Customer Reviews

Modern Physics

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

 

 

This is one of my favorite books left over from my undergraduate career. It is perfect for sophomore/junior level physics students who have completed intro courses and are ready to take a peek at something a little more advanced and a little more interesting. The student will need a little bit of differential equations and plenty of calculus to do well with this text. The chapter on Solid State Physics is very well done, with excellent descriptions of Bose and Fermi statistics, which should be adequate preparation for a more advanced course in statistical mechanics. The chapter involving the Schrodinger Equation is elementary, but it is unecessary to confuse a student with Quantum Mechanics at this level. A well-rounded book which makes a well-rounded student.

For a undergraduate text, I expect more mathematical explanations and modeling and less dumbed-down concepts. This book is really geared toward the lowest common denominator. The course that uses this book at my college is hands-down the "dumbest" class required for majors. It reads like a middle-school science textbook.

This book is awful. An above reviewer gives the author credit for his chapter on statistical and solid-state physics, but I frankly don't see what warrants it; formulas are given in a reasonably clear manner, but very little explanation is given as to why they are true. For instance, when 'deriving' the Boltzmann-Maxwell distribution, the author's argument doesn't go beyond 'for random processes, we can expect a formula similar to the Gaussian distribution.' No real insight is gained. I used this book for a course this semester, and learned only how to properly plug numbers into a few formulas. Get "The Feynmann Lectures on Physics" instead.

Firstly, I would like to question how good a modern physics book which doesn't make reference to either Feynman or Dirac can be? You may say that these two physicists are above the level of this book, but considering the amount of half assed attempts to explain physics in this book, at least a student could leave this course knowing a little bit about the founders of modern physics. My complaints are as follows:
-Way too dumbed down: I don't know why every introductory physics book falls into this same trap, but they all seem to miss the highlights of a subject in their attempt to sneak around doing some "real" math. This approach does students no favors, at some time or another every physics student will be introduced to more advanced concepts, and will be expected to keep up with the pace of an advanced course. This book doesn't even introduce bra-ket notation: I admit that at this level there is no need to introduce bras as functionals, and to explain their existence one to one with kets via riesz's representation theorem is out of the picture. However, this book is most likely used as a precursor to books like Griffiths, who makes no apologies in his use of more advanced math. Students who use this book will suffer later on because of this "math light" approach to phyics.
-Bad layout: Here is a hint to all publishers of physics books: Please publish diagrams on the page they are intended to be used on. I do not like flipping pages constantly so I can see your monochromatic mess of a diagram which is intended to replace heavy math in explaining why a concept is true.
-Arguments are mostly heuristic: I don't think this needs any explanation, however this is another place where most introductory books fail.
This book suffers from every kind of defect one could hope to avoid in pedagogy. It is, as said above, written like a middle school science textbook: Patronizing, and not well thought out.

I wasn't a fan of the book's layout. The few examples were put at the end of the chapter so you'd have to flip back and forth.

I am using the book as one of my references in teaching Modern Physics. Derivation of equations and formulas require only basic algebra and trigonometry. A lot of equation analysis which is very helpful in understanding the equation and the implications.

This book is a descent book, especially as a quick referral book after you have taken more advanced classes and know the material better. I think sometimes the author was to wordy, and over-focused on the historical aspect of it. I like the historical aspect of a lot of it, but some of it defers away from the actual study of the material.

Moreover, the book doesn't always clearly explain everything to an introductory student, or isn't math heavy enough. By that I mean, he explains the procedures for Schrodinger's Equation, but doesn't show enough of the math along with it. Sometimes overly condensed on and leaves the general concept out. Personally, if you are having to take this course, I would get Griffiths Quantum Mechanic book to help you in understanding how to and why your Normalize, understanding the step-barriers, harmonic oscillator, etc.

If your a professor, I would recommend looking around to other textbooks instead of this book. The Halliday and Resnick, 3rd book was a better source of understanding than this. (It's the one that deals with modern physics, but is part of the Cal-Physics I and II series, except instead of ending at Chapter 35, it continues to chapter 48 or something like that, which is the modern physics section). And in the interest of saving your students money, you should tell the physic majors in particular or any of them that believe they will have to go through modern physics to go ahead and just buy all three portions of the Halliday and Resnick together.

Once professor assigns this text, you're stuck with it. Although there are many books with same name to compliment this one, this one is still quite reasonable provided that its chosen for classes that are for engineers, chemists etc, and not exclusively for physics majors, so extra explanations can be viewed as overcomplication of the material, whos purpose is the overview of modern physics.

This book is very helpful in teaching the basics of quantum and relativity. The historical development helps to give perspective on the problems that are still around. The only possible complaint is that the book could use some more challenging problems.

The seller is very responsible, I had received my purchase item about two to three after I placed my order. Furthermore, the item looks new and clean.