASA satellite. The sky
appears black from out in space because
there are so few molecules to
reflect light (Why the sky
appears blue to us on
Earth has to do with
scattering of light by
molecules of the
atmosphere, as

• * 4 Chapter 35.)
Note the
storm off
the coast
of Mexico.

Introduction,
Measurement, Estimating
CHAPTER-OPENING QUESTION —Guess now!
Suppose you wanted to actually measure the radius of the Earth, at least roughly, CONTENTS
rather than taking other people’s word for what it is. Which response below 1-1 The Nature of Science
describes the best approach? 1-2 Models, Theories, and Laws
(a) Give up; it is impossible using ordinary means. 1-3 Measurement and Uncertainty;
(b) Use an extremely long measuring tape. Significant Figures
(c) It is only possible by flying high enough to see the actual curvature of the Earth. 1 -4 Units, Standards, and
(d) Use a standard measuring tape, a step ladder, and a large smooth lake. the SI System
(e) Use a laser and a mirror on the Moon or on a satellite. 1-5 Converting Units

\We start each Chapter with a Question, like the one above. Try to answer it right away. Don’t worry 1-6 Order of Magnitude:
about getting the right answer now— the idea is to get your preconceived notions out on the table. If they Rapid Estimating
are misconceptions, we expect them to be cleared up as you read the Chapter. You will usually get another :1 -7 Dimensions and Dimensional
chance at the Question later in the Chapter when the appropriate material has been covered. These Analysis
Chapter-Opening Questions will also help you to see the power and usefulness of physics. ]
1

(b)
FIGURE 1-1 (a) This Roman
aqueduct was built 2000 years ago
and still stands, (b) The Hartford
Civic Center collapsed in 1978, just
two years after it was built.
2 CHAPTER 1
hysics is the most basic of the sciences. It deals with the behavior and
P structure of matter. The field of physics is usually divided into classical physics
which includes motion, fluids, heat, sound, light, electricity and magnetism;
and modem physics which includes the topics of relativity, atomic structure,
condensed matter, nuclear physics, elementary particles, and cosmology and astrophysics.
We will cover all these topics in this book, beginning with motion (or mechanics, as it
is often called) and ending with the most recent results in our study of the cosmos.
An understanding of physics is crucial for anyone making a career in science
or technology. Engineers, for example, must know how to calculate the forces within
a structure to design it so that it remains standing (Fig. 1-la). Indeed, in Chapter 12
we will see a worked-out Example of how a simple physics calculation—or even
intuition based on understanding the physics of forces—would have saved
hundreds of lives (Fig. 1-lb). We will see many examples in this book of how
physics is useful in many fields, and in everyday life.
1—1 The Nature of Science
The principal aim of all sciences, including physics, is generally considered to be
the search for order in our observations of the world around us. Many people
think that science is a mechanical process of collecting facts and devising theories.
But it is not so simple. Science is a creative activity that in many respects resem­
bles other creative activities of the human mind.
One important aspect of science is observation of events, which includes the
design and carrying out of experiments. But observation and experiment require
imagination, for scientists can never include everything in a description of what
they observe. Hence, scientists must make judgments about what is relevant in
their observations and experiments.
Consider, for example, how two great minds, Aristotle (384-322 b .c .) and
Galileo (1564-1642), interpreted motion along a horizontal surface. Aristotle
noted that objects given an initial push along the ground (or on a tabletop) always
slow down and stop. Consequently, Aristotle argued that the natural state of an
object is to be at rest. Galileo, in his reexamination of horizontal motion in the
1600s, imagined that if friction could be eliminated, an object given an initial
push along a horizontal surface would continue to move indefinitely without
stopping. He concluded that for an object to be in motion was just as natural as for
it to be at rest. By inventing a new approach, Galileo founded our modern view of
motion (Chapters 2,3, and 4), and he did so with a leap of the imagination. Galileo
made this leap conceptually, without actually eliminating friction.
Observation, with careful experimentation and measurement, is one side of the
scientific process. The other side is the invention or creation of theories to explain
and order the observations. Theories are never derived directly from observations.
Observations may help inspire a theory, and theories are accepted or rejected based
on the results of observation and experiment.
The great theories of science may be compared, as creative achievements, with
great works of art or literature. But how does science differ from these other
creative activities? One important difference is that science requires testing of its
ideas or theories to see if their predictions are borne out by experiment.
Although the testing of theories distinguishes science from other creative
fields, it should not be assumed that a theory is “proved” by testing. First of all, no
measuring instrument is perfect, so exact confirmation is not possible. Further­
more, it is not possible to test a theory in every single possible circumstance. Hence
a theory cannot be absolutely verified. Indeed, the history of science tells us that
long-held theories can be replaced by new ones.
1 -2 Models, Theories, and Laws
When scientists are trying to understand a particular set of phenomena, they often
make use of a model. A model, in the scientist’s sense, is a kind of analogy or
mental image of the phenomena in terms of something we are familiar with. One
example is the wave model of light. We cannot see waves of light as we can water
waves. But it is valuable to think of light as made up of waves because experiments
indicate that light behaves in many respects as water waves do.
The purpose of a model is to give us an approximate mental or visual picture—
something to hold on to—when we cannot see what actually is happening. Models
often give us a deeper understanding: the analogy to a known system (for instance,
water waves in the above example) can suggest new experiments to perform and can
provide ideas about what other related phenomena might occur.
You may wonder what the difference is between a theory and a model. Usually
a model is relatively simple and provides a structural similarity to the phenomena
being studied. A theory is broader, more detailed, and can give quantitatively testable
predictions, often with great precision.
It is important, however, not to confuse a model or a theory with the real
system or the phenomena themselves.
Scientists give the title law to certain concise but general statements about
how nature behaves (that energy is conserved, for example). Sometimes the state­
ment takes the form of a relationship or equation between quantities (such as
Newton’s second law, F = ma).
To be called a law, a statement must be found experimentally valid over a wide
range of observed phenomena. For less general statements, the term principle is
often used (such as Archimedes’ principle).
Scientific laws are different from political laws in that the latter are
prescriptive: they tell us how we ought to behave. Scientific laws are descriptive:
they do not say how nature should behave, but rather are meant to describe how
nature does behave. As with theories, laws cannot be tested in the infinite variety
of cases possible. So we cannot be sure that any law is absolutely true. We use the
term “law” when its validity has been tested over a wide range of cases, and when
any limitations and the range of validity are clearly understood.
Scientists normally do their research as if the accepted laws and theories were
true. But they are obliged to keep an open mind in case new information should
alter the validity of any given law or theory.

