Customer Reviews

Problems and Solutions on Solid State Physics, Relativity and Miscellaneous Topics (Major American Universities Ph.D. Qualifying Questions and Solutions)

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All of these books titled "Problems and Solutions on (subject): Major American Universities Ph.D. Qualifying Questions and Solutions" are invaluable tools for a physics graduate student, in my experience.

It is difficult to find solved problems concering the topics in this text, so it is smaller than some of the others. However, it is still invaluable.

Criticism: Sparse index. You might find yourself adding a lot of notes of your own to the index as well as the contents.

If you are a student in physics, I suggest that you get your hands on these books.

I have not reviewed the Solid State portion of the book, and my review is limited to the relativity portion. I have been very pleased with the other books in the excellent series, but in the area of special relativity, I found this one somewhat disappointing. There were only seven problems in this area, and three were essentially the same thing. One was the basic derivation of the Lorentz transformation, which can be found in any relativity textbook. As I mentioned, I can not speak for the Solid State part of the book, but if you expect a variety of useful problems on special relativity, you will be disappointed. The general relativity part is OK, but I do not know of many schools which include general relativity on their qualifying exams.

This book has LOTS of sample problems. Though the solutions are not indepth, they do point you in the right direction. A good book to have if you need to study for a PhD exam, though your school should have it's own library.