Customer Reviews

Atomic Physics: 8th Edition (Dover Books on Physics)

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Max Born was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, a great physicist and a cultivated gentleman. His "Atomic Physics" has been around since a long time, but is still the best place to find out why do we really need to replace Newtonian mechanics. This book studies every kind of phenomena which puzzled the physicsts of the early century, like thermal equilibrium of radiation, photo-electric effect, the Bohr model of the atom, specific-heat irregularities, cohesion forces among molecules, etc. Then he shows how quantum mechanics correctly describes each one of them. This is done in a pedagogically very effective way: the ideas are explained in the text, while the more formal derivations appear in a large set of appendices. These are gems of precision and concision, precious by themselves. My favorite one is the derivation of the Van der Waals forces (between molecules), which he shows to be essentially quantal, as they are due to the zero-point energy of the ! quantum harmonic oscillator. One of the great text-books of this century.

Atomic Physics is based upon a series of lectures on physics that Born gave in Germany in 1933. Since then it has been translated into English updated significantly as physics developed. This means that the book represents sound physics, and not the relatively undeveloped 1933 picture of the physics.

I should note that the title of the book is slightly misleading. The original German edition was called modern physics. However, the publisher of the English version already had a book called modern physics, so the English version was renamed Atomic Physics.

Born covers a wide range of topics dealing with the gasses, elementary particles, the structure of the nucleus, atoms, molecules. He has written the book in the context of describing the historical development of each topic. This is done in a flowing style by only including important equations in the text. Derivations and so fourth are placed in the 130 pages of appendices in the back of the book. This allows the text to tell a story without the burden of constant discontinuities due to equations. If you want to see the maths, just flip to the back of the book.

I would classify this book somewhere between popular science and a textbook. Like a popular science it tells a story, it flows and readable. People with some knowledge of physics can read this book and learn a lot form it. Even without the appendices. On the other hand, like a text it doesn't give hand wavy, simplified descriptions of the physics. This is good hard physics.

While I wouldn't call this book a text, it is far too general for that, it does give an excellent overview of the development and character of modern physics from one of the people who was there in the thick of it. I highly recommend it to any person that is acquainted with physics. Non-scientists would probably benefit more from reading something like Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.

This is a great book, it is well written, structure and relevant. It fully deserves five stars. To reiterate what other reviewers have said, I wish present-day textbooks were written this well.

When we see how much quantum mechanics pushed our civilization and how bad it became explained on 'modern' textbooks it is a relief to find out that this book is still published and affordable. A must for anyone interested in the subject or needing to understand it with the help of one of the fathers of QM.

I used this book many years ago to prepare for my preliminary exams (pre-PhD exams) in modern physics. Although it's dated (ca. 1950), that doesn't matter very much. The strong feature is that it discusses the content without getting into a lot of formalism, and gives the historical connection between different aspects that one is not likely to see in the usual text books.

Well, this is probably not the most up to date text but it is still one of the best. The book is a collection of topics (Atomic Physics, Solid State Physics, some of QM, some of classical Physics, Statistical Thermodynamics), which are explained in a short, simple and clear way. This is also a great book for those who are familiar with QM: they will find an excellent collection of topics that are just outlined on other standard QM textbooks. Moreover one can learn a lot from the original way M. Born approaches important subjects in Physics (how to recognize the Physics in every concept, for example). This is a book everyone interested in Physics should have in her/his library.

This book on Atomic Physics is in its eighth printing for good reason. Its a five star book and I have evaluated against a college level, more detailed equivalent. This book has a balanced level of dialog, illustrations, graphs, charts and theoretical formulas to understandable explanations. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. It will become your Bible. PS: I am retired and seventy+. CFC

This is a wonderful book to read if you have an advanced degree in math and physics. The latter is needed to understand it completely. It's probably also a wonderful book to read even if you don't have an advanced degree in math and physics, for it does actually penetrate the equations and reveal the physics hidden within them. It is telling of the calculus-centric view of its era, that the author uses Fourier transforms, separation methods for PDEs, perturbation theory, and other advanced analysis tools, without flinching, but shies away from simple algebraic methods as being 'mathematically too advanced.'