Optics (4th Edition) [Hardcover]

Eugene Hecht (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805385665 | ISBN-13: 978-0805385663 | Publication Date: August 12, 2001 | Edition: 4

Accurate, authoritative and comprehensive, Optics, Fourth Edition has been revised to provide readers with the most up-to-date coverage of optics. The market leader for over a decade, this book provides a balance of theory and instrumentation, while also including the necessary classical background. The writing style is lively and accessible.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 680 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; 4 edition (August 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805385665
• ISBN-13: 978-0805385663
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Light
  • #3 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Optics

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK textbook, could have been better, May 10, 2006

By 

Joey Pittman (Edmonton, AB, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Optics (4th Edition) (Hardcover)

I used this textbook for an introductory optics course. It was an average book. There weren't any examples in the core of the text, but fortunately the author did include worked solutions in the appendix for some of the end-of-chapter problems, which I used as examples to work from. Most of the questions that were answered were the easier ones, that anybody halfway intelligent should be able to figure out.

On the plus side, there were lots of equations and lots of description to help learn the material. Some sections were better than others. The sections on mirrors and lenses, for example, were wonderful; I never understood that stuff in high school, and Hecht made it all clear. The tables he had for the different types of lenses/mirrors and their properties were great. An example of a poor section was that on diffraction; I had no clue what he was talking about.

The book is a bit expensive, but overall it is alright; certainly better than some of the other books I used during my degree!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great in combination with the Schaum's outline by the same author, March 15, 2009

By 

calvinnme - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Optics (4th Edition) (Hardcover)

If this book had to stand on its own I'd say it is a failure. The author is very good about explaining concepts. For example, he tries to make practical sense out of reflection, refraction, and the Fresnel equations via conversational examples in nature such as the "mirages" you see on highways in the hot summertime. Also, his derivations are quite detailed and complete. However, he works very few numerical examples. He just expects you to do so in the exercises with no demonstration by him on how to do it. As someone has previously mentioned, the subject of Fourier optics is spread all over the book in a completely disorganized manner.

So why am I giving it four stars? Because, unbelievably, it is the best optics textbook out there for those of us seeking an academic treatment and not some popular mechanics text. Also, the author has written an outstanding Schaum's outline, Schaum's Outline of Optics, that goes hand in hand with this book. They complement each other perfectly. Simply read a chapter of this book, go to the corresponding chapter in the Schaum's outline, and there the same author shows practical problems and their solutions.

If the author ever writes another edition of this text it would be great if he folded in some of the practicality of his Schaum's outline into this very complete but unpractical text.

49 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars worst text I ever used, December 8, 2004

By 

GSN - See all my reviews

This review is from: Optics (4th Edition) (Hardcover)

Hecht is the worst text I used as an undergrad fro the following reasons.

1) He is too verbose. His explanations of phenomena could easily be more brief and a lot more clear. Some people like to hear themselves speak; Hecht likes to hear himself write. If you want a clear description of what is going on then Pedrotti is a much better text.

2) You will often find entire sections devoted to the history of optics. This is not bad and I rather enjoyed them. However, they are interspersed between critical sections that one really ought to be drawing connections between. There is nothing wrong with a stand-alone history of optics chapter or even with putting the historical development in the beginning or at the end of the chapter.

2.5) His current style makes this text useless as a quick reference. If I want to read about a Fourier transform of a triangle function, I want to be able to flip to the index, see a page number, go to it, and get the relevant information. I do not trudge through why FT is such a useful tool, transforms of gaussian and cylindrical functions, convolution, the dirac delta function, Fraunhoffer difraction, and correlation to find the ten lines that tell you what the result is. There is a figure a few pages later that gives you the same information as well. Why it is not on the same page as the relevant text I will never know. The exercise took 20 mins and principally because you have to read through the text to make sure he didn't mention on one line it under some random heading (which he did...it shows up under correlation...because its obvious to look under there apparently. There is no entry for triangle functions under the index, either by itself or under FT...you will however find an entry for Charles Wheatstone)

One might argue that if I needed such information I could use Schaums (also by Hecht) but the point is every other textbook I have used (and I have used a lot of them) facilitates information retrieval EXCEPT Hecht.

3) Even if he is too verbose, and includes unnecessary information, what is happening really ought to be clear from looking at an equation, as these are the most economical way of describing phenomena...after all thats why we use them. Hecht's equations use archaic notation and are not rigorously derived in most cases. They are spread out over the chapter (or chapters) which is a problem because he makes cross references all over the place. A summary of essential formulae at the end of a chapter would go a long way towards addressing this shortcoming.

4) Some of Hecht's figures (cartoons if you like) are too busy and too much is going on in any one to make them easily understandable. His captions are frequently uninformative. I did like that he has actual pictures all over the place, and in this respect Hecht does beat out other optics textbooks. However, negative infinity plus one does not change his score a whole lot. Optics is a subject principally learnt in lab, and the pictures help in bridging the gap between class and lab or theory and experiment.

5) The binding is shoddy.

In summary, this book sucks.

I felt strongly enough about it to compose this diatribe and if any of you want to argue about it, feel free to mail me.