Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Physics and Astrophysics

For the last eighteen years, I have been teaching an introductory course in as­ trophysics. The course is intended for nonscience majors satisfying a general education requirement in natural science. It is a physics course with applications in astronomy. The only prerequisite is the high school mathematics required for ad­ mission to the university. For a number of years, I used an astronomy text, which I supplemented with lecture notes on physics. There are many good astronomy texts availa...