The Cambridge Handbook of Physics Formulas

Graham Woan

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking relates that he was warned against including equations in the book because “each equation…  would halve the sales.”  Despite this dire prediction there is, for a scientific audience, some attraction in doing the exact opposite. The reader should not be misled by this exercise. Although the equations and formulas contained here underpin a good deal of physical science they are useless unless the reader understands them. Learning physics is not about remembering equations, it is about appreci- ating the natural structures they express. Although its format should help make some topics clearer, this book is not designed to teach new physics; there are many excellent textbooks to help with that. It is intended to be useful rather than pedagogically complete, so that students can use it for revision and for structuring their knowledge once they understand the physics. More advanced users will benefit from having a compact, internally consistent, source of equations that can quickly deliver the relationship they require in a format that avoids the need to sift through pages of rubric.