Preface to the Third Edition

It’s very simple: This English edition is an updated translation of our Cours de Physique, Springer, Paris 1999, which was an expanded French translation of Stauffer & Stanley, From Newton to Mandelbrot, Springer, New York 1990 and 1996, which in turn was an expanded translation of Stauffer, Theoretische Physik, Springer, Heidelberg 1989 (in German language). The first expansion was Chap. 5 on Fractals, the second expansion Chap. 6 on Dynamical Systems and Chaos. The present version omits the diskettes added to the earlier version. Chapters 1–4 contain the standard material of courses in theoretical physics and are supposed to accompany lectures at the university; thus they are rather condensed. They are supposed to fill 1 year of teaching. Chapters 5 and 6, in contrast, are written less condensed since this material may not be part of standard lectures and thus could be studied without the help of a university teacher. An appendix on elementary particles lies somewhere in between: It could be a summary of a much more detailed course, or studied without such a course.