Customer Reviews

Physics of Waves (Dover Books on Physics)

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

 

 

Elmore and Heald is a very hit and miss book. The first chapter about simple transverse waves on strings is pretty good except for the confusing treatment of Fourier series (which I can't imagine would help anyone who hasn't seen them before). Chapter 3 on elastic theory was fine too and the EM waves stuff in chapter 8 wasn't bad.

However, the introduction to tensors in chapter 7 and their application to more complex elastic theory was horrible. The dyadic notation they use is really old-fashioned and their presentation is confusing. The stuff in chapter 12 on fourier transforms and integrals wasn't that great either.

More generally, the problem is that it spends too much time diving into excruciating detail without teaching and emphasizing important concepts. Not to mention the fact that there are no example problems.

I cannot say anything good about this book except the fact that it's cheap. Even so, I think the book is not very worth the money. The notation and presentation are old and outdated. There are no example problems. The author often delves into technical details without fully introduce the concepts. This book may make a good technical reference, but it is, by no means, a good textbook that is supposed to teach students physics. As a not-so-dull physics students in Cornell (where they have been using this book for the honors wave class for years), I did not learn much physics from this book and was often left confused about what the author is trying to say.
I feel deeply sorry for Cornell students who have suffered under this book and prospective students who will be spending 4 months trying to understand this book. If you are in a physics class which uses this book, I strongly sugguest that you get a better text. Although there aren't many outstanding text on waves out there, many books are more suitable than this one, such as the one in the MIT introdctory sequence by French and Taylor.

just few points:

(1) This is not a book for a undergrad taking any wave class for the first time
(2) It's such a great summary book for grad students who already learned waves at least once (EM/acoustic). Reading this book is such an enjoyable experience, that scattered knowledge of waves finally merges together, and different physics eventually turn out to be just some special treatment to the same wave equation (mathematically).

it's a great book for student who really want to have a profound understanding of what really wave is, but it might be a bad one if you just want to pass your exam.Physics of Waves

This book covers a lot of conceptual territory rather rapidly, reaching approximate analytic techniques associated with diffraction, beginning from almost first principles. To do this, the authors hurry through introductory material, and sometimes skimp on development of more complex topics. That said, the book does a good job of covering waves in the many forms they appear in physics. The book is a review. This requires the reader to be familiar with at least about half of the material in the book, or you will probably get frustrated quickly, or have to go elsewhere for more details / development. Another prerequisite for this book is mathematics through vector calculus and some exposure to advanced engineering math.

The book is originally from the 1960s; it is not the most modern or up-to-date book on waves. Despite this, the fundamentals really never change, and this book has a pretty good pedagogical side to it. I would not recommend this as a book to introduce waves with, or to use in any sort of introductory sense (possibly in conjunction with a standard textbook). I would recommend the book to be read after the details and examples of the basics have been covered. This book will help the reader to fit the ideas already learned into the larger framework of physics and waves, by introducing a few new ideas and covering previous ideas in a slightly different way.

Comparatively, the book Almost All About Waves is about equivalent to chapter 8 of this book. This book does much better introducing things deliberately and covers much more ground, and I think is therefore much more useful.

The book is really great and covers all the fundamental aspects of wave prorogation in different mediums and different kind of waves.

Also delivery of the book was very quick and I got the book in a very good condition, as shown on Amazon.com during the purchase.