Particles and Nuclei: An Introduction to the Physical Concepts [Paperback]

Bogdan Povh (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0387594396 | ISBN-13: 978-0387594392 | Publication Date: August 1995

This text is based on lectures held at the University of Heidelberg and provides a presentation of nuclear and particle physics. The first part is devoted to disentangling the substructure of matter. It shows that experiments are designed to uncover the substructures of nuclei and nucleons have a similar conceptual basis, and lead to the picture of all matter being built out of a small number of elementary building blocks and a small number of interactions. The second part shows how the elementary particles may be combined to build hadrons and nuclei. The fundamental interactions which are responsible for the forces in all systems become less and less evident in increasingly complex systems. Such systems are in fact dominated by many-body phenomena. The text includes 39 problems and worked solutions.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Springer-Verlag (August 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387594396
• ISBN-13: 978-0387594392
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Up to date and State of the art, August 8, 2000

By 

J. Enders "jenders" (Darmstadt) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Particles and Nuclei: An Introduction to the Physical Concepts (Particles & Nuclei) (Paperback)

Povh, Rith, Scholz, and Zetsche have written an exceptional book about nuclei and particles. It is comprehensive, but not too elaborate to confuse the reader, it is up to date, but provides a thorough guide to the contemporary topics, and it has an unusual structure that is very compelling: In part one, the decomposition of matter down to the structures of elementary particles is presented, in part two, the synthesis of composite systems out of these fundamental particles and their interactions is discussed. This approach is - from a structural point of view - a brilliant idea.

So why do I rate this book with 4 stars only? Maybe because I personally like Donald Perkins' book on high-energy phyics even better (and if the new edition is as good as announced it will probably remain my preferece). The nuclear physics content (my personal field of interest) is also only briefly addressed in the book by Povh et al. (Perkin's book of course contains no introduction to nuclear structure at all, even on a very rough scale, but it has its focus clearly only on high-energy physics whereas Povh et al. also address nuclear structure issues). Clearly, Povh et al. focus on the introduction to a wide field where addtional reading is required anyway.

It would be highly desirable if the authors could enlarge their interesting introductory textbook by a few topical results of nuclear structure physics. But all in all, it is a very good approach to the world of nuclei, particles, and their interactions.