Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good resource for advanced topics, January 13, 2007
I learned statistical mechanics from `Statistical Mechanics' by K. Huang and `Statistical Mechanics' by S.K. Ma. In my opinion, most books on the elementray principles, including the book by K. Huang, are too complicated for beginners. The best treatments as far as I know are given by `Statistical Physics, part I' by Landau and Lifshize and the one by S.K. Ma. Another weak points in Huang's book are the discussions about ideal quantum gases. It presents formal mathematical methods to study this problem. I think that this approach is also too complicated for beginners and sometimes bury the relevant physical ideas. In this part, the best treatment for the ideal Bose gas is given by `Statistical mechanics' by T.D. Lee (in Chinese), and for the ideal Fermi gas given by S.K. Ma.
For these parts, I should give 3 stars. However, the strong parts of Huang's book is the chapters on the advanced topics. The writting is compact and clear. They can be served as a good introduction to the modern theory of critical phenomena and superfluidity. Further, they are useful references for research. In addition, the formal manipulation for quantum ideal gases is necessary for research though it seems a little bit complicated for students. For all these, I gave 4 stars to this book.
Finally, I should say that the approach of Huang's book is not based on the kinetic theory though it spends a few chapters on this aspect. The reason why the kinetic theory is put before the chapters on SM, in my opinion, is to emphasize the important role played by collisions between particles to establish thermal equilibrium and the validity of the basic assumption of SM, as indicated by S.K. Ma in his book. I think previous reviews about this are misleading.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Contains some material difficult to find elsewhere, February 16, 2009
It might or might not be a good idea to use this book as a textbook for a course of statistical mechanics. However, it contains some material which is difficult to find elsewhere. First of all, there is a very nice exposition of Lars Onsager's own solution of the 2D Ising model which I found easy to follow. The book also contains a nice illustration of renormalization ideas with the 1D Ising model. The first edition of the book appeared in 1960-es and contained some new pedagogical ideas which appealed to many physicists. The book was almost immediately translated into Russian which emphasizes its significance.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not the best beginning, December 19, 2008
I just completed a class taught from Huang. It was rocky. If this is your first time through a serious stat mech class, you have difficulty with thermodynamics, or you are the sort of person that learns by doing, then this probably isn't the book for you.
That being said, if you have a strong background in stat mech and thermo, you'll probably find Huang quite enlightening. Huang's approach isn't the most pedagogically sound, but he is more insightful than most. (In the sense of what he presents, not necessarily how he presents it.)
Additionally, while there are errors in the book, there aren't so many that it makes it unreadable -- the book is hard to read based on its own construction.
I managed to do well in the course, but it was by constantly referencing other books. If this is your first time through, I recommend reading the material of the current chapter in another book first, running a couple of example problems from that book, and then reading through Huang. It seemed to work better as a reference into usually uncovered topics than as a textbook. The first few chapters on thermodynamics and (non-quantum) statistical mechanics are probably best learned from another source.
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