Rienk Van Grondelle

Dass der Mensch mit der Technik und ihren Folgen die Umwelt stark verandert, ist uns spatestens seit Tschernobyl und dem Auftreten des Ozonlochs bewusst. Taglich werden wir mit physikalischen Messungen von Umwelteigenschaften konfrontiert, deren physikalische Prinzipien und Aussage wir zumeist glauben mussen. "Physik und Umwelt" schliesst nun die Lucke fur den physikalisch vorgebildeten Nichtfachmann, der keine spezielle Literatur zu Rate ziehen mochte. Entstanden aus Vorlesungen der Autoren an der Universitat Amsterdam ist es auch fur Vorlesungen des Hauptstudiums fur Ingenieure und Physiker geeignet. Damit bietet das Buch in Thema und Niveau eine ideale Erganzung zu dem bewahrten Vieweg-Titel "Chemie und Umwelt" von Andreas Heintz und Guido Reinhardt.

This thoroughly revised and updated third edition focuses on the utilization of sustainable energy and mitigating climate change, serving as an introduction to physics in the context of societal problems. A distinguishing feature of the text is the discussion of spectroscopy and spectroscopic methods as a crucial means to quantitatively analyze and monitor the condition of the environment, the factors determining climate change, and all aspects of energy conversion. This textbook will be invaluable to students in physics and related subjects, and supplementary materials are available on a companion website: http://www.nat.vu.nl/environmentalphysicsInstructor support material is available at: http://booksupport.wiley.com

Providing extensive coverage of the field, this book brings togetherthe latest developments, theories, research and concerns from both a scientificand social perspective. Beginning with an introduction on approaching environmentalproblems, the text then moves on to look at climatic change, energy conversion,the transport of pollutants, experimental methods and ends with a discussionon science and society. Features: Extensive coverage of the latest concerns, issues and developments withinthe field from both a scientific and social perspective Numerous relevant examples and mini-case studies (appetisers) combinedwith exercises in each chapter and references for further reading A supplementary website where students can access experiments and simplemodels relevant to the book: www.nat.vu.nl/envphysexp

Excitons are considered as the basic concept used by describing the spectral properties of photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes and excitation dynamics in photosynthetic light-harvesting antenna and reaction centers. Following the recently obtained structures of a variety of photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes from plants and bacteria our interest in understanding the relation between structure, function and spectroscopy has strongly increased. These data demonstrate a short interpigment distance (of the order of 1 nm or even smaller) and/or a highly symmetric (ring-like) arrangement of pigment molecules in peripheral light-harvesting complexes of photosynthetic bacteria. Books which were devoted to the exciton problem so far mainly considered the spectral properties of molecular crystals. However, the small size of these pigment aggregates in the pigment-protein complexes as well as the role of the protein, which is responsible for the structural arrangement of the complex, clearly will have a dramatic influence on the pigment spectra and exciton dynamics. All these aspects of the problem are considered in this book. Exciton theory is mainly considered for small molecular aggregates (dimers, ring-like structures etc.). Together with the theoretical description of the classical conceptual approach, which mainly deals with polarization properties of the absorption and fluorescence spectra, the nonlinear femtosecond spectroscopy which is widely used for investigations now is also discussed. A large part of the book demonstrates the excitonic effects in a multitude of photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes and how we can understand these properties on the basis of the exciton concept.