electricity

In a downright easy to read manner, Howard Hampton describes the beginings of the North American Electricity markets and the ensuing political gamesmanship that occured at the turn of the century from a historical perspective, then combined with insight and dedicated following guides the reader to the present, where Mega-Corporations control the buying and selling of wholesale electricity between themselves and other jurisdictions.

Without having to specifically 'Name Names' Howard is able to describe the process that delivers one of the world's most abundant, yet most critical resources, Electricity.

He describes how we as North AMericans have been having it relatively comfortably being generated as a 'Overabundant' Supply product that is available for every citizen of an area, then how the Marketers and other 'For-Profit' entities have seen fit to begin the march down the road that 'privatization' will bring.

Currently, In January 2004, with a New Government in Ontario wrestling with the 'Hydro Monster' is no easy task, but Howard and his book have broght to the forefront how important this resource is, not only to Ontarians, but to others in both the developed and developing worlds.

It is surprising that a book about the electricity industry, let alone one written by a politician, could be so absorbing, informative and even inspiring.

Public Power tells the story of the North American electric utility industry and how it has evolved over the last 100 years. The story begins in Ontario, Canada, where the idea of publicly-owned electrical utilities first took root in the early years of the 20th century under the direction of the remarkable Sir Adam Beck, whose 1917 testimony to the U.S. Congress on the success of Ontario Hydro helped fuel the American public power movement. The book then vividly chronicles the struggle between private and public power in the United States. Leading roles in the narrative are assigned to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established the New York Power Authority and the Tennessee Valley Authority, Samuel Insull, who died penniless after his mammoth utility holding company collapsed in an Enron-like implosion in 1932, and former Cleveland Mayor (and now Presidential candidate) Dennis Kucinich, who courageously sacrificed his political career in 1978 rather than sell his city's publicly owned utility. Also part of the story: Clint Murchison, the Texas oil and gas magnate who caused a political crisis in Canada in the mid-1950s when he tricked the Liberal government into publicly financing his privately owned Trans-Canada natural gas pipeline.

Much of the latter part of this highly readable book is devoted to explaining the failure of electricity deregulation and privatization, which began in Gen. Augusto Pinochet's Chile and later Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain under the tutelage of Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist Milton Friedman. After telling the story of how Thatcher's policies led to the chaos and foreign control of Britain's electricity industry and the bankruptcy of nuclear giant British Energy, the book explains the geopolitical and nuclear origins of the U.S. deregulation movement, from Richard Nixon to George Bush. The failure of utility deregulation in the U.S. is told in fascinating detail, with particular emphasis on California, Montana and Pennsylvania. Also explained are the disastrous "me too" deregulation experiments in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario, where Hampton, Ontario's former Attorney General, now leads the opposition New Democratic Party.

Hampton's lucid analysis of why electricity deregulation has failed to live up to its promise is very persuasive. So is his argument that public ownership of utilities is better for the economy and the environment. Both should be studied by anybody who assumes that 1) competition will inevitably lead to lower costs and 2) government ownership is inherently less efficient than private ownership. In the utility sector, at least, the evidence shows otherwise.

The book concludes with an eloquent vision of a 21st century public power system that is both technologically and economically feasible, and environmentally sound. Hampton makes a case for regulated public power that will be very difficult to refute.

This book basically covers the same material as chapters 6-9 of the classic "Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" by Bjorken & Drell.
- Propagator
- Basic Quantum Electrodynamical Processes
- The Scattering Matrix in Higher Order (including good discussions of vacuum polarization, electron self-energy the and vertex correction)
- QED of spinless bosons

In addition to this it covers bound systems and strong fields, which are not discussed in B&D. The book also does a good job of working out a lot of the details missing from B&D.

The only minuses are:
-- some of the more advanced topics in B&D are dropped.
-- there are a lot of typos (but the alert reader should spot them easily)

QED is known as the most accurate theory in physics. This text nicely explains the major achievements in QED by Feynmann, Schwniger, and Tomonaga. Important connection among relativities, quantum mechanics, and classical electrodynamics.

One of Mr. Kaiser's initial reference manuals which sets the template for his other outstanding handbooks on the core components of electronic circuits. Each individually stand on their own, but collectively, comprise a library of reference manuals for the electronics technician as well as a core curriculum for the teacher.

This is a very good reference book for selecting resistors for real world applications. Highly recommended.

I built the robotic hand all by myself without help. It has red and blue pieces. The robotic hand grabs some things, but not everything. It worked better with rubber bands, which I added to my kit. It is really cool.

As a parent of a child whose imagination runs wild with ideas of building and designing moving gadgets this item was very much appreciated. Motors and wires and very well layed out instructions will intrigue anyone with a mind and love for robots. You don,t have to be a child to enjoy the ideas that are set forth here. Hooray !! Thumbs up to the developers of this product.