1 -3 Measurement and Uncertainty;

Significant Figures
In the quest to understand the world around us, scientists seek to find relationships
among physical quantities that can be measured.
Uncertainty
Reliable measurements are an important part of physics. But no measurement is FIGURE 1-2 Measuring the width
absolutely precise. There is an uncertainty associated with every measurement. Among of a board with a centimeter ruler.
the most important sources of uncertainty, other than blunders, are the limited accuracy The uncertainty is about ± 1 mm.
of every measuring instrument and the inability to read an instrument beyond some
fraction of the smallest division shown. For example, if you were to use a centimeter
ruler to measure the width of a board (Fig. 1-2), the result could be claimed to be
precise to about 0.1 cm (1 mm), the smallest division on the ruler, although half of this
value might be a valid claim as well. The reason is that it is difficult for the observer to
estimate (or interpolate) between the smallest divisions. Furthermore, the ruler itself
may not have been manufactured to an accuracy very much better than this.
When giving the result of a measurement, it is important to state the estimated
uncertainty in the measurement. For example, the width of a board might be
written as 8.8 ± 0.1 cm. The ± 0.1 cm (“plus or minus 0.1 cm”) represents the
estimated uncertainty in the measurement, so that the actual width most likely lies
between 8.7 and 8.9 cm. The percent uncertainty is the ratio of the uncertainty
to the measured value, multiplied by 100. For example, if the measurement is 8.8
and the uncertainty about 0.1 cm, the percent uncertainty is

1%,
where ~ means “is approximately equal to.’ SECTION 1-3 3

(a) (b)
FIGURE 1 - 3 These two calculators
show the wrong number of significant
figures. In (a), 2.0 was divided by 3.0.
The correct final result would be 0.67.
In (b), 2.5 was multiplied by 3.2. The
correct result is 8.0.
p PROBLEM SOLVING
Significant figure rule:
N um ber o f significant figures in final
result should be sam e as the least
significant input value
A CAUT I ON
Calculators err with significant figures
I PROBL E I VI SOLVING
R eport only the p ro p er num ber o f
significant figures in the final result.
Keep extra digits during
the calculation
FIGURE 1 - 4 Example 1-1.
A protractor used to measure an angle.
4 CHAPTER 1
Often the uncertainty in a measured value is not specified explicitly. In such cases,
the uncertainty is generally assumed to be one or a few units in the last digit specified.
For example, if a length is given as 8.8 cm, the uncertainty is assumed to be about
0.1 cm or 0.2 cm. It is important in this case that you do not write 8.80 cm, for this
implies an uncertainty on the order of 0.01 cm; it assumes that the length is probably
between 8.79 cm and 8.81 cm, when actually you believe it is between 8.7 and 8.9 cm.
Significant Figures
The number of reliably known digits in a number is called the number of
significant figures. Thus there are four significant figures in the number 23.21 cm
and two in the number 0.062 cm (the zeros in the latter are merely place holders
that show where the decimal point goes). The number of significant figures may
not always be clear. Take, for example, the number 80. Are there one or two signif­
icant figures? We need words here: If we say it is roughly 80 km between two
cities, there is only one significant figure (the 8) since the zero is merely a place
holder. If there is no suggestion that the 80 is a rough approximation, then we can
often assume (as we will in this book) that it is 80 km within an accuracy of about
1 or 2 km, and then the 80 has two significant figures. If it is precisely 80 km, to
within + 0.1 km, then we write 80.0 km (three significant figures).
When making measurements, or when doing calculations, you should avoid the
temptation to keep more digits in the final answer than is justified. For example, to
calculate the area of a rectangle 11.3 cm by 6.8 cm, the result of multiplication would
be 76.84 cm2. But this answer is clearly not accurate to 0.01 cm2, since (using the
outer limits of the assumed uncertainty for each measurement) the result could be
between 11.2 cm X 6.7 cm = 75.04 cm2 and 11.4 cm X 6.9 cm = 78.66 cm2. At best,
we can quote the answer as 77 cm2, which implies an uncertainty of about 1 or 2 cm2.
The other two digits (in the number 76.84 cm2) must be dropped because they are not
significant. As a rough general rule (i.e., in the absence of a detailed consideration
of uncertainties), we can say that the final result o f a multiplication or division should
have only as many digits as the number with the least number o f significant figures
used in the calculation. In our example, 6.8 cm has the least number of significant
figures, namely two. Thus the result 76.84 cm2 needs to be rounded off to 77 cm2.
EXERCISE A The area of a rectangle 4.5 cm by 3.25 cm is correctly given by (a) 14.625 cm2;
(b) 14.63 cm2; (c) 14.6 cm2; (d) 15 cm2.
When adding or subtracting numbers, the final result is no more precise than
the least precise number used. For example, the result of subtracting 0.57 from 3.6
is 3.0 (and not 3.03).
Keep in mind when you use a calculator that all the digits it produces may not
be significant. When you divide 2.0 by 3.0, the proper answer is 0.67, and not some
such thing as 0.666666666. Digits should not be quoted in a result, unless they are
truly significant figures. However, to obtain the most accurate result, you should
normally keep one or more extra significant figures throughout a calculation, and
round o ff only in the final result. (With a calculator, you can keep all its digits in
intermediate results.) Note also that calculators sometimes give too few significant
figures. For example, when you multiply 2.5 X 3.2, a calculator may give the
answer as simply 8. But the answer is accurate to two significant figures, so the proper
answer is 8.0. See Fig. 1-3.
CONCEPTUAL EXAMPLE 1-1 | Significant figures. Using a protractor (Fig. 1-4),
you measure an angle to be 30°. (a) How many significant figures should you quote in
this measurement? (b) Use a calculator to find the cosine of the angle you measured.
RESPONSE (a) If you look at a protractor, you will see that the precision with
which you can measure an angle is about one degree (certainly not 0.1°). So you
can quote two significant figures, namely, 30° (not 30.0°). (b) If you enter cos 30°
in your calculator, you will get a number like 0.866025403. However, the angle
you entered is known only to two significant figures, so its cosine is correctly
given by 0.87; you must round your answer to two significant figures.
NOTE Cosine and other trigonometric functions are reviewed in Appendix A.
| EXERCISE B Do 0.00324 and 0.00056 have the same number of significant figures?
Be careful not to confuse significant figures with the number of decimal places.
EXERCISE C For each of the following numbers, state the number of significant figures
and the number of decimal places: {a) 1.23; (b) 0.123; (c) 0.0123.

Scientific_Notation
We commonly write numbers in “powers of ten,” or “scientific” notation—for
instance 36,900 as 3.69 X 104, or 0.0021 as 2.1 X 10-3. One advantage of scientific
notation is that it allows the number of significant figures to be clearly expressed.
For example, it is not clear whether 36,900 has three, four, or five significant
figures. With powers of ten notation the ambiguity can be avoided: if the number is
known to three significant figures, we write 3.69 X 104, but if it is known to four,
we write 3.690 X 104.

I EXERCISE D Write each of the following in scientific notation and state the number of
| significant figures for each: (a) 0.0258, (b) 42,300, (c) 344.50.

Percent Uncertainty versus Significant Figures

The significant figures rule is only approximate, and in some cases may underestimate
the accuracy (or uncertainty) of the answer. Suppose for example we divide 97 by 92:
97
— = 1.05 « 1.1.
92
Both 97 and 92 have two significant figures, so the rule says to give the answer
as 1.1. Yet the numbers 97 and 92 both imply an uncertainty of + 1 if no other
uncertainty is stated. Now 92 + 1 and 97 + 1 both imply an uncertainty of
about 1% (1/92 « 0.01 = 1%). But the final result to two significant figures
is 1.1, with an implied uncertainty of + 0.1, which is an uncertainty of
0.1/1.1 « 0.1 ~ 10%. In this case it is better to give the answer as 1.05 (which is
three significant figures). Why? Because 1.05 implies an uncertainty of + 0.01
which is 0.01/1.05 « 0.01 ~ 1%, just like the uncertainty in the original
numbers 92 and 97.
SUGGESTION: Use the significant figures rule, but consider the % uncer­
tainty too, and add an extra digit if it gives a more realistic estimate of uncertainty.

