Customer Reviews

Introduction to Plasma Physics: With Space and Laboratory Applications

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The standard book for introductory plasma physics is "Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion" by Francis Chen. Unfortunately, the semester I took the course, the professor chose to use this text. It lacks any worked-through examples and has no answers to any of the problems so you have little assurance that you are understanding the concepts. Furthermore, the authors have a bad habit of stating, "It is easily shown that ..." and then never showing the derivations, nor providing information on where such derivations may be found. The result is a collection of random equations with a binding and pretty cover. I consistently find myself turning to alternate texts to clarify the material presented in this text. If you are forced to use this book, make certain you have access to a copy of Chen's book and start reading there.

The text was nicely written and describes a lot of phenomena but the homework problems were way too easy and most of the time did not even require the knowledge presented in the chapters. For example, many of the problems were of the form "plug this into the quadratic equation" or "add these two equations and simplify". Without problems that present a test of knowledge it was hard for me to solidify my reading or to know whether I really understood it. That criticism aside, the author was able to present a lot of information in an understandable form without getting needlessly bogged down in details.