This book contains 101 electrical and magnetic experiments and projects. The materials used can be found around the house or easily purchased at a local store. These experiments teach many of the basics of electricity and magnetics and can be very informative for kids, and even adults, and the illustrations and text explaining the science behind the experiments are well done. I think science is fascinating, and this book can help you spread the 'magic' of science to others.

With paper clips, magnets, and assorted junk from around the house, you can demonstrate the basics of static electricity and magnetism for your kids (and your own) enlightenment. Well thought out, and peppered with historical notes, this book belongs in every household with children, and at least one older kid (e.g. parent) who likes to play with science. Thanks Mr. Graf.

Covers all the areas that are likely to crop up in a semiconductor physics undergraduate course.

A good book which covers the areas of semiconductor science that will crop up in an undergraduate semiconductor course.

"Signal Integrity Simplified" is undoubtedly one of the best books that I have read on the subject. For a designer it is critically important to maintain a correct mental image of the electromagnetic effects that the design must take into account. Without a clear and balanced mental image flaws might be introduced in the design; corrective measures may not work as anticipated, and may even worsen the situation as is too often the case in the field of high-speed design and EMI control.

Contrary to many who focus on the algebraic developments without guiding the reader through the actual physical meaning of these developments, this book contributes to the establishment of a clear and solid mental image. I especially appreciated the treatment of inductance in chapter 6, as well as the use of field-solver images throughout the book, which help a great deal in visualizing the electromagnetic effects.

Even though it tackles an admitedly difficult subject, the book is actually very easy to read. It explains modern design practices with great clarity. In all honesty, I read it from cover to cover like a good novel! and, I might add, there are more than a few things that it finally helped me fully understand.

I was very pleased with this book. Not only does it cover a very useful area of design, it is very well written and very clear its approach to complex engineering. Although there are other books that cover similar material, I found this book to have a clear consise and pleasing delivery. I especially enjoyed that the author focused first on the basis of the problem - I liked the chapter on Inductance - and then folded the concepts into transmission lines. All the "controversial" elements are addessed from partial inductance to differential signalling. I have read many books on this subject and this one fits a nice niche between the heavy theoretical ( such as Clayton Pauls Tranmission Line)
to the very basic.

Overall - a very nice addition to anyones shelf!

Book Review-Spintronics, M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese (Eds.), LNP 569, Springer Verlag, 2001

The Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP) published by Springer Verlag is a treasure of physics knowledge consisting of about 600 volumes covering all areas of physics. The main role of LNP is to offer a comprehensive account of the hottest issues of physics, written in an accessible style, for a reader that could be quite unfamiliar with the treated subject. The main aim of a volume in LNP is to encourage the reader to start his/her own research after reading of a LNP volume. Starting with the year 2001, the LNP is available also in electronic form, and any volume published in the years 2000 and 2001 can be downloaded from the Springer Internet homepage.
Moreover, Springer Verlag has offered in the summer of 2001 free access to all LNP volumes published in 2000, and at the end of 2001 another free access to LNP volumes published in 2000 and 2001. Thus, the physics community was able to read the last volumes of LNP and to test their contents.
An illustrative example about LNP is its 569th volume, named Spintronics, edited by M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese. This volume of about 500 pages is the first book dedicated to the emerging area of spintronics. The large majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are based on the dynamics and control of charged carriers when their spin orientation plays no role. The spin electronics and the spin optoelectronics briefly termed Spintronics are new areas of research entirely based on the control and transfer of the electronic spin orientation. There are only two spin orientations: spin-up and spin-down. Thus, in these devices the information is encoded in the spin orientation of the carriers and can be read, memorized, transferred and finally sensed as a certain polarity of the current flow.
Ferromagnets are natural sources of oriented spins because they contain a certain spin asymmetry. There is an increased interest in the developing of semiconductors able to work based on spin orientation, although the large majority of them are non-magnetic. An example of the emerging area of ferromagnetic semiconductors is GaAs, which becomes ferromagnetic when doped with a magnetic dopant. The spin orientation can be controlled even when the spins are tunneling semiconductor interfaces.
The applications of spintronics are promising, and some of them are already implemented and demonstrated in computer architectures: (i) high-density hard disks based on giant magnetic resistance (GMR) of spintronics materials when they are turned from a spin state to another by a magnetic bias, (ii) Random Access Memories based on GMR that are non-volatile and one million times faster than a hard disk.
A very important future application is the quantum information based on spin orientation. The already proposed solutions based on atom or ion manipulation are not reliable for real computing devices, being able to perform only some operations in predetermined sequence that cannot be changed. On the contrary, spintronics devices are more versatile: the spin orientation can be programmed, switched and memorized at picosecond time scales.
The book takes into account all the aspects mentioned above being an introduction in the spintronics domain; it starts with introductory chapters, then presents the materials used in spintronics and their applications for data storage, field sensors and magnetic imaging. The realization of spintronics devices using micro- and nanofabrication techniques is also reviewed.
The book reviewed above is only an example of the LNP collection of books, which is a must for any physics library. Since LNP is being available via Internet, it is now more easily accessible to the physicists at their work place or at home. LNP was a main tool of education and knowledge for some generation of physicists and will continue to be so in its new electronic form.