Approximations
Much of physics involves approximations, often because we do not have the
means to solve a problem precisely. For example, we may choose to ignore air
resistance or friction in doing a Problem even though they are present in the real
world, and then our calculation is only an approximation. In doing Problems, we
should be aware of what approximations we are making, and be aware that the
precision of our answer may not be nearly as good as the number of significant
figures given in the result.

Accuracy versus Precision

There is a technical difference between “precision” and “accuracy.” Predsion in a strict
sense refers to the repeatability of the measurement using a given instrument. For
example, if you measure the width of a board many times, getting results like 8.81 cm,
8.85 cm, 8.78 cm, 8.82 cm (interpolating between the 0.1 cm marks as best as possible
each time), you could say the measurements give a precision a bit better than 0.1 cm.
Accuracy refers to how close a measurement is to the true value. For example, if the
ruler shown in Fig. 1-2 was manufactured with a 2% error, the accuracy of its
measurement of the board’s width (about 8.8 cm) would be about 2% of 8.8 cm or
about + 0.2 cm. Estimated uncertainty is meant to take both accuracy and precision
into account.

SECTION 1- 3 Measurement, Uncertainty; Significant Figures 5


TABLE 1-1 Some Typical
Lengths or Distances
(order of magnitude)
Length
(or D istance) (approximate)
Neutron or proton
(diam eter)
A tom
(diam eter)
Virus [see Fig. l- 5 a ]
Sheet o f paper
(thickness)
Finger width
Football field length
H eight o f Mt. Everest
[see Fig. l- 5 b ]
Earth diameter
Earth to Sun
Earth to nearest star
Earth to nearest galaxy
Earth to farthest
galaxy visible
FIGURE 1 - 5 Som e lengths:
(a) viruses (about 10-7 m long)
attacking a cell; (b) Mt. E verest’s
height is on the order of 104 m
(8850 m, to be precise).
(a)
1—4 Units, Standards, and the SI System
The measurement of any quantity is made relative to a particular standard or unit,
and this unit must be specified along with the numerical value of the quantity. For
example, we can measure length in British units such as inches, feet, or miles, or in
the metric system in centimeters, meters, or kilometers. To specify that the length
Meters
of a particular object is 18.6 is meaningless. The unit must be given; for clearly,
18.6 meters is very different from 18.6 inches or 18.6 millimeters.
For any unit we use, such as the meter for distance or the second for time, we
10-15 need to define a standard which defines exactly how long one meter or one second
is. It is important that standards be chosen that are readily reproducible so that
-7
anyone needing to make a very accurate measurement can refer to the standard in
the laboratory.
10-4 Length
10“2 The first truly international standard was the meter (abbreviated m) established as
102 the standard of length by the French Academy of Sciences in the 1790s. The stan­
dard meter was originally chosen to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the
104 Earth’s equator to either pole,f and a platinum rod to represent this length was
107 made. (One meter is, very roughly, the distance from the tip of your nose to the tip
1011 of your finger, with arm and hand stretched out to the side.) In 1889, the meter was
1016 defined more precisely as the distance between two finely engraved marks on a
1022 particular bar of platinum-iridium alloy. In 1960, to provide greater precision and
reproducibility, the meter was redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of a particular
1026 orange light emitted by the gas krypton-86. In 1983 the meter was again redefined,
this time in terms of the speed of light (whose best measured value in terms of the
older definition of the meter was 299,792,458 m/s, with an uncertainty of lm /s).
The new definition reads: “The meter is the length of path traveled by light in
vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.” *
British units of length (inch, foot, mile) are now defined in terms of the
meter. The inch (in.) is defined as precisely 2.54 centimeters (cm; 1 cm = 0.01 m).
Other conversion factors are given in the Table on the inside of the front cover
of this book. Table 1-1 presents some typical lengths, from very small to very
large, rounded off to the nearest power of ten. See also Fig. 1-5. [Note that the
abbreviation for inches (in.) is the only one with a period, to distinguish it from
the word “in”.]
Time
The standard unit of time is the second (s). For many years, the second was defined as
1/86,400 of a mean solar day (24h/day X 60min/h X 60s/min = 86,400 s/day).
The standard second is now defined more precisely in terms of the frequency of radi­
ation emitted by cesium atoms when they pass between two particular states.
[Specifically, one second is defined as the time required for 9,192,631,770 periods of
this radiation.] There are, by definition, 60 s in one minute (min) and 60 minutes in
one hour (h). Table 1-2 presents a range of measured time intervals, rounded off to
the nearest power of ten.
Mass
The standard unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). The standard mass is a particular
platinum-iridium cylinder, kept at the International Bureau of Weights and
Measures near Paris, France, whose mass is defined as exactly 1 kg. A range of
masses is presented in Table 1-3. [For practical purposes, 1 kg weighs about
2.2 pounds on Earth.]

tModern measurements of the Earth’s circumference reveal that the intended length is off by about
one-fiftieth of 1%. Not bad!
*The new definition of the meter has the effect of giving the speed of light the exact value of
(b) 299,792,458 m/s.

6 CHAPTER 1 Introduction, Measurement, Estimating

 TABLE 1-2 Some Typical Time Intervals TABLE 1-3 Some Masses
Time Interval Seconds (approximate) Object Kilograms (approximate)

Lifetim e o f very unstable subatomic particle 1 0 -23 s Electron 1(T30 kg

Lifetim e o f radioactive elem ents 10~22 s to 1028 s Proton, neutron 10-27 kg
Lifetim e o f muon 1(T6 s D N A m olecule 1(T17 kg
Time betw een human heartbeats 10° s (= 1 s) Bacterium 1(T15 kg
O ne day 105 s M osquito 1(T5 kg
O ne year 3 X 107 Plum 10"1 kg
Human life span 2 X 109 Human 102 kg
Length o f recorded history 1011 Ship 108 kg
Humans on Earth 1014 Earth 6 X 1024 kg
Life on Earth 1017 Sun 2 X 1030 kg
A g e of U niverse 1018 Galaxy 1041 kg

When dealing with atoms and molecules, we usually use the unified atomic TABLE 1-4 Metric (SI) Prefixes
mass unit (u). In terms of the kilogram,
Prefix Abbreviation Value
l u = 1.6605 X 10-27 kg.
The definitions of other standard units for other quantities will be given as we yotta Y 1024
encounter them in later Chapters. (Precise values of this and other numbers are zetta Z 1021
given inside the front cover.) exa E 1018
peta P 1015
Unit Prefixes
tera T 1012
In the metric system, the larger and smaller units are defined in multiples of 10 from 109
giga G
the standard unit, and this makes calculation particularly easy. Thus 1 kilometer (km)
m ega M 106
is 1000 m, 1 centimeter is ifem, 1 millimeter (mm) is or ^cm , and so on.
kilo k 103
The prefixes “centi-,” “kilo-,” and others are listed in Table 1-4 and can be applied
not only to units of length but to units of volume, mass, or any other metric unit. hecto h 102

