Amazon.com description: Product Description: "Physical oceanography" encompasses a broad range of subjects, from heat transfer to sound and optics. Knauss brings all these disparate fields together in this comprehensive text. He strikes a balance between purely descriptive texts and mathematically rigorous ones, assuming readers only have knowledge of elementary calculus and physics. This results in a straightforward, readable book that makes the material accessible both to readers specializing in physical oceanography and those from other disciplines who need to understand the fundamental principles of physical oceanography.