Daniela Dragoman
Mircea Dragoman

Univ. Mannheim
Dept. Optoelectronics,
B6, 23-29, Building C
68131 Mannheim, Germany

danieladragoman@yahoo.com
mdragoman@yahoo.com

Personal webpages:
http://www.geocities.com/danieladragoman
http://www.geocities.com/mdragoman

Spintronics, M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese (Eds.), LNP 569, Springer Verlag, 2001

The Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP) published by Springer Verlag is a treasure of physics knowledge consisting of about 600 volumes covering all areas of physics. The main role of LNP is to offer a comprehensive account of the hottest issues of physics, written in an accessible style, for a reader that could be quite unfamiliar with the treated subject. The main aim of a volume in LNP is to encourage the reader to start his/her own research after reading of a LNP volume. Starting with the year 2001, the LNP is available also in electronic form, and any volume published in the years 2000 and 2001 can be downloaded from the Springer Internet homepage.
Moreover, Springer Verlag has offered in the summer of 2001 free access to all LNP volumes published in 2000, and at the end of 2001 another free access to LNP volumes published in 2000 and 2001. Thus, the physics community was able to read the last volumes of LNP and to test their contents.
An illustrative example about LNP is its 569th volume, named Spintronics, edited by M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese. This volume of about 500 pages is the first book dedicated to the emerging area of spintronics. The large majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are based on the dynamics and control of charged carriers when their spin orientation plays no role. The spin electronics and the spin optoelectronics briefly termed Spintronics are new areas of research entirely based on the control and transfer of the electronic spin orientation. There are only two spin orientations: spin-up and spin-down. Thus, in these devices the information is encoded in the spin orientation of the carriers and can be read, memorized, transferred and finally sensed as a certain polarity of the current flow.
Ferromagnets are natural sources of oriented spins because they contain a certain spin asymmetry. There is an increased interest in the developing of semiconductors able to work based on spin orientation, although the large majority of them are non-magnetic. An example of the emerging area of ferromagnetic semiconductors is GaAs, which becomes ferromagnetic when doped with a magnetic dopant. The spin orientation can be controlled even when the spins are tunneling semiconductor interfaces.
The applications of spintronics are promising, and some of them are already implemented and demonstrated in computer architectures: (i) high-density hard disks based on giant magnetic resistance (GMR) of spintronics materials when they are turned from a spin state to another by a magnetic bias, (ii) Random Access Memories based on GMR that are non-volatile and one million times faster than a hard disk.
A very important future application is the quantum information based on spin orientation. The already proposed solutions based on atom or ion manipulation are not reliable for real computing devices, being able to perform only some operations in predetermined sequence that cannot be changed. On the contrary, spintronics devices are more versatile: the spin orientation can be programmed, switched and memorized at picosecond time scales.
The book takes into account all the aspects mentioned above being an introduction in the spintronics domain; it starts with introductory chapters, then presents the materials used in spintronics and their applications for data storage, field sensors and magnetic imaging. The realization of spintronics devices using micro- and nanofabrication techniques is also reviewed.
The book reviewed above is only an example of the LNP collection of books, which is a must for any physics library. Since LNP is being available via Internet, it is now more easily accessible to the physicists at their work place or at home. LNP was a main tool of education and knowledge for some generation of physicists and will continue to be so in its new electronic form.

This monster tomb is one of the best books on electricity and magnetism ever written. It was designed for EEs and experimental physicists before computational electrodynamics became really doable. So the emphasis is on being able to solve advanced (and I do mean advanced) electrodynamics problems analytically by hand. I guarantee that if the modern physics graduate student can solve even a fraction of the problems in this book by whatever means available, he will obtain a greater knowledge of E&M that 99% of the people out there in any field. (The only exception being computational electrodynamics of course.) This and Jeans old book are the goldmines of E&M.

As the author says and does: This book is to allow EE's and others to actually be able to _solve_ EM problems on paper. He was tired of people who knew the theory and couldn't apply it.

What can i not say about this book.... none of us really have the time to get into extensive research in huge hardcover books on the mundane details of electricity.. so what more could you ask for in a comprehensive thorough yet easy-to-read and understand book on electricity for any age...

I love this book. As a parent as well as a high school Science teacher, his book is priceless. I have learned over the years that children learn faster when they are learning with a sense of humor, combined with facts. This book combines both beautifully. It is a must for every educator and parent who wants their children to know about the wonderful world of science, and wants to help unfold the mysteries underneath the why's