The benchmark for reviews of written texts was provided by Richelieu in the 17th century: "Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre."
Over 40 000 downloads per year of Motion Mountain - The Adventure of Physics puts the series among the most widely read physics texts across the world. If mirror sites and torrent providers are included, the number is even higher, though by an unknown amount.
The text is used by curious people of all kind: students, professors, universities, pupils, teachers, schools, and learners of all ages. The text is even used for preparation to the International Physics Olimpiad.
Here is some reader feedback from the old guestbook, now closed due to spam, from emails to the author, and from the internet:
- "Motion Mountain is by far the best open textbook I've come across." - Wynn Williamson
- "This book is absolutely phenomenal." - Didi Conimbriga
- "Thanks for this treasure." - Andres Nunez
- [The theory of] "evolution is not science; why do you support it?" - Fred Smith
- "Astrology is correct; your negative remarks about it should be changed!" - Wiebke van Leeuwen
- "Probably the most interesting physics book you will ever see." - Art Ruff
The text has been discussed in:
- Various physics research papers (in the meantime, many more than listed here), including: John D. Barrow, G.W. Gibbons, A maximum magnetic moment to angular momentum conjecture, arXiv:1701.06343; Su-Peng Kou, Knot physics - an ultimate unified theory of matter and its motion, arXiv:1604.07217; Yu.L. Bolotin, V.A. Cherkaskiy, A.V. Tur, V.V. Yanovsky, An ideal quantum clock and principle of maximum force, arXiv:1604.01945; Yu. L. Bolotin, V. A. Cherkaskiy, Principle of maximum force and holographic principle: two principles or one? arXiv:1507.02839, Mariusz P. Dabrowski, H. Gohar, Abolishing the maximum tension principle, arxiv.org/abs/1504.01547; John D. Barrow, Gary W. Gibbons, Maximum tension: with and without a cosmological constant, arxiv.org/abs/1408.1820; Herbert W. Zimmermann, Relation between quantum thermodynamics and classical thermodynamics, Z. Phys. Chem. 225, 1-13, (2011); Jorge G. Russo and Paul K. Townsend, Relativistic kinematics and stationary motions, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 42, 445402 (2009); Paolo Facchi and Saverio Pascazio, Quantum Zeno dynamics: mathematical and physical aspects, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41, 493001 (2008); E. Minguzzi, Classical aspects of lightlike dimensional reduction, Class. Quantum Grav. 23, 7085 (2006); Harald van Lintel et al., The rod and hole paradox re-examined, Eur. J. Phys. 26, 19-23 (2005);
- Several physics theses and various studies on education research, including B. Assefa et al., Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences, 3, 71-80 (2008); also an US-American study on electronic textbooks and a study on educational software by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
Recommendations to read the Motion Mountain
textbook – none requested or triggered by the author:
- Many college and university students, such as Jaime, who writes "Motion Mountain is probably the biggest, most professional freely available and published online textbook",
- A renowned overseas research institution that in 2019 invited me to give a talk about the book series, with paid aeroplane trip, which sadly I had to refuse because my family commitments did not permit it,
- Numerous physics teachers in public and private schools, universities and teaching institutions across the world,
- Dozens of readers who were so captivated that they spent many months of their lives to read every single line of the text,
- The translators, who translated various volumes with diligence and enthusiasm,
- The hundreds of readers who praised it in the former guestbook and on other websites,
- The numerous sponsors, listed here, who provided donations to this project,
- The Japanese PEN magazine, which published an interview with the author in 2013,
- The nomination, in 2010, for an important science popularization prize,
- Numerous university physics departments across the continents,
- Fellow physics textbook authors,
- Dozens of blogs and discussion groups, too numerous to mention here,
- The article How to learn physics at home, which advises reading Motion Mountain as one of four steps to do so,
- The influential blog cinghiale digitale, who in 2010 called it "splendid",
- The TeX User Group, who used it in its 2010 calendar that presents one example of beautiful typesetting every month,
- The influential blog by Stephen Downes, who in 2008 called it a "gem",
- The influential Cool Tools blog by Kevin Kelly, who in 2008 called it "a work of art" and a "masterpiece",
- The Christmas 2007 column of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics, where John Baez, from the University of California at Riverside, advised to use it in case "you're dying to learn physics, but don't know where to start" and called it a "feast of ideas - romantic, wildly ambitious, and still not finished",
- A 2007 article in Heise online, who called it a "liebevoll gemachtes Liebhaberprojekt" (a project made with love by an enthusiast),
- The Physical Sciences Ressource Center of the American Association of Physics Teachers, where it was a featured site in 2007,
- The well-known Learnoutloud blog, where in 2006 Jonathan Bischke called it "amazing" and put it among the six best ways to learn physics for free,
- The EU-funded European Gateway to Science Education, which is distributing the text to science teachers, science communicators and pupils since 2006,
- The former
Stingyscholar
website, which awarded the text the beggin-and-choosin award for
"best textbook" in 2005:
- Awards and articles from numerous science and education websites,
among them:
- The famous Boingboing blog, where Cory Doctorow wrote in 2005 that it is "perfect to dip into when you have a particular subject you want to get up to speed on",
- A 2005 article in the French Onirik e-zine, where David Lapetina called it "une mine d'or" (a gold mine),
- The Return of Whatever podcast in 2005,
- NASA's emlib, later hosted at IEEE, now gone,
- The disturbed anti-semite who organized an attack against the Motion Mountain website because Christoph Schiller refused to support anti-semitism (this almost incredible story was the reason that years ago a captcha was installed for downloads),
- Various Wikipedia articles that cite it as reference,
- An article in The Physics Teacher,
- An article in the July 2004 edition of Physics Education,
- A short article in Physikalische Blätter, the journal of the German physical society,
- Another disturbed reader who is so fascinated by the text that he is spending much of his time sending hate messages to the author and writing hate comments with mistaken arguments all over the internet, always under a different name – including deleting the citations in Wikipedia, writing to helpers and slandering the author – thus trying to emulate the man who went for many months to the Dutch museum showing Barnett Newman's painting 'Cathedra' again and again, until he finally damaged the painting with a knife, claiming, among others, that the book states that "The fundamental interactions of the universe have no speed limit", even though of course the book nowhere says so, and criticizing that "Motion Mountain ... predicts a fundamental momentum limit in violation of the local Poincaré invariance of general relativity", despite this statement being correct per elementary particle, like all (corrected) Planck limits in nature,
- Several readers who find the text helpful in difficult personal situations,
- Several governments: this site is proud to have been repeatedly blocked by the totalitarian governments of Tibet, Myanmar, Russia and North Corea; it is also virtually unavailable in various other countries whose governments do not respect the human "right to education", the right "to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers" and the right "to share in scientific advancement and its benefits." These expressions are extracts of the articles 26, 19 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a result of the lack of these human rights, such countries have few teachers, technicians, scientists and engineers, and therefore have little chance to achieve decent standards of living.