Thank you

I am deeply grateful for all the support that I received for the books, the website, and the publications about the strand tangle model. For the research publications, the names are listed in the respective acknowledgements. Passing on the gifts from my parents, my family, and everybody I met is my way to honour what I received. Therefore, this website is free for everybody.

The following volunteers and organizations have supported the book project. Many others have helped but wanted to remain anonymous. Thank you to all of them.

Gold sponsors

• From 2020 to 2021, Alessandro Gori translated the first half of the third volume into Italian. Thank you very much!
• From 2016 to 2019, Cao Sĩ Sơn admirably translated all five volumes into Vietnamese. He also updated the first volume in 2020, and the others in 2021. Thank you very much for this wonderful effort!
• In 2020, Enrique Ynfante Milá translated the third volume into Spanish. Thank you very much for this wonderful work!
• Up to 2019, Dragoš Vulović admirably translated all volumes into Serbian. Thank you very much for this great effort!
• In 2019, Enrique Ynfante Milá translated a large part of the first volume into Spanish and helped to put it into Latex format. Thank you very much!
• In 2018 and 2019, Ahmad Bassel Radwan translated the first five volumes into the Arabic language. Thank you very much for this wonderful effort!
• From 2016 to 2018, Jerónimo Hurtado Pérez translated three volumes, over 1000 pages, into the Spanish language. Jerónimo, thank you very much for this beautiful effort!
• From 2006 to 2010, Benoît Clénet translated the first three volumes, over 1000 pages, into the French language. Benoît, thank you very much for this fantastic effort! (Benoît Clénet also translated into French the book À la recherche de la matière noire by Robert Sanders.)
• Since 2010, the website of the project receives non-monetary philantropic support.
• From 2007 to 2011, this project was supported by the Klaus Tschira Foundation.
• In 2014 and 2015, Salvatore Spampinato translated two volumes into the Italian language. Thank you very much!
• Hirooka Megumi admirably translated the volume on relativity into Japanese. Thank you very much!
• Alessandro Gori translated the section on special relativity into the Italian language.
• José Manuel López López translated the section on special relativity into the Spanish language.

Silver sponsors

• Ben Kilgore produced animations of the Reisemeister moves and of the fundamental principle.
• Antonio Martos produced two wonderful animations about the belt trick.
• Jason Hise produced several wonderful animations about the belt trick.
• A dedicated reader, P.L., made regular donations over the years.

Bronze sponsors

• The physics tutors at Varsity Tutors made a donation in 2011.
• The physics resources department at Teachable.net made a donation in 2011.
• Vincent Isoz and Evert Meulie have provided free pdf download of the book from 2005 to 2008.
• The Digital City of Eindhoven provided free html web hosting for many years.
• Marco Fulle, Roberto Carniel and Jürg Alean provided volcano images from www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli.
• Gilles Régnier provided tide photographs from his site www.gillesregnier.com.
• Neil Clayton of Shinywhitebox provided a copy of the IShowU screen capture software for animations.
• Daugerresearch provided a copy of its Atom in a Box software to visualize atomic orbitals.
• Lucas Barbosa and José Antonio Díaz Navas produced animations specifically for this text.
• Two figures from www.messmittelonline.de have been included by kind permission.
• Luca Gastaldi, Antonio Martos and Ulrich Kolberg produced images specifically for this text.
• Rüdiger Paschotta provided images from his Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology found at www.rp-photonics.com/encyclopedia.html.
• Content and editing help came in many points from Frank Sweetser, and also from Mikael Johansson, Bruno Barberi Gnecco, Lothar Beyer, including the numerous improvements by Bert Sierra, the detailed suggestions by Claudio Farinati, the many improvements by Eric Sheldon, the extensive advice of Andrew Young, the continuous help and advice of Jonatan Kelu, the corrections of Elmar Bartel, and in particular the extensive, passionate and conscientious help of Adrian Kubala.
• Heiko Oberdiek, Michael Zedler, Achim Blumensath and Donald Arseneau helped extensively with fonts and typesetting.
• Ulrich Dirr and Johannes Küster provided professional typographic consulting.
• Bildhaft provided web design.
• My wife Britta provided suggestions and constant support.

Iron sponsors

The SchoolTutoring Academy provided a donation in support of better physics education.
The physics resources department at www.teachable.net made a donation in 2011.
The physics tutors at www.VarsityTutors.com made a donation in 2011.
Donations were also provided by Robrecht De Rouck, Virginia Lira, Liliana Alonso and Wolf Tombe and a number of other donors who prefer to be unnamed.

