This is a slender volume that the author calls out as inspired by David MacKay's work Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air and in whose memory the book is dedicated. Starting with the title, the simple physics is the 19th century physics of mechanics, electricity, and thermodynamics with a little mention of semiconductors (solar panels) and nuclear physics (nuclear energy). This could form a survey physics course for the student who won't be involved in a more formal physics class. The mathematics is kept at the level of basic algebra with a bit of calculus in the appendices.
For many years, I taught an introductory (college, freshman-sophomore level) physics course Energy and the Environment. We used at first a custom textbook built up from pieces of three other books, and later a set of articles and notes that I made. This book by Peter Rez looks almost perfect for that course. The mathematics level is slightly higher than the (primarily education, social sciences, and humanities) students I had would have liked, but the approach is clean with derivations moved to appendices, available for the diligent reader but not required for the main “arc” of the book. The figures are also clean and clear, easy for students to understand and well connected to the text. I would have appreciated a bit more color, used here just for a small subset of figures and drawings, but that might have impacted the book cost which is quite reasonable for a textbook.
A long, more intensive treatment of this material is available in Robert Jaffe and Washington Taylor's The Physics of Energy, but that book is more suitable for an engineering or science student, and working all the way through the nearly 900 pages is more than a one semester course. Richard Muller's Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines is closer to this book in scope but is less a focused textbook and more a popular science read. All seem to have followed in one way or another from David MacKay though.
Digging into the book, it covers a lot of territory from insulation, thermal cycles, sources of electricity, energy cost of materials, transportation efficiency, and world-wide power usage. In the course of that coverage, basic physics from energy, work, power, thermodynamics, basic electricity, magnets, photoelectric effect, chemical and nuclear reactions, and drag (and many more topics) are discussed. I think the broad patterns of the book would appeal to the non-science students who would end up being at least slightly familiar with concepts across classical and modern physics. This is in addition to the elephant in the room, the dire real-world consequences, far away from the equations, of the massive consumption of fossil fuel energy and the atmospheric implications of that consumption. Likely prospective students taking a course using this as their textbook are aware of global climate change, probably alarmed by it, and in this classroom can gain an understanding of kilowatt-hours, photovoltaics, and the integration of renewable energy into the existing power grid. These are obviously related to CO2 emissions and rising sea levels. Less obvious are the energy costs of manufacture, detailed for buildings, cars, ships, airplanes, and power plants, and their energy return on investment. These are pieces of the environmental energy which rarely feature in the news.
Despite the considerable breadth of the book, if we zoom in on specific topics, there is quite a bit of detail. For example, in Chap. 9 (Ground Transportation: Road and Rail), after developing the forces on a rolling wheel and briefly discussing air resistance, the energy required per 100 km plots for Toyota Corolla sedans, Toyota Sequoia SUVs (with photos), a bicycle, and a (British main line) passenger train is compared with separate curves for the drag and rolling resistance terms. The next subsection looks at Otto and Diesel cycle engines in order to evaluate the efficiency of producing that required energy per distance. Opening up to nearly any page, there is a pairing of the simple physics and its application, often with very specific examples.
Thinking further about the use of this book in the classroom, I believe that for US non-science college students, one would have to add some discussion, or lab-like sessions, early in the course to explicitly cover units, dimensions, refresh algebra, and give the 1-h version of calculus to augment and refresh student backgrounds. Some additional labs during the class might also help connect the “paper” physics concepts to real world “tactile” experiences.
My review is filtered by thinking of this book in the classroom, as a textbook, but other readers would be encouraged to tackle this book as well. Reading it by oneself, I'd still work through the problems at the end of the book. Mastering these mere 35 example problems over such a wide range of topics would be a confidence-inspiring capstone to the book. As for the Summary, Rez begins it with Richard Feynman's quote from the Challenger Disaster Report, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” Well put.
Michael A. DuVernois is Research Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a senior scientist at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center. His research interests are primarily in experimental particle astrophysics, including cosmic ray and neutrino telescopes. He has bowled on all seven continents.