For example, a centiliter (cL) is ^ liter (L)> and a kilogram (kg) is 1000 grams (g). deka da 101
deci d KT1
Systems of Units centi c 1(T2
When dealing with the laws and equations of physics it is very important to use a milli m 1(T3
consistent set of units. Several systems of units have been in use over the years. microf 1(T6
V
Today the most important is the Systeme International (French for International nano n K T9
System), which is abbreviated SI. In SI units, the standard of length is the meter,
pico P 1(T12
the standard for time is the second, and the standard for mass is the kilogram. This
fem to f 1(T15
system used to be called the MKS (meter-kilogram-second) system.
A second metric system is the cgs system, in which the centimeter, gram, and atto a KT18
second are the standard units of length, mass, and time, as abbreviated in the title. zepto z 1(T21
The British engineering system has as its standards the foot for length, the pound yocto y KT24
for force, and the second for time. f ju, is the Greek letter “mu.”
We use SI units almost exclusively in this book.
Base versus Derived Quantities TABLE 1-5
SI Base Quantities and Units
Physical quantities can be divided into two categories: base quantities and derived
quantities. The corresponding units for these quantities are called base units and Unit
Quantity Unit Abbreviation
derived units. A base quantity must be defined in terms of a standard. Scientists, in the
interest of simplicity, want the smallest number of base quantities possible consistent Length m eter m
with a full description of the physical world. This number turns out to be seven, and Time second s
those used in the SI are given in Table 1-5. All other quantities can be defined in terms Mass kilogram kg
of these seven base quantities/ and hence are referred to as derived quantities. An Electric
example of a derived quantity is speed, which is defined as distance divided by the time current ampere A
it takes to travel that distance. A Table inside the front cover lists many derived Temperature kelvin K
quantities and their units in terms of base units. To define any quantity, whether base or A m ount
derived, we can specify a rule or procedure, and this is called an operational definition. of substance m ole m ol
Luminous
trThe only exceptions are for angle (radians—see Chapter 8) and solid angle (steradian). No general intensity candela cd
agreement has been reached as to whether these are base or derived quantities.

SECTION 1- 4 Units, Standards, and the SI System 7

 1—5 Converting Units
Any quantity we measure, such as a length, a speed, or an electric current, consists
of a number and a unit. Often we are given a quantity in one set of units, but we
want it expressed in another set of units. For example, suppose we measure that a
table is 21.5 inches wide, and we want to express this in centimeters. We must use a
conversion factor, which in this case is (by definition) exactly
1 in. = 2.54 cm
or, written another way,
1 = 2.54 cm/in.
Since multiplying by one does not change anything, the width of our table, in cm, is

21.5 inches = (21.5 X ^ 2 .5 4 ^ ^ = 54.6 cm.

Note how the units (inches in this case) cancelled out. A Table containing many unit
conversions is found inside the front cover of this book. Let’s consider some Examples.

0 PHYSICS APPLIED EXAMPLE 1 -2 The 8000-m peaks. The fourteen tallest peaks in the world
The world’s tallest peaks (Fig. 1-6 and Table 1-6) are referred to as “eight-thousanders,” meaning their
summits are over 8000 m above sea level. What is the elevation, in feet, of an
elevation of 8000 m?

APPROACH We need simply to convert meters to feet, and we can start with the
conversion factor 1 in. = 2.54 cm, which is exact. That is, 1 in. = 2.5400 cm to
any number of significant figures, because it is defined to be.
SOLUTION One foot is 12 in., so we can write

cm
1 ft = (1 2 is.)(2 .5 4 — J = 30.48 cm = 0.3048 m,
FIGURE 1 - 6 The w orld ’s second
highest peak, K2, w h ose sum m it is
which is exact. Note how the units cancel (colored slashes). We can rewrite this
considered the m ost difficult o f the
equation to find the number of feet in 1 meter:
“8000-ers.” K2 is seen h ere from
the north (C hina).

lm = a U s = 3'28084ft
TABLE 1-6
The 8000-m Peaks We multiply this equation by 8000.0 (to have five significant figures):
Peak H eigh t (m )

Mt. E verest 8850 8000.0m = (8000.0 la .) ^ 3 .2 8 0 8 4 ; ^ = 26,247ft.

K2 8611
K angchenjunga 8586 An elevation of 8000 m is 26,247 ft above sea level.
L hotse 8516 NOTE We could have done the conversion all in one line:
M akalu 8462
C ho O yu 8201
annum - - 26O T «.
D haulagiri 8167
M anaslu 8156
N anga Parbat 8125 The key is to multiply conversion factors, each equal to one (= 1.0000), and to
A nnapurna 8091
make sure the units cancel.
G asherbrum I 8068
B road Peak 8047 EXERCISE E There are only 14 eight-thousand-m eter peaks in the world (see E xam ple 1 -2 ),
G asherbrum II and their nam es and elevation s are given in Table 1 - 6 . They are all in the H im alaya m ou n ­
8035
tain range in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and China. D eterm in e the elevation o f the w orld ’s
Shisha Pangm a 8013
three highest peaks in feet.

8 CHAPTER 1 Introduction, Measurement, Estimating

 EXAMPLE 1-3 Apartment area. You have seen a nice apartment whose
floor area is 880 square feet (ft2). What is its area in square meters?
APPROACH We use the same conversion factor, 1 in. = 2.54 cm, but this time
we have to use it twice.
SOLUTION Because lin. = 2.54cm = 0.0254m, then lft2 = (12 in.)2(0.0254 m/in.)2 =
0.0929 m2. So 880 ft2 = (880ft2)(0.0929 m2/ft2) « 82 m2.
NOTE As a rule of thumb, an area given in ft2 is roughly 10 times the number of
square meters (more precisely, about 10.8 X) .

EXAMPLE 1 -4 Speeds. Where the posted speed limit is 55 miles per hour
(mi/h or mph), what is this speed (a) in meters per second (m/s) and (b) in
kilometers per hour (km/h)?
APPROACH We again use the conversion factor 1 in. = 2.54 cm, and we recall
that there are 5280 ft in a mile and 12 inches in a foot; also, one hour contains
(60min/h) X (60s/min) = 3600 s/h.
SOLUTION (a) We can write 1 mile as
jGirr 1m
1 mi = (5280ir)( 2.54 = 1609 m.
'TRv. / \ 100 jGfTf
We also know that 1 hour contains 3600 s, so
'mi. m 1 JT
55— = 55 1609 = 25“ ,
h ir ~mL J V3600 s s
where we rounded off to two significant figures.
(b) Now we use 1 mi = 1609 m = 1.609 km; then
'm i. km _km
55— = 55 1.609 - 88- .
h 'm i
NOTE Each conversion factor is equal to one. You can look up most conversion j PROBLEM SOLVING
factors in the Table inside the front cover. Conversion factors = 1

EXERCISE F Would a driver traveling at 15 m /s in a 35 m i/h zone be exceeding the speed

limit?

When changing units, you can avoid making an error in the use of conversion \PROBLEM SOLVING
factors by checking that units cancel out properly. For example, in our conversion Unit conversion is w ron g if units do
of 1 mi to 1609 m in Example 1-4(a), if we had incorrectly used the factor ( n ^ ) n ot cancel
instead of (ujoSn), the centimeter units would not have cancelled out; we would not
have ended up with meters.

