Customer Reviews

Electrons in Solids, Third Edition: An Introductory Survey

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When you're ten years out of school, and you still reach for a book you used in college, you know its valuable. I reach for Bube as a refresher very frequently. Its not flowery, but it has just enough figures and just enough math and explanation to cover most electronic phenomena. Photoemission, field emission, photoelectric effects, schottky barriers, etc. are covered well enough so that you can tackle a calculation of a particular phenomenon when necessary.

This book is a good place to go for explanations when you get lost in the muck of proofs. If you expect it to be rigorous, of course you will be disappointed. The synopses say it is for people who have never been through these topics before. This book is invaluable when you are going through notes and derivations and forget what the heck assumptions were made and what you're trying to get to. The beauty of it is that it isn't weighed down by too much information. It gives a good overview of exactly what it says: Electrons in Solids.

A pretty crummy book for the price. It's pretty short, the explanations aren't very good, and I don't particularly like the chosen topics either. You'd be better off with Kittel, and Kittel is a terrible book. I've read this, Kittel, Omar, Ashcroft+Mermin, and Burns, and this is the worst. It doesn't tell you enough to build a foundation for anything and I didn't find a single person in my class of 12 or so who liked this book. How bad is this book? I had to write my own table of physical constants on the inside cover because this book doesn't have them. I'd buy Omar instead, followed by Kittel, followed by anything else but Bube.