Designed for physics students treating the underlying basis for modern techniques and the devices used, this timely survey describes current experimental methods in a clear and accessible text. This up-to-date volume provides an essential part of undergraduate physics training; until now, students were often expected to learn many of these methods in the laboratory without proper introduction. The broad coverage of available techniques includes discussion of state-of-the-art electronic equipment, as well as such topics as discrete semiconductor devices, signal processing, thermometry, optical...

In this invaluable book, the basic mathematical properties of the golden ratio and its occurrence in the dimensions of two- and three-dimensional figures with fivefold symmetry are discussed. In addition, the generation of the Fibonacci series and generalized Fibonacci series and their relationship to the golden ratio are presented. These concepts are applied to algorithms for searching and function minimization. The Fibonacci sequence is viewed as a one-dimensional aperiodic, lattice and these ideas are extended to two- and three-dimensional Penrose tilings and the concept of incommensurate...