1—6 Order of Magnitude: Rapid Estimating

We are sometimes interested only in an approximate value for a quantity. This
might be because an accurate calculation would take more time than it is worth
or would require additional data that are not available. In other cases, we may
want to make a rough estimate in order to check an accurate calculation made
on a calculator, to make sure that no blunders were made when the numbers
were entered. ^
A rough estimate is made by rounding off all numbers to one significant figure \ \ PROBLEM SOLVING
and its power of 10, and after the calculation is made, again only one significant H o w to m ake a rough estimate
figure is kept. Such an estimate is called an order-of-magnitude estimate and can
be accurate within a factor of 10, and often better. In fact, the phrase “order of
magnitude” is sometimes used to refer simply to the power of 10.

SECTION 1- 6 Order of Magnitude: Rapid Estimating 9

 r = 500 in
10 m

(b)

FIGURE 1 - 7 E xam ple 1 - 5 . (a) H ow

m uch water is in this lake? (P h oto is o f
on e o f the R ae Lakes in the Sierra
N evad a o f California.) (b) M od el o f
the lake as a cylinder. [We could go on e
step further and estim ate the m ass or
w eight o f this lake. W e w ill see later
that w ater has a density o f 1000 k g /m 3,
so this lake has a m ass o f about
(I0 3 k g /m 3) ( l0 7 m 3) « 1010 kg, which is
about 10 b illion kg or 10 m illion m etric
tons. (A m etric ton is 1000 kg, about
2200 lbs, slightly larger than a British
ton, 2000 lbs.)]

EXAMPLE 1 -5 ESTIMATE I Volume of a lake. Estimate how much water

© - PHYSICS APPLIED
E stim atin g the vo lu m e (or m ass) o f there is in a particular lake, Fig. l-7 a , which is roughly circular, about 1 km
a lake; see also Fig. 1 - 7 across, and you guess it has an average depth of about 10 m.
APPROACH No lake is a perfect circle, nor can lakes be expected to have a
perfectly flat bottom. We are only estimating here. To estimate the volume, we
can use a simple model of the lake as a cylinder: we multiply the average depth
of the lake times its roughly circular surface area, as if the lake were a cylinder
(Fig. l-7 b ).
SOLUTION The volume V of a cylinder is the product of its height h times the
area of its base: V = hirr2, where r is the radius of the circular base.f The radius r
is \ km = 500 m, so the volume is approximately
V = hirr2 M (10 m) X (3) X (5 X 102m)2 m 8 X 106m3 « 107m3,
where tt was rounded off to 3. So the volume is on the order of 107m3, ten
million cubic meters. Because of all the estimates that went into this calculation,
the order-of-magnitude estimate (l07m3) is probably better to quote than the
8 X 106m3 figure.
NOTE To express our result in U.S. gallons, we see in the Table on the inside
front cover that 1 liter = 10-3 m3 « \ gallon. Hence, the lake contains
(8 X 106m3)(l gallon/4 X 10_3m3) « 2 X 109 gallons of water.

EXAMPLE 1 - 6 ESTIMATE I Thickness of a page. Estimate the thickness

of a page of this book.
APPROACH At first you might think that a special measuring device, a micrometer
(Fig. 1-8), is needed to measure the thickness of one page since an ordinary
PROBLEM SOLVING ruler clearly won’t do. But we can use a trick or, to put it in physics terms, make
Use sy m m e try w h en p o ssib le use of a symmetry, we can make the reasonable assumption that all the pages of
this book are equal in thickness.
SOLUTION We can use a ruler to measure hundreds of pages at once. If you
measure the thickness of the first 500 pages of this book (page 1 to page 500),
you might get something like 1.5 cm. Note that 500 numbered pages,

fFormulas like this for volume, area, etc., are found inside the back cover of this book.

10 CHAPTER 1 Introduction, Measurement, Estimating

counted front and back, is 250 separate sheets of paper. So one page must have
a thickness of about
1.5 cm
6 X 10-3 cm = 6 X 10“2mm,
250 pages
or less than a tenth of a millimeter (0.1 mm).

EXAMPLE 1 -7 ESTIMATE- ! Height by triangulation. Estimate the height

of the building shown in Fig. 1-9, by “triangulation,” with the help of a bus-stop
pole and a friend.
APPROACH By standing your friend next to the pole, you estimate the height of
the pole to be 3 m. You next step away from the pole until the top of the pole is in
line with the top of the building, Fig. l-9a. You are 5 ft 6 in. tall, so your eyes are FIGURE 1 - 8 Example 1-6. Micrometer
about 1.5 m above the ground. Your friend is taller, and when she stretches out her used for measuring small thicknesses.
arms, one hand touches you, and the other touches the pole, so you estimate that
FIGURE 1 - 9 Exam ple 1 -7 .
distance as 2 m (Fig. l-9a). You then pace off the distance from the pole to the
Diagrams are really useful!
base of the building with big, 1-m-long steps, and you get a total of 16 steps or 16 m.
SOLUTION Now you draw, to scale, the diagram shown in Fig. l-9 b using these
measurements. You can measure, right on the diagram, the last side of the
triangle to be about x = 13 m. Alternatively, you can use similar triangles to
obtain the height x :
1.5 m
so 13 4 m.
2m 18 m
Finally you add in your eye height of 1.5 m above the ground to get your final
result: the building is about 15 m tall.

EXAMPLE 1 -8 ESTIMATE I Estimating the radius of Earth. Believe it or

not, you can estimate the radius of the Earth without having to go into space (see
the photograph on page 1). If you have ever been on the shore of a large lake,
you may have noticed that you cannot see the beaches, piers, or rocks at water
level across the lake on the opposite shore. The lake seems to bulge out between
you and the opposite shore—a good clue that the Earth is round. Suppose you
climb a stepladder and discover that when your eyes are 10 ft (3.0 m) above the
water, you can just see the rocks at water level on the opposite shore. From
a map, you estimate the distance to the opposite shore as d ~ 6.1 km. Use
18m
Fig. 1-10 with h = 3.0 m to estimate the radius R of the Earth.
APPROACH We use simple geometry, including the theorem of Pythagoras,
c2 = a2 + b2, where c is the length of the hypotenuse of any right triangle, and a
and b are the lengths of the other two sides.
SOLUTION For the right triangle of Fig. 1-10, the two sides are the radius of the FIGURE 1 - 1 0 Exam ple 1 -8 , but
Earth R and the distance d = 6.1 km = 6100 m. The hypotenuse is approxi­ not to scale. You can see small rocks
at water level on the opposite shore
mately the length R + h, where h = 3.0 m. By the Pythagorean theorem,
o f a lake 6.1 km wide if you stand on
R2 + d2 « (R + h)2 a stepladder.

« R2 + 2hR + h2.
We solve algebraically for R , after cancelling R 2 on both sides:
d2 - h2 (6100 m)2 - (3.0 m)2
= 6.2 X 106m = 6200 km.
2h 6.0 m
NOTE Precise measurements give 6380 km. But look at your achievement! With a
few simple rough measurements and simple geometry, you made a good estimate
of the Earth’s radius. You did not need to go out in space, nor did you need a very long
measuring tape. Now you know the answer to the Chapter-Opening Question on p. 1.

