Customer Reviews

200 Puzzling Physics Problems: With Hints and Solutions

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The problems are generally at the level of International Physics Olympiad competitions or higher, and are very suitable for freshman/sophomore honors physics courses. The problems are tough and very interesting, with many unique and unusual twists, guaranteed to challenge even the best students preparing for physics competitions at the senior high school and undergraduate levels. I would guess that those sitting for PhD qualifying exams will have difficulties with some of the problems. The surprise is that the solutions require no more than elementary calculus, although lots of original critical thinking and insight are necessary.

Gnadig and Honyek are both leading the Hungarian physics olympiad teams for many years, while Riley is a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge. Riley had a previous equally interesting but slightly less difficult problem book called "Problems for Physics Students," covering quite a few interesting Cambridge Natural Sciences Tripos and entrance exam type questions for the best UK high school students.

If you are a physics buff, you will derive countless hours of enjoyment (and frustration - if you resist the temptation of looking at the provided solutions too soon), plus it will bring your understanding of classical physics to a deeper level.

A few other worthy physics problem books include Thomas & Raine's "Physics to a Degree" for undergraduates, and Dendy's "Cambridge Problems in Physics" for high school students aiming for Cambridge University entrance. The Russian books "Problems in General Physics" by Irodov and "Problems in Elementary Physics" by Bukhovtsev are very good too but they may be harder to find. An upcoming excellent (and tough) classical mechanics problem book is David Morin's Physics 16 course text at Harvard - still in its draft form but downloadable from Harvard website.