but eventually I realized that the trend of mathematician texts like GTM is just terrible for learning for physics
590972
I appreciate Kai Lam for trying to bridge the texts between strong mathematical style of the Springer Verlag Yellow book series (GTM) and that of Physics texts, but eventually I realized that the trend of mathematician texts like GTM is just terrible for learning for physics. Physicists need to be able to have a strong visual idea of the mathematical ideas in order to apply them to problems. The book starts out at an easy level with vectors, but then very rapidly progresses to very abstract methods of exterior forms, manifolds, which needs a stronger motivation for physics than he provides. I am still not convinced that one needs to introduce all the formal differential geometric structure of Cartan and his followers to do physics. I have looked at a great deal of Physics, Mathematics, and Mathematical Physics text that try to use the bundle structure and exterior forms, and am still not sold on it. I prefer the old tensor calculus of Ricci as developed in Kreyszig's Differential Geometry, and then for gauge theory simply writing down the gauge fields without even talking about bundles. It is good to know they possess the same mathematical structure as the Levi-Civita connection used in GR, but I don't think you need to develop an abstract formalism to unify the two. Too much set theory, yuck. Please let us calculate. Yes they are similar, but unfortunately the formal structure developed I think adds way too much structure without giving strong visual intuition. If authors insist on developing the bundle structure they need to do a better job of motivating it for physics. I have yet to see any theorems that need this structure at this level of a Fundamental Principles of Classical Mechanics book.

I bought this book in hopes that it could allow me to understand the Symplectic Geometry and Bundle Differential Geometry that is being developed to apply to theoretical physics problems, but at this point after studying many texts on the subject, I am doubtful that they will have very much importance to the practical development of physics, as well as completing any sort of unification. If you want to study classical mechanics at the advanced level I recommend Classical Dynamics by Sudarshan and Mukunda, although it is a bit heavier than you need I think, it is a book to study for a life time and has a pretty complete development of the mechanics essential for Quantum Theory. Many Classical Mechanics books can be lacking in sophisticated discussion of Hamiltonian mechanics, which is central to Quantum Theory. That is why I recommend Sudarshan and Mukunda. I think It is also worth taking a look at Whittaker's Analytical Mechanics for reference, as that seems to be the other treatise on the subject that is written at the level of physicists that provides a thorough discussion of the foundations and more. The other book to take a look at is Analytical and Canonical Formalism in Physics by Mercier.
1138329
About to take the AP Physics B exam in May, I bought several different review books and watched hours and hours worth of physics videos. As I truly enjoyed the Crash Course for European History, I thought surely this book would live up to my expectations. Wrong! This book in an unorganized clutter of pictures and mishaps. The book failed to even mention torque at all and after spending 5 minutes attempting to read it, gave up and read a different review book. Personally for me, I enjoyed 5 Steps to a 5 for physics at least. But, if you want to see a bunch of formulas with no true explanation for some kind of review purpose, go ahead and spend the money.
992081
I've always been fascinated by the psychological motivations of people who spend their lives trying to solve very difficult intellectual puzzles that are essentially unknown to anyone not in the particular discipline. I ordered this book, hoping to learn more about people who essentially spend their working lives living in abstract space. I was disappointed, because the book is highly technical and read more like a text in topology. So I have a hard time ranking this book. From the other reviews here, it seems that it is an excellent book if you're a mathematician. But it is not a book for the layman.

Dennis Fried&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Small-Dog-Big-Life-Memoirs-of-a-Furry-Genius/dp/1416599509/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Small Dog, Big Life: Memoirs of a Furry Genius</a>
1374853
The authors make a valiant attempt to familiarize Quantum Field Theory to an educated public in 192 illustrated lesions in a small paperback book. Unfortunately, they fail. Their goal was unattainable. Such a manifold complicated subject is a serious challenge for doctoral candidates majoring in Quantum Mechanics Physics. Each page is presented clearly, has a picture of the physicist(s) who discovered or developed the Quantum point discussed, and shows relevant graphics. Thats fine. The most educated of the general public would find this book an easy read but exceedingly difficult to understand. The problem is that the subject is just too complicated to be presented in such a miniature manner.

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Physicsadmittedly many years old. Nonetheless, I try to maintain minimum currency in Quantum Mechanics. I could understand, more or less, the concepts presented on most pages. The problem is the way the book is structured in headline tidbits. Theres no chance for an in-depth understanding or to tie concepts into a coherent understanding

