Hey -
Bit of an unusual request: Does anybody know of any good science books for physics? Specifically, books with not only the facts about physics, but the specific reasons and experiments for which those facts are believed?
I have an associate who is interested in the subject, and completely uninterested in reading something that presents current beliefs as facts. When explaining particle spin, it then took me something like four hours to find the relevant experiments performed for proving the existence of particle spin (and I have to confess the information I was able to find on such a fundamental element of modern physics left me a bit underwhelmed).
How much physics do you want and how much math do you want? I mean most of the first year of a physics class you can experimentally verify yourself if you have a watch and a ruler. If you're looking to verify special relatively, you'll probably need more equipment, but in general there aren't nearly as many experiments as in other sciences, however, there's a lot more math. If you know the math and the underlying rules, you need a lot less experiments to understand a phenomenon.
Physics is a very broad discipline, which makes this a very difficult question. Do you just want some interesting and surprising physics cocktail facts and the experiments that go along with them?
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.