Customer Reviews

Optics

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have now used Hecht as the primary text for four classes (physical optics, intro to geometric optics, geometric optics 1 and fourier optics) and have not been very happy with the book. The book lacks structure, especially on the subject of Fourier optics and lacks examples throughout. It is slightly compensated for by a plethora of diagrams, graphs, photos and the likes but--like most texts filled with pictures--they do not generally contribute significantly to the didactic success of the book.

The treatment of geometric optics is suitable because the subject is all but obsolete in our age of lens design software and an engineer really needs only moderate knowledge of the third order theory equations and more of an understanding of what aberrations are and why apertures help etc.

The treatment of Fourier optics is unacceptable. For starters, the necessary information for a full treatment of Fourier optics is spread out over three chapters (7,11 and 14 if memory serves me) and the meaning of the transform and all of the little tricks that can be done with it is all but completely lost. Fourier optics is a losely defined subject as it is and with Hecht's treatment, it comes off as a bunch of unrelated phenomena. I may be complaining more about the structure of the course I was in which based itself almost entirely upon Hecht but the fact remains, Hecht is not a good text to learn Fourier from. I personally recommend Steward's text as an introduction because it avoids all of Hecht's pitfalls.

Physical optics is probably the best treated subject of the subjects that I have learned from Hecht. Then again, it is a pretty straightforward subject on the simple level of interference that most freshman (as I was) are exposed to.

That said, I must say that Hecht is the only text out there for an undergraduate studying optics in depth. Born wrote a great book but it is difficult to learn from. Jenkins and White is a bit too brief on many subjects. Fowles as well. Hecht remains, despite all of its flaws, really the only choice for undergraduate students of optics. At least, under one cover. Fishing around here and there, a library-adept student can piece together a better text but I would still say, if you are studying a lot of optics on the undergraduate level and are only going to buy one book, buy Hecht.

But before you buy anything, fish around online. I found a text on archive.org from 1901 which dealt with geometric optics quite nicely. There are assorted pdfs, wikipedia articles and course sites which together can make up the better part of a textbook.

Hecht did a great job of giving you visually appealing (as is only appropriate for an Optics text!) descriptions of optical phenomena. I've been frustrated by other texts which do extensive mathematical derivations without telling you what the math is supposed to describe.

On the other hand, Hecht does not give many example problems, and sometimes he entirely breezes over the math behind certain phenomena, and while I appreciate the clarity of his qualitative descriptions, I feel pretty crippled if I cannot mathematically characterize the optical systems I'm studying. On the other hand, sometimes he goes overboard with some pretty confusing math, like the math behind the Cornu spiral. This graph is used to help figure out the spacing of Fresnel diffraction lines, but Hecht layers on some very confusing electromagnetic wave theory on top of the basic function, and I had a hard time trying to understand what he was describing.

This is still a great beginning's text, but it should be bulked up a bit with more solved problems and mathematical examples, and some things like the Cornu Spiral should be wholly reworked.

I am recommending that the University of Vermont library purchase copies of this text in the 3rd edition. I am also recommending that it be used as the optics text for our undergraduate curriculum.

In grad school,I used the 2nd edition and found it to be perfect in its mixture of theory, historical background and cool experiments to try -- like the Poisson dot.

Although I am in astrophysics research now, I occasionally go back to the section on Fresnel diffraction and the Cornu spiral to dig out insight for use in quantum field theory and path integrals!

This book is constantly referred to by those who have been practicing in the field of optics for years and years, but also serves as an excellent introduction to optics. The explanations are simple, clear and direct. The explanations in Hecht often settle complicated arguments on esoteric regions of optics, by reducing the argument to first principles and clear, concise descriptions.

As an introductory book teaching classical (and some modern) optics, this wonderful book is difficult to beat.

It prepares you remarkably well for any direction in optics you then want to set off in. The explanations are mostly crystal-clear, crafted with great care. Lots of words and diagrams, not too much math, but enough math to facilitate useful calculations.

An excellent under-graduate text, to my mind, the best available today.