To the authors credit, they do cover the fieldalbeit superficially. They start with definitions of the atom, electron, proton, neutron; and proceed forthwith with the standard model, quarks, and the Higgs Boson; and conclude with supersymmetry, negative energy, dark matter, string theory, and a discussion of the solar neutrino.
4012670
Not useful for learning material rigorously. The justification for many steps in deriving equations is either hidden, implied, or absent.
712557
It's decent. I mean, it's a textbook and if you get this it means you are taking modern physics which is tough. Also, some of their derivations (even the easier ones) are not rigorous.
1322405
This book is an attempt to teach modern physics to students by enabling them to visualize various physical phenomena via Java applets designed to demonstrate various physics concepts - thus the name "physlets". The book and its accompanying CD contain around 250 such physlets that span a broad spectrum of physics courses, although the emphasis is on quantum theory. The book has some discussion of the concepts involved, particularly in the context of the parameters of the particular Physlet being examined, but this really wasn't meant to be a textbook. It's just a supplementary text for a variety of physics courses in which visualization of a concept is a real roadblock in learning. The book has 200 exercises, and they are not what you would expect in a physics book. The problems largely consist of running a physlet and answering some questions about your observations, or you are asked to change the input parameters to a physlet and explain what you observe versus what you observed when the default parameter was active. At no point does the author assume you are a Java programmer yourself and ask you to code up your own physlet, although if you know how, that would probably be a very educational activity. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Physlets

Part 1: Special Relativity

Chapter 2: Space and Time in Special Relativity

Chapter 3: Relativistic Mechanics

Part 2: The Need for a Quantum Theory

Chapter 4: From Blackbody to Bohr

Chapter 5: Wave-Particle Duality

Part 3: Quantum Theory

Chapter 6: Classical and Quantum-mechanical Probability

Chapter 7: The Schrdinger Equation

Chapter 8: The Free Particle

Chapter 9: Scattering in One Dimension

Chapter 10: The Infinite Square Well

Chapter 11: Finite Square Wells and Other Piecewise-constant Wells

Chapter 12: Harmonic Oscillators and Other Spatially-varying Wells

Chapter 13: Multi-dimensional Wells

Part 4: Applications

Chapter 14: Atomic, Molecular, and Nuclear Physics

Chapter 15: Statistical Mechanics
2270565
Horrible book.

Text is confusing. The text under-explains in some cases, but in other cases, adds too much irrelevant detail. There are not enough examples of problems in the book.

On one topic, the text left me scratching my head. I looked up the topic on some free, random physics website that I googled & the website made everything crystal clear in 2 minutes! Unlike the $100+ textbook, this random physics website had plenty of clear explanations, examples, and sample problems.

Additionally, the solution manual that accompanies the textbook only has solutions for every 4th or 5th problem. Physics is about doing problems and this textbook does not cleary and adequately show you how to tackle problems.
2803838
As a student, I'm just wrapping up my Physics I semester and I am appalled at this book.

Cons:
Price/WebAssign.  The book is already expensive enough.  But if your professor makes you use webAssign for online homework, you have to either buy new, or buy an extra $100 webAssign key.  College is expensive enough!  Professors: if your making your students pay for an access key so that you don't have to take the time to grade their work, you're being lazy.  Because that's all webAssign is good for.  Although the key includes an online book access which I never used, and a couple of videos, which again, I never used because they weren't helpful, it's simply not worth the extra money.  So please, if you're a professor, don't make your students buy the book with a key.

Explanation.  I'm so glad I was taking Dynamics the same semester I took this!  I would never have gotten an A in this class!  I found that I was referencing my Dynamics book (Hibbeler) far more than my Physics book for ways to solve these problems.  They covered much of the same thing.  Only this physics book had these arbitrary notations that left you scratching your head trying to figure out what the heck they're talking about, whereas my dynamics book was very concise and had simplified notation.  The examples worked out in this book were so few and elementary, that I had no idea how to solve the end-of-chapter questions without the help of Google and Youtube!  Terrible!

Pros:
Material.  There's a lot of information in this book.  If you can understand it, it can be very valuable.
3385878
Of all the textbooks i have ever used at university (and as a fourth year student there have been quite a lot) this is simply the worst by far. Unlike the other physics textbooks i have used which were good at clarifying material, i found myself more confused after reading this book. Material i understood perfectly well at the lecture become suddenly incomprehendable when reading this awful book. Avoid it.
Having shelled out money at the beginning of the semester for this book, i ended up using other optics books from the library all semester. Do NOT buy this book.
2468190
I bought this because the other reviews said it downplayed the math.  There is a lot of math in this, and the explanations are terse.  What it leaves out, that you get in most physics texts, are all the conversions you need to do from miles to meters, hours to seconds, etc.  It's probably good for a review or supplement to a college text but not so great as a first Physics book for a high school kid, tho it does cover a lot of topics they don't really cover in high school physics, like atoms and molecules, solids, liquids and gases, static electricity and electrical currents, electrical induction, electromagnetic waves, etc.  I would have given it fewer stars but my high school student actually likes the book, and that counts for a lot.
948928
i've about had it with this textbook. i've been teaching high school geometry for the past 12 years and i just don't understand why most high schools use this book. first off, the author does a terrible job of explaining new theorems and proofs, and cannot convey the concept to the student. i've had my students complain to me numerous times about how this book is unclear for exercises, and believe me, i teach some soon to be national merit scholars. the worst thing in this book is the fact that problems go on FOREVER. what i mean by this is that almost every problem has an a, b, c, d, e, and f to them. that means when i assign problems 1-11 odd for homework, it will take my students about 2 hours to do it. forget it, whoever will buy this textbook is simply out of their mind. instead, i like to teach geometry's theorems, postulates, proofs, and reasoning online at [...] or geometry the easy way, a terrific study guide.
The last thing i'd like to say is that there is some false information in this textbook. if you would take a look at chapter 14, transformations, it is stated on page 602 that an isometry is a conic mapping. that is absolutely false; the entire book is a joke. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS TEXTBOOK, I REPEAT: DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS LIE.
3530350
As a physicist trying to understand factor analysis, I find much of what I have read (which is by no means comprehensive) to be very aggravating. In physics, you state the problem, you try to understand as many implications as possible, try to find a general solution. If you cannot, you make approximations, solve approximate problems, perhaps with approximate techniques. You might get down into the nitty gritty of algorithms to find your solution.

