LibGuides: Physical Science: Books

About Books

Reference Books

Reference Books are the best places to find concise summaries and background information on a topic. Reference books cannot be checked out of the library. Some of them are available as databases or ebooks.

Circulating Books

Circulating books (books you can check out) may also provide summaries and background information, but usually go into greater depth about a topic.

Using Books for Research

Using books for research does not always mean that you need to read the entire book.

Use the table of contents and the index to find where in a book information about your topic is located.
The introduction to a book may be a good place to find background information on the topic the book is about.
You should read enough of a book or chapter to understand what an author is saying and quote her correctly.
Sometimes chapters in books are complete works written by different authors, making them ideal for research.

STLCC Library Books

These are just a few examples of the books you can find in the STLCC Libraries print and online collections.

Radioactivity by Marjorie C. Malley
Call Number: 539.72 M253r
Publication Date: 2011
This is the story of a new science. Beginning with an obscure discovery in 1896, radioactivity led researchers on a quest for understanding that ultimately confronted the intersection of knowledge and mystery. Not merely a historical account, the book examines philosophical issues connected with radioactivity, and relates its topics to broader issues regarding the nature of science.
The World Scientific Handbook of Energy by Gerard M. Crawley
Call Number: eBook Central
Publication Date: 2013
The World Scientific Handbook of Energy provides comprehensive, reliable and timely sets of data on energy resources and uses; it gathers in one publication a concise description of the current state-of-the-art for a wide variety of energy resources, including data on resource availability worldwide and at different cost levels. The end use of energy in transportation, residential and industrial areas is outlined, and energy storage, conservation and the impact on the environment included.
13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything by John Gribbin
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Call Number: eBooks on EbscoHost
Publication Date: 2016
The twentieth century gave us two great theories of physics. The general theory of relativity describes the behavior of very large things, and quantum theory the behavior of very small things. In this landmark book, John Gribbin--one of the best-known science writers of the past thirty years--presents his own version of the Holy Grail of physics, the search that has been going on for decades to find a unified "Theory of Everything" that combines these ideas into one mathematical package, a single equation that could be printed on a T-shirt, containing the answer to life, the Universe, and everything. With his inimitable mixture of science, history, and biography, Gribbin shows how--despite skepticism among many physicists--these two great theories are very compatible, and point to a deep truth about the nature of our existence. The answer lies, intriguingly, with the age of the universe: 13.8 billion years.
Weather, Macroweather, and the Climate by Shaun Lovejoy
Call Number: eBook Central
ISBN: 9780190864217
Publication Date: 2019-04-16
Weather, Macroweather, and the Climate is an insider's attempt to explain as simply as possible how to understand the atmospheric variability that occurs over an astonishing range of scales: from millimeters to the size of the planet, from milliseconds to billions of years. Author Shaun Lovejoy asks - and answers - many fundamental questions such as: Is the atmosphere random or deterministic? What is turbulence? How big is a cloud (what is the appropriate notion of size itself)? What is its dimension? How can we conceptualize the structures within structures within structures spanning millimeters to thousands of kilometers and milliseconds to the age of the planet? What is weather? What is climate? Lovejoy shows in simple terms why the industrial epoch warming can't be natural - much simpler than trying to show that it's anthropogenic. Above all, the book offers readers a new understanding of the atmosphere.