SECTION 1- 6 Order of Magnitude: Rapid Estimating 11

 EXAMPLE 1-9 ESTIMATE-! Total number of heartbeats. Estimate the
total number of beats a typical human heart makes in a lifetime.
APPROACH A typical resting heart rate is 70beats/min. But during exercise it
can be a lot higher. A reasonable average might be 80 beats/min.
SOLUTION One year in terms of seconds is (24h)(3600s/h)(365 d) « 3 X 107s.
If an average person lives 70 years = (70yr)(3 X 107s/yr) « 2 X 109s, then the
total number of heartbeats would be about

:) ( 2 x 109 s) « 3 x 109,
min / \ 60 s
or 3 trillion.

Another technique for estimating, this one made famous by Enrico Fermi to
his physics students, is to estimate the number of piano tuners in a city, say,
Chicago or San Francisco. To get a rough order-of-magnitude estimate of the
number of piano tuners today in San Francisco, a city of about 700,000 inhabitants,
we can proceed by estimating the number of functioning pianos, how often each
j PROBLEM SOLVING piano is tuned, and how many pianos each tuner can tune. To estimate the number
Estim ating h o w m any pian o tuners of pianos in San Francisco, we note that certainly not everyone has a piano.
there are in a city a guess of 1 family in 3 having a piano would correspond to 1 piano per 12 persons,
assuming an average family of 4 persons. As an order of magnitude, let’s say
1 piano per 10 people. This is certainly more reasonable than 1 per 100 people, or
1 per every person, so let’s proceed with the estimate that 1 person in 10 has a
piano, or about 70,000 pianos in San Francisco. Now a piano tuner needs an hour
or two to tune a piano. So let’s estimate that a tuner can tune 4 or 5 pianos a day.
A piano ought to be tuned every 6 months or a year—let’s say once each year.
A piano tuner tuning 4 pianos a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year can tune
about 1000 pianos a year. So San Francisco, with its (very) roughly 70,000 pianos,
needs about 70 piano tuners. This is, of course, only a rough estimated It tells us
that there must be many more than 10 piano tuners, and surely not as many as 1000.

1—7 Dimensions and Dimensional Analysis

When we speak of the dimensions of a quantity, we are referring to the type of base
units or base quantities that make it up. The dimensions of area, for example, are
always length squared, abbreviated [L2], using square brackets; the units can be
square meters, square feet, cm2, and so on. Velocity, on the other hand, can be
measured in units of km/h, m/s, or mi/h, but the dimensions are always a length [L]
divided by a time [T\: that is, [L/T].
The formula for a quantity may be different in different cases, but the dimen­
sions remain the same. For example, the area of a triangle of base b and height h is
A = \bh, whereas the area of a circle of radius r is A = irr2. The formulas are
different in the two cases, but the dimensions of area are always [L2].
Dimensions can be used as a help in working out relationships, a procedure
referred to as dimensional analysis. One useful technique is the use of dimensions
to check if a relationship is incorrect. Note that we add or subtract quantities only
if they have the same dimensions (we don’t add centimeters and hours); and
the quantities on each side of an equals sign must have the same dimensions. (In
numerical calculations, the units must also be the same on both sides of an equation.)
For example, suppose you derived the equation v = v0 + I at2, where v is the
speed of an object after a time t, v0 is the object’s initial speed, and the object
undergoes an acceleration a. Let’s do a dimensional check to see if this equation

t A check of the San Francisco Yellow Pages (done after this calculation) reveals about 50 listings. Each
of these listings may employ more than one tuner, but on the other hand, each may also do repairs as
well as tuning. In any case, our estimate is reasonable.
*Some Sections of this book, such as this one, may be considered optional at the discretion of the
instructor, and they are marked with an asterisk (*). See the Preface for more details.

12 CHAPTER 1 Introduction, Measurement, Estimating

could be correct or is surely incorrect. Note that numerical factors, like the \ here,
do not affect dimensional checks. We write a dimensional equation as follows,
remembering that the dimensions of speed are [L/T\ and (as we shall see in
Chapter 2) the dimensions of acceleration are [L /T 2]:

.?]1M+ +
The dimensions are incorrect: on the right side, we have the sum of quantities
whose dimensions are not the same. Thus we conclude that an error was made in
the derivation of the original equation.
A dimensional check can only tell you when a relationship is wrong. It can’t
tell you if it is completely right. For example, a dimensionless numerical factor (such
as \ or 2 t t ) could be missing.
Dimensional analysis can also be used as a quick check on an equation you are
not sure about. For example, suppose that you can’t remember whether the equa­
tion for the period of a simple pendulum T (the time to make one back-and-forth
swing) of length i is T = 2ttV tj g or T = 2ttV g /l, where g is the acceleration
due to gravity and, like all accelerations, has dimensions [L /T 2]. (Do not worry
about these formulas—the correct one will be derived in Chapter 14; what we are
concerned about here is a person’s recalling whether it contains £/g or g/L)
A dimensional check shows that the former (i/g ) is correct:

[r| - 'J\ S k ] - v W - m,
whereas the latter (g/l) is not:
'[l / t 2] = n r = 1
m *
[l ] \I[ r -} [t ]
Note that the constant 2tt has no dimensions and so can’t be checked using dimensions.
Further uses of dimensional analysis are found in Appendix C.

[2 5 J 2 I2 H H H Planck length. The smallest meaningful measure of length is

called the “Planck length,” and is defined in terms of three fundamental constants
in nature, the speed of light c = 3.00 X 108m/s, the gravitational constant
G = 6.67 X 10-11 m3/kg • s2, and Planck’s constant h = 6.63 X 10_34kg*m2/s.
The Planck length AP (A is the Greek letter “lambda”) is given by the following
combination of these three constants:

AP —

Show that the dimensions of AP are length [L], and find the order of magnitude of AP.
APPROACH We rewrite the above equation in terms of dimensions. The dimen­
sions of c are [L/T], of G are [L3/M T 2], and of h are [ML2/T].
SOLUTION The dimensions of AP are

| L, / ” r l - v P I - w

which is a length. The value of the Planck length is

/Gfc (6.67 X 10-11m3A g -s2)(6.63 X 10-34kg-m2/s)
Ap = A/ —r = a /------------------- ;-----------:----- ^ ~ 4 X 10 "m ,
VC3 V (3.0 X 10s m/s)3
which is on the order of 10-34 or 10-35 m.
NOTE Some recent theories (Chapters 43 and 44) suggest that the smallest particles
(quarks, leptons) have sizes on the order of the Planck length, 10_35m. These
theories also suggest that the “Big Bang,” with which the Universe is believed to
have begun, started from an initial size on the order of the Planck length.