In this book it is entirely backwards. You are given one after another solution methods to various approximations to a problem that is not clearly stated until near the end, in a rather terse and offhand way at that. I plowed through this book with all its obsession over communalities, matrix techniques, etc. etc., all the time wondering - why? Is factor analysis theory just a veritable blizzard of calculation techniques to solve various ill-defined problems? Finally, in chapter nine, the problem is stated, but only as an introduction to yet another approximation which takes advantage of "high speed electronic computers".

It seems that prior to the advent of high-speed computation, the problem was simply intractable, and a great deal of effort was put into finding approximate solutions to approximate problems. Even modern texts seem to treat factor analysis as an instruction manual on what keystrokes to make when running a plug-and-play factor program. Maybe I will find a book that does it right, but this one is not it. It draws no distinction between theory and technique. I gave it three stars, the average of one star for theoretical insight and five stars for a detailed exposition of the various mathematical techniques associated with factor analysis up to 1976.
1587750
A horror. Avoid.

These guys write as though they're talking to people who already know the material. Not exactly rare, in physics textbooks. My mechanics instructor at the University of Miami used this book, and the students despised it and scrambled to find other teaching materials. If you're already a Ph. D., and for some perverse reason, you want to read a book that recapitulates what you've learned, this is a swell choice. Otherwise, it's better suited to use as compost or perhaps kindling.

A total failure as a teaching tool.
815308
I've read the book twice and I've seen the series based on his book. Even so, trying to keep an open mind I find that aside from what has been established as scientifically accurate, (i.e. Relativity, particle physics) this book tries to portray itself as adding to that knowledge with fanciful ideas and stories that are on par with the ancient story that a giant turtle is carrying the earth on it's back. Superstring theory is totally unproven and at this point seemingly unprovable. It adds nothing to what is already known, but it seems capable of embrassing and accepting anything new that is discovered in particle physics. It's a flexible math concept that can adapt to any conditions given, but it offers no beacon of enlightenment or advancement. Many people enjoy entertaining stories, but I prefer turtles over strings.
226799
I saw the author's intro video on tensors so I bought this book with high expectations. Unfortunately it reminds me of my college textbooks which are written by professors for other professors. I probably crossed out half the book as meaningless verbiage and annoying phrases. The best thing about it was the section on div, curl and related, but that was about 10 pages. I did manage to learn from it, but spent more time on mentally castigating it than learning from it. It is probably good for someone who has a strong mathematical mind and can easily grasp concepts. That is, not me.
3975141
This is supposed to be an introductory text, yet it assumes the reader is somewhat familar with the calculus concepts. Add that to his annoying habit of making odd algebraic leaps with no explaination and you have a bad text.

Nearly every student I know, hates this book, yet the teachers love it. That shows how poorly aimed it is. If an introductory text is written so only a math professor can work through it, the book needs to go back to the design stage. The worst is the chapter covering the fundamental thereom of calculus. After working through every single chapter in the book, that chapter still confuses me. You would think the one chapter he would make the most clear, would be the one that the entire subject is built on.

The chapter on differential equations is so out of place and pointless. It should be removed. For some odd reason it separated the chapters on parametric equations/polar coordinates(for some reasons, they shoved conics here) and vectors, and stuck infinite series and sequences between them. What sense is that?

Before someone makes broad generalizations about how bad I am in math. I get A's in math and understand it, and just about have my minor. I am not the problem, this book is. The main thing is that this book only really covers algorthims, it never touched on the big questions: why did it this way, and where does concept x come from. If you really want to learn calculus, avoid this book. It will not give you a deep understanding of a deep and critical subject.

An intro text should cover the how, and this one does, but also the why, which is cloaks in obtuse proofs and explianations. I have had only one excepllent math text and that was written by the instructor and tailored to his class. Every other generic math text I have read has been barely adequate or worse. This is one of the worst. I think the only one I had that was worse was 'A transition to advanced  mathematics'