Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Optics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has stood the test of time as one of the classic textbooks of physics. It ranks up there with Reitz, Milford & Christy ("Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory") and Symon ("Mechanics") as one of the most-used textbooks in the upper-division undergraduate physics curriculum, and for very good reasons. While not detailed enough for graduate-level treatments (the standard in this case is Born and Wolf, "Principles of Optics"), as its title states, "Fundamentals of Optics" starts with the assumption that the reader knows absolutely nothing about optics and goes from there. Without getting bogged down in daunting mathematics (see "Principles of Optics" for that!), "Fundamentals of Optics" covers ALL of the main points of optics in a very consistently clear and concise manner, so much so that, after twenty years in the business of optical engineering, this book is STILL the first book I go to when I need to review a fundamental optical phenomenon (for actual optical engineering, I still rely on Smith, "Modern Optical Engineering"). Interestingly, some of the more complex aspects of Optics are handled better as chapters in "Fundamentals of Optics" than they are in whole books devoted to these topics! For example, the chapters in "Fundamentals of Optics" that deal with crystal optics and birefringence are pretty much the best treatments that I have ever found that actually explain the phenomenology without getting lost in the finer details. I refer to these chapters all the time in my work with solid-state lasers.

This is a great book, and you won't regret owning it.

Like another reviewer stated, the authors here assume you know nothing about optics. Unlike Hecht's text on the subject they do not start out with wave theory, but instead start with lenses in part one and progress to wave optics in part two. When the authors finally get around to wave optics, they explain wave theory to the point of distraction - an entire chapter actually. Finally, part three discusses quantum optics, with chapters on lasers, holography, and the dual nature of light.

The explanations here are largely prose. There is not much in the way of derivations if that is what you are looking for. Equations are presented, explained, and used in mathematical examples but not derived. The book is well-illustrated. Each chapter has a set of largely numerical problems with answers provided for the odd numbered problems. This is a great text for an undergraduate, particularly for engineers that are trying to approach the problem of learning optics - I say that because that is my background, and I appreciate the emphasis on problem solving coupled with solid explanations. Physicists will probably continue to prefer Hecht.

The only thing I can really complain about is the sky-high price. I suggest looking for used copies, since if you are willing to live with such minor inconveniences as a crease in the cover and coffee stains on one corner that do not obscure the text, you can find usable copies out there for thirty dollars, as I did. The table of contents is not included in the product description, so I show that next:

PART 1 - GEOMETRICAL OPTICS
1. Properties of Light
2. Plane Surfaces and Prisms
3. Spherical Surfaces
4. Thin Lenses
5. Thick Lenses
6. Spherical Mirrors
7. The Effects of Stops
8. Ray Tracing
9. Lens Aberrations
10. Optical Instruments

PART 2 - WAVE OPTICS
11. Vibrations and Waves
12. The Superposition of Waves
13. Interference of two Beams of Light
14. Interference Involving Multiple Reflections
15. Fraunhoffer Diffraction by a Single Opening
16. The Double Slit
17. The Diffraction Grating
18. Fresnel Diffraction
19. The Speed of Light
20. The Electromagnetic Character of Light
21. Sources of Light and Their Spectra
22. Absorption and Scattering
23. Dispersion
24. The Polarization of Light
25. Reflection
26. Double Refraction
27. Interference of Polarized Light
28. Optical Activity and Modern Wave Optics

PART 3 - QUANTUM OPTICS
29. Light Quanta and their Origin
30. Lasers
31. Holography
32. Magneto-Optics and Electro-Optics
33. The Dual Nature of Light

I had first read the book in college (Purdue). I was a physics major. It is a good basic book about optics. I now have a ten year old asking questions, and I use the book as a reference to explain things to my son. My copy of the book is the third edition. I am purchaseing the fourth edition because it contains the topic of Scherlerion optics. Sorry for the misspellings.

Part 1: Geometrical Optics. Part II: Physical Optics. Part III: Quantum Optics.

This book has stood the test of time as one of the classic textbooks of physics. It ranks up there with Reitz, Milford & Christy ("Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory") and Symon ("Mechanics") as one of the most-used textbooks in the upper-division undergraduate physics curriculum, and for very good reasons. While not detailed enough for graduate-level treatments (the standard in this case is Born and Wolf, "Principles of Optics"), as its title states, "Fundamentals of Optics" starts with the assumption that the reader knows absolutely nothing about optics and goes from there. Without getting bogged down in daunting mathematics (see "Principles of Optics" for that!), "Fundamentals of Optics" covers ALL of the main points of optics in a very consistently clear and concise manner, so much so that, after twenty years in the business of optical engineering, this book is STILL the first book I go to when I need to review a fundamental optical phenomenon (for actual optical engineering, I still rely on Smith, "Modern Optical Engineering"). Interestingly, some of the more complex aspects of Optics are handled better as chapters in "Fundamentals of Optics" than they are in whole books devoted to these topics! For example, the chapters in "Fundamentals of Optics" that deal with crystal optics and birefringence are pretty much the best treatments that actually explain the phenomenology without getting lost in the finer details.

This is pretty truly a fundamentals book but if you want to know much more about lenses and diffraction this is a good book for that. The chapter on lenses and Gaussian lens design was the only one I used but was very helpful. The notation and writing are easier to read than some other books (Born and Wolf).

This is a good book. It provides me the basic background in optical engineering. Actually, this book belongs to my advisor. He gave me to read and understand the basic idea of optics and it works. Not only did I get the basic idea of this kind of field, but I also have some advanced ideas how to deal with Optic in reality. Someone may say that this book is too easy for him/her, but would you think about it a little bit that how you could achieve something without the basic idea?