I loathed this book when I was an undergraduate student, more so than any
textbook I've ever encountered before or since. And what do you know?
Reading it again, sixteen years later, I loathe it just as much.
This was the book that instilled in me a hatred of everything and anything
to do with optics, a hatred that persists to this day.
It is the very fact that I hate optics so much that had me reading this
book again. I figured that if I was to try to learn optics again, this
time in a more pleasant fashion, perhaps the best way to start was to
return to where it all began, to go over Hecht & Zajac again to see what
they say, evaluate it in the light of my older, more knowledgeable me, and
remember essentially the points they cover for comparison when I read a
better (ie any other whatsoever) text.
Just what is it that makes this book so very bad?
Any textbook can have convoluted physical explanations that make no sense.
Likewise any textbook can include plodding mathematical explanations that
get so worn down explaining basic and trivial points that by the time you
reach their end you've forgotten what the goal was.
Any textbook author can devote no time whatsoever to such pedagogical
basics as making sure the material is ordered so that everything builds
on what came before, and that a thorough overview is presented before the
details are covered, of just what we are about to do and why.
Of course H&Z cover these basics with aplomb, but they manage to include
two far more vicious pathologies. The first, usually only found in quantum
mechanics books, is the historical pathology; they are so in love with the
history of optics that they are unwilling to ever explain anything in
modern (which usually means maxwellian) terms when they could explain it
in some alternative fashion involving some historical picture from 1820 or
1840 or whatever. The result is that instead of a coherent description of
optics as maxwell's equations followed by a long sequence of teasing out
the consequences of the equations, we see a constant hodge-podge of
different theoretical models throughout the book, each appropriate to its
particular problem and little else. Don't get me wrong; I like history as
much as (probably rather more so) than the next physicist, but I want a
textbook on optics to teach me the optics; I'll learn the history from my
history of optics textbook. We don't teach mechanics or heat or EM this
way (for the most part) and for good reason.
The second H&Z pathology is specific to their text alone, and it is that
they cannot get it through their thick skulls that they are writing a
general optics textbook, not a (very poor) reference manual, not an
experimentalist's handbook. The text is littered with bizarre asides about
how to view the issue just discussed in some variant fashion, the point of
which, to anyone who is not an expert, is completely mystifying; it would
be cruel of me to say so, but I'll do it anyway --- these inclusions seem
very much to come across as a form of insecure boasting, a way of saying,
"you think you're better than me? you think so? well what do you know
about xyz's paper in 1963? do you know how to modify the theory of
geometrical optics so as to give results just like standard diffraction
theory? no --- I thought so."
If you can, in any way whatsoever, avoid this book. Read anything else at
all to learn about optics.

Just as described, it has some wear-out on the binding, but the interior is good. Perfect price for a second-hand and still fair condition book.
by the way, Optics by Hecht is a great book for me! Very clear physical pictures and helps me lot on my PhD qualified exams!

I first came across this book when a good friend of mine, dr. Sigurður Mæjónes, showed it to me when we were doing experiments in optical physics. He had just recently bought and simply couldn't let it down. We had an extremely boring textbook, whose name I can not (and will not) remember, but ever since I got a copy of Hecht's book I stopped using the other one. This book has everything you ever wanted to know about optics and has the best chapter on the "Hornafjarðarljósbjögun" I have ever seen.

I came across Hecths books on optics when I was working with my college, dr. Waage Skrýmslið, on a phenomenon known as Hornarfjarðarljósbjögun (a.k.a. SR-Mjöl). I was doing some research at the library when I came across that book. I stole it from the library brought it back to our dr. Skrýmslið lab. We fought for the book for days and finally decided to share it. The next few weeks we even slept together, with only that book to seperate us. The book came in handy aswell doing our research and we solved the Hornarfjarðarljósbognunar problem (see our books "Hornafjarðaljósbjögun, the problem scoped and solved", "How to get to Hornafjörður without meeting SRJ" and "Hornafjarðarljósbognun for experts".