Content: Numerous readers have provided material for this text: a warm thank-you to every one of them. Important material was provided by Bert Peeters, Anna Wierzbicka, William Beaty, Jim Carr, John Merrit, John Baez, Lawrence Bottorff, Frank DiFilippo, Jonathan Scott, Jon Thaler, Luca Bombelli, Douglas Singleton, George McQuarry, Tilman Hausherr, Brian Oberquell, Peer Zalm, Martin van der Mark, Vladimir Surdin, Julia Simon, Antonio Fermani, Don Page, Stephen Haley, Peter Mayr, Allan Hayes, Igor Ivanov, Doug Renselle, Wim de Muynck, Steve Carlip, Tom Bruce, Ryan Budney, Gary Ruben, Chris Hillman, Olivier Glassey, Jochen Greiner, squark, Martin Hardcastle, Mark Biggar, Pavel Kuzin, Douglas Brebner, Luciano Lombardi, Franco Bagnoli, Lukas Fabian Moser, Dejan Corovic, Steve Carlip, Corrado Massa, Tom Helmond, Gary Gibbons, Heinrich Neumaier, Peter Brown, Paul Vannoni, John Haber, Saverio Pascazio, Klaus Finkenzeller, Leo Volin, Jeff Aronson, Roggie Boone, Lawrence Tuppen, Quentin David Jones, Arnaldo Uguzzoni, Frans van Nieuwpoort, Alan Mahoney, Britta Schiller, Petr Danecek, Ingo Thies, Vitaliy Solomatin, Carl Offner, Nuno Proença, Elena Colazingari, Paula Henderson, Daniel Darre, Wolfgang Rankl, John Heumann, Joseph Kiss, Martha Weiss, Antonio González, Antonio Martos, John Heumann, André Slabber, Ferdinand Bautista, Zoltán Gácsi, Pat Furrie, Michael Reppisch, Enrico Pasi, Thomas Köppe, Martin Rivas, Herman Beeksma, Tom Helmond, John Brandes, Vlad Tarko, Nadia Murillo, Ciprian Dobra, Romano Perini, Harald van Lintel, Andrea Conti, François Belfort, Dirk Van de Moortel, Heinrich Neumaier, Jaroslaw Królikowski, John Dahlman, Fathi Namouni, Paul Townsend, Sergei Emelin, Freeman Dyson, S.R.Madhu Rao, David Parks, Jürgen Janek, Daniel Huber, Alfons Buchmann, William Purves, Pietro Redondi, Sergei Kopeikin, Helmut Wunderling, Frank Sweetser, Farooq Ahmad Bhat, plus a number of people who chose to remain unnamed.

Animations and films: All included films are copyrighted; they were kindly provided by Martin Elsässer, Jarmo Hietarinta, Lim Tee Tai, Thomas Weiland, Daniel Schroeder, Roger Sabbadini, Dean Dauger, Greg Egan, Jake Socha, Lucas Barbosa, José Antonio Díaz Navas and Ute Kraus.

Photographs: Almost all photographs, in total more than 200, shown in the text and on the website are copyrighted; permission to use them has been kindly provided by each copyright holder. The names are mentioned below each picture, in the index of names, and on the picture credit page in the appendix.

Software: The textbook was typeset using its own LaTeX class file, the MinionPro package and over 60 existing LaTeX packages, using Gerben Wierda's gwtex distribution, Andrew Trevorrow's OzTeX and TexLive. Numerous limitations and bugs in the tex distribution, in LaTeX, in LaTeX packages, in programming editors, and even in Adobe Acrobat had to be corrected to typeset the text. The software tools were refined with the repeated and valuable support of Donald Arseneau; help came also from Ulrike Fischer, Piet van Oostrum, Gerben Wierda, Klaus Böhncke, Craig Upright, Herbert Voss, Andrew Trevorrow, Danie Els, Sebastian Rahtz, Don Story, Vincent Darley, Johan Linde, Joseph Hertzlinger, Rick Zaccone, John Warkentin, Ulrich Diez, Uwe Siart, Will Robertson, Joseph Wright, Enrico Gregorio, Rolf Niepraschk, Alexander Grahn and Michael Zedler. The beautiful Minion math fonts are those of Johannes Küster; they are found at Typoma.

Website: The programming of the html pages owes much to the help of Greg Smith and Michael Beretka. Chris Garbers helped for the wiki and many other issues. Ipad tests are due to Rick Shoal. The website uses several PHP scripts from the PHPJunkyard and from Phil Connell. Translations of the html pages are due to Daniel Gutmanas, Romano Perini, Matous Ringel, Marek Gajdos, Irwan Prasetya Gunawan, Jarosław Królikowski, Johnny Chadda, Martin Clausen, Dimitar Genchev, Ryan, Kasper Olsen, Helga Trapp, Thomas Wahlstrøm, Gorka Ochoa, Ambrož Demšar, Roman Beslik, Paul Townsend, Kristjan Kannike, Hirooka Megumi, Mahdi Samadzad, Rahele Mashhadiebrahim, Kishan Kumar, Ahmed Bassel Radwan and Dragos Vulovic.

Hardware: Without the excellent and professional service of Gravis in Munich this project could not have been realized.

Colour sponsors

The many readers who sent feedback, suggestions and criticism helped making this text into what it is today. Thank you for the support! You add the colour to this project.

I want to thank also the many software developers who make free tools for book writing: TeX, LaTeX, TextMate, Alpha, Aquamacs, Inkscape, FileZilla, Firefox, Opera.