*SECTION 1 -7 Dimensions and Dimensional Analysis 13

 Summary
[The Summary that appears at the end of each Chapter in this book
gives a brief overview of the main ideas of the Chapter. The Summary
cannot serve to give an understanding of the material, which can be
accomplished only by a detailed reading of the Chapter.]
Physics, like other sciences, is a creative endeavor. It is not
simply a collection of facts. Important theories are created with
the idea of explaining observations. To be accepted, theories are
tested by comparing their predictions with the results of actual
experiments. Note that, in general, a theory cannot be “proved”
in an absolute sense.
Scientists often devise models of physical phenomena. A
model is a kind of picture or analogy that helps to describe the
phenomena in terms of something we already know. A theory,
often developed from a model, is usually deeper and more
complex than a simple model.
A scientific law is a concise statement, often expressed in
the form of an equation, which quantitatively describes a wide
range of phenomena.
Questions
1. What are the merits and drawbacks of using a person’s foot
as a standard? Consider both (a) a particular person’s foot,
and (ib) any person’s foot. Keep in mind that it is
advantagous that fundamental standards be accessible (easy
to compare to), invariable (do not change), indestructible,
and reproducible.
2. Why is it incorrect to think that the more digits you
represent in your answer, the more accurate it is?
3. When traveling a highway in the mountains, you may see
elevation signs that read “914 m (3000 ft).” Critics of the
metric system claim that such numbers show the metric
system is more complicated. How would you alter such
signs to be more consistent with a switch to the metric
system?
4. What is wrong with this road sign:
Memphis 7 mi (11.263 km)?
5. For an answer to be complete, the units need to be speci­
fied. Why?
| Problems
[The Problems at the end of each Chapter are ranked I, II, or III
according to estimated difficulty, with (I) Problems being easiest.
Level (III) Problems are meant mainly as a challenge for the best
students, for “extra credit.” The Problems are arranged by Sections,
meaning that the reader should have read up to and including that
Section, but not only that Section—Problems often depend on
earlier material. Each Chapter also has a group of General Problems
that are not arranged by Section and not ranked.]
1-3 Measurement, Uncertainty, Significant Figures
{Note: In Problems, assume a number like 6.4 is accurate to +0.1;
and 950 is + 10 unless 950 is said to be “precisely” or “very nearly”
950, in which case assume 950 + 1.)
1. (I) The age of the universe is thought to be about 14 billion
years. Assuming two significant figures, write this in powers
of ten in (a) years, (b) seconds.
14 CHAPTER 1 Introduction, Measurement, Estimating
Measurements play a crucial role in physics, but can never
be perfectly precise. It is important to specify the uncertainty
of a measurement either by stating it directly using the ±
notation, and/or by keeping only the correct number of
significant figures.
Physical quantities are always specified relative to a partic­
ular standard or unit, and the unit used should always be stated.
The commonly accepted set of units today is the Systeme
International (SI), in which the standard units of length, mass,
and time are the meter, kilogram, and second.
When converting units, check all conversion factors for
correct cancellation of units.
Making rough, order-of-magnitude estimates is a very
useful technique in science as well as in everyday life.
[*The dimensions of a quantity refer to the combination of
base quantities that comprise it. Velocity, for example, has
dimensions of [length/time] or [L/T]. Dimensional analysis can
be used to check a relationship for correct form.]
6. Discuss how the notion of symmetry could be used to
estimate the number of marbles in a 1-liter jar.
7. You measure the radius of a wheel to be 4.16 cm. If you
multiply by 2 to get the diameter, should you write the
result as 8 cm or as 8.32 cm? Justify your answer.
8. Express the sine of 30.0° with the correct number of
significant figures.
9. A recipe for a souffle specifies that the measured ingredients
must be exact, or the souffle will not rise. The recipe calls for
6 large eggs. The size of “large” eggs can vary by 10%,
according to the USDA specifications. What does this tell you
about how exactly you need to measure the other ingredients?
10. List assumptions useful to estimate the number of car
mechanics in (a) San Francisco, (b) your hometown, and
then make the estimates.
11. Suggest a way to measure the distance from Earth to the Sun.
*12. Can you set up a complete set of base quantities, as in
Table 1-5, that does not include length as one of them?
2. (I) How many significant figures do each of the following
numbers have: (a) 214, (b) 81.60, (c) 7.03, (d) 0.03,
(e) 0.0086, ( /) 3236, and (g) 8700?
3. (I) Write the following numbers in powers of ten notation:
(a) 1.156, (b) 21.8, (c) 0.0068, (d) 328.65, (e) 0.219, and (/) 444.
4. (I) Write out the following numbers in full with the
correct number of zeros: (a) 8.69 X 104, (b) 9.1 X 103,
(c) 8.8 X 10_1, (d) 4.76 X 102, and (e) 3.62 X 10“5.
5. (II) What is the percent uncertainty in the measurement
5.48 ± 0.25 m?
6. (II) Time intervals measured with a stopwatch typically have
an uncertainty of about 0.2 s, due to human reaction time at
the start and stop moments. What is the percent uncertainty
of a hand-timed measurement of (a) 5 s, (b) 50 s, (c) 5 min?
7. (II) Add (9.2 X 103s) + (8.3 X 104s) + (0.008 X 106s).
 8. (II) Multiply 2.079 X 102m by 0.082 X 10-1, taking into 28. (II) Estimate how long it would take one person to mow a
account significant figures. football field using an ordinary home lawn mower (Fig. 1-11).
9. (Ill) For small angles 6, the numerical value of sin 0 is Assume the mower moves with a 1-km/h speed, and has a
approximately the same as the numerical value of tan0. 0.5-m width.
Find the largest angle for which sine and tangent agree to
within two significant figures.
10. (Ill) What, roughly, is the percent uncertainty in the volume
of a spherical beach ball whose radius is r = 0.84 ± 0.04 m?
1-4 and 1-5 Units, Standards, SI, Converting Units
11. (I) Write the following as full (decimal) numbers with stan­
dard units: (a) 286.6 mm, (b) 85 /jlV, ( c ) 760 mg, (d) 60.0 ps,
(e) 22.5 fm, ( /) 2.50 gigavolts.
FIGURE 1-11
12. (I) Express the following using the prefixes of Table 1-4:
Problem 28.
(a) 1 X 106volts, (b) 2 X 10-6 meters, (c) 6 X 103days,
(id) 18 X 102 bucks, and (e) 8 X 10-8 seconds.
29. (II) Estimate the number of dentists (a) in San Francisco
13. (I) Determine your own height in meters, and your mass in kg.
and (b) in your town or city.
14. (I) The Sun, on average, is 93 million miles from Earth. How
many meters is this? Express (a) using powers of ten, and 30. (Ill) The rubber worn from tires mostly enters the atmos­
(b) using a metric prefix. phere as particulate pollution. Estimate how much rubber
(in kg) is put into the air in the United States every year.
15. (II) What is the conversion factor between (a) ft2 and yd2,
To get started, a good estimate for a tire tread’s depth is 1 cm
(b) m2 and ft2?
when new, and rubber has a mass of about 1200 kg per m3 of
16. (II) An airplane travels at 950 km /h. How long does it take
volume.
to travel 1.00 km?
31. (Ill) You are in a hot air balloon, 200 m above the flat Texas
17. (II) A typical atom has a diameter of about 1.0 X 10-10m.
plains. You look out toward the horizon. How far out can
(a) What is this in inches? (b) Approximately how many
you see—that is, how far is your horizon? The Earth’s
atoms are there along a 1.0-cm line?
radius is about 6400 km.
18. (II) Express the following sum with the correct number of
significant figures: 1.80 m + 142.5 cm + 5.34 X 105/xm. 32. (Ill) I agree to hire you for 30 days and you can decide between
two possible methods of payment: either (1) $1000 a day, or
19. (II) Determine the conversion factor between (a) km /h
(2) one penny on the first day, two pennies on the second day
and m i/h, (b) m /s and ft/s, and (c) km /h and m/s.
and continue to double your daily pay each day up to day 30.
20. (II) How much longer (percentage) is a one-mile race than
Use quick estimation to make your decision, and justify it.
a 1500-m race (“the metric mile”)?
33. (Ill) Many sailboats are moored at a marina 4.4 km away on
21. (II) A light-year is the distance light travels in one year
the opposite side of a lake. You stare at one of the sailboats
(at speed = 2.998 X 108m /s). (a) How many meters are
because, when you are lying flat at the water’s edge, you can
there in 1.00 light-year? (b) An astronomical unit (AU) is
just see its deck but none of the side of the sailboat. You
the average distance from the Sun to Earth, 1.50 X 108km.
then go to that sailboat on the other side of the lake and
How many AU are there in 1.00 light-year? (c) What is the
measure that the deck is 1.5 m above the level of the
speed of light in A U /h?
water. Using Fig. 1-12, where h = 1.5 m, esti­
22. (II) If you used only a keyboard to enter data, how many
mate the radius R of the Earth.
years would it take to fill up the hard drive in your h-------- d
computer that can store 82 gigabytes (82 X 109 bytes) of
data? Assume “normal” eight-hour working days, and that
one byte is required to store one keyboard character, and FIGURE 1-12 Problem 33.
that you can type 180 characters per minute. You see a sailboat across a
23. (Ill) The diameter of the Moon is 3480 km. (a) What is the lake (not to scale). R is the
surface area of the Moon? (b) How many times larger is the radius of the Earth. You are a
surface area of the Earth? distance d = 4.4 km from the
sailboat when you can see only
1-6 Order-of-Magnitude Estimating
its deck and not its side.
{Note: Remember that for rough estimates, only round numbers are Because of the curvature of the
needed both as input to calculations and as final results.)
Earth, the water “bulges out”
24. (I) Estimate the order of magnitude (power of ten) of: (a) 2800, between you and the boat.
(b) 86.30 X 102, (c) 0.0076, and (d) 15.0 X 108.
25. (II) Estimate how many books can be shelved in a college 34. (Ill) Another experiment you can do also uses the radius of
library with 3500 m2 of floor space. Assume 8 shelves high, the Earth. The Sun sets, fully disappearing over the horizon as
having books on both sides, with corridors 1.5 m wide. you lie on the beach, your eyes 20 cm above the sand. You
Assume books are about the size of this one, on average. immediately jump up, your eyes now 150 cm above the sand,
26. (II) Estimate how many hours it would take a runner to run (at and you can again see the top of the Sun. If you count the
10 km/h) across the United States from New York to California. number of seconds (= t) until the Sun fully disappears again,
27. (II) Estimate the number of liters of water a human drinks you can estimate the radius of the Earth. But for this Problem,
in a lifetime. use the known radius of the Earth and calculate the time t.

