Introducing the Universe, 2nd Edition

Covers quite a lot, and as you can imagine not a ton of detail about any one subject, but it's a great overview.

Here the Cosmology lesson is nothing short of amazingly rendered and illustrated. This is a great unification for books on physics. You will keep referencing its history and explanations for some time to come. Core material: Cosmology Looking back in time Atomic structures Universe structure Exponent notations Aristotle Plato Christianity Tycho's supernovas Kepler's laws 1. Each planet moves in an ellipse, with the sun at one focus 2. The radius vector from the sun to the planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times 3. Kepler's ratio Galileo and the Church Shapley Milky way sketch Hubble Spiral nebulae and Hubble's constant Big Bang Penzias and Wilson in 1965 discover cosmic background radiation as radio noise General relativity Quantum Mechanics Atomic numbers Atomic nucleus (protons [+1 charge] and neutrons [0 charge] [made of quarks]. Electrons [-1]. The 4 forces The theory of electromagnetism Forms of energy Kinetic energy, Potential energy, Electromagnetic radiation, Photon, and Thermal energy. Waves and Particles Light waves Light spectrum Redshift - blueshift Special Relativity Gravitation Mass and Weight All bodies equally fast General relativity Black holes Dying Suns Neutrons Quasars Quantum theory Quantum mechanics Planck's density (when universe is compacted) is 10(93) times the density of water and Planck's time 10(-43) seconds. Friedman Model The Standard Cosmological model A big crunch Open universe The Horizon Problem Density Inflation Dark matter GUT Anthropics Hawking