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The
texts on this site have been developed over the years as I have
taught the various courses. I have been at Baylor for over 20
years; I was a student of Julian Schwinger at UCLA. Many of his
methods, techniques and approaches have been used as organizing
and inspirational principles in my texts. There are presently 4
texts (1 graduate, 3 undergraduate) in various stages of completion.
Most of these texts started as Microsoft Word 5.1 documents and
were composed on a Macintosh computer. There are still difficulties
converting this format into readable versions, especially for PC’s.
Production values of figures and tables will not be as high as
for commercial texts and text itself may be more economical to
keep printing costs down. This is a designed trade-off, not a
compromise. Emphasis will be on up-to-date high-quality material.
Unlike open source software, point is not to produce a single
unified set of materials, but to make a forum for the presentation
of various teaching points of view. Individuality is important
in teaching. Also, perhaps unlike an open source program, individual
copyrighting of the material will be crucial to insure appropriate
use and acknowledgement. Will be easy to correct misconceptions,
mistakes and typos since all will be online to a world-wide audience.
The director of the Open-Text website is Dr. Walter Wilcox (Walter_Wilcox@baylor.edu) of the Baylor University Physics Department. For more information on his research and teaching please see the Physics Department website and his personal homepage. |