Problems 15
 1-7 Dimensions
*35. (I) What are the dimensions of density, which is mass per
volume?
*36. (II) The speed v of an object is given by the equation
v = A t3 — Bt, where t refers to time, (a) What are the
dimensions of A and 5 ? (b) What are the SI units for the
constants A and 5 ?
*37. (II) Three students derive the following equations in which
x refers to distance traveled, v the speed, a the acceleration
(m /s2), t the time, and the subscript zero (0) means a quantity
at time t = 0: (a) x = vt2 + 2at, (b) x = v0t + \a t2, and
(c) x = v0t + 2at2. Which of these could possibly be
correct according to a dimensional check?
| General Problems___________
39. Global positioning satellites (GPS) can be used to deter­
mine positions with great accuracy. If one of the satellites is
at a distance of 20,000 km from you, what percent uncertainty
in the distance does a 2-m uncertainty represent? How
many significant figures are needed in the distance?
40. Computer chips (Fig. 1-13) etched on circular silicon wafers
of thickness 0.300 mm are sliced from a solid cylindrical
silicon crystal of length 25 cm. If each wafer can hold
100 chips, what is the maximum number of chips that can be
produced from one entire cylinder?
F IG U R E !-13 Problem 40.
The wafer held by the hand (above)
is shown below, enlarged and
illuminated by colored light. Visible
are rows of integrated circuits (chips).
41. {a) How many seconds are there in 1.00 year? (b) How
many nanoseconds are there in 1.00 year? (c) How many
years are there in 1.00 second?
42. American football uses a field that is 100 yd long, whereas a
regulation soccer field is 100 m long. Which field is longer,
and by how much (give yards, meters, and percent)?
43. A typical adult human lung contains about 300 million tiny
cavities called alveoli. Estimate the average diameter of
a single alveolus.
44. One hectare is defined as 1.000 X 104m2. One acre is
4.356 X 104 ft2. How many acres are in one hectare?
45. Estimate the number of gallons of gasoline consumed by
the total of all automobile drivers in the United States,
per year.
46. Use Table 1-3 to estimate the total number of protons or
neutrons in (a) a bacterium, (b) a DNA molecule, (c) the
human body, (d) our Galaxy.
47. An average family of four uses roughly 1200 L (about
300 gallons) of water per day (l L = 1000 cm3). How much
depth would a lake lose per year if it uniformly covered an
area of 50 km2 and supplied a local town with a population
of 40,000 people? Consider only population uses, and
neglect evaporation and so on.
16 CHAPTER 1 Introduction, Measurement, Estimating
1538. (II) Show that the following combination of the three funda­
mental constants of nature that we used in Example 1-10
(that is G, c, and h) forms a quantity with the dimensions
of time:
h =
This quantity, tP, is called the Planck time and is thought to
be the earliest time, after the creation of the Universe, at
which the currently known laws of physics can be applied.
48. Estimate the number of gumballs in the machine of Fig. 1-14.
FIGURE 1-14 Problem 48.
Estimate the number of
gumballs in the machine.
49. Estimate how many kilograms of laundry soap are used in
the U.S. in one year (and therefore pumped out of washing
machines with the dirty water). Assume each load of
laundry takes 0.1 kg of soap.
50. How big is a ton? That is, what is the volume of something
that weighs a ton? To be specific, estimate the diameter of a
1-ton rock, but first make a wild guess: will it be 1 ft across,
3 ft, or the size of a car? [Hint: Rock has mass per volume
about 3 times that of water, which is 1 kg per liter (lO3 cm3)
or 62 lb per cubic foot.]
51. A certain audio compact disc (CD) contains 783.216 megabytes
of digital information. Each byte consists of exactly 8 bits.
When played, a CD player reads the CD’s digital information
at a constant rate of 1.4 megabits per second. How many
minutes does it take the player to read the entire CD?
52. Hold a pencil in front of your eye at a position where its
blunt end just blocks out the
Moon (Fig. 1-15). Make appro­
priate measurements to estimate
the diameter of the Moon, given
that the Earth-M oon distance is
3.8 X 105 km.
FIGURE 1-15 Problem 52.
How big is the Moon?
53. A heavy rainstorm dumps 1.0 cm of rain on a city 5 km wide
and 8 km long in a 2-h period. How many metric tons
(l metric ton = 103 kg) of water fell on the city? (1 cm3 of
water has a mass of 1 g = 10-3 kg.) How many gallons
of water was this?
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN