1 comments about Nuclear Energy: Principles, Practices, and Prospects.

1. I am amazed that nobody wrote yet a review of this book.
   
   I liked this book a lot. David Bodansky's style is logical, concise and fun to read. What I liked most is that the author succeeds to attack with equal clarity a wide range of diverse subjects about nuclear energy:
   - Economic considerations on nuclear energy.
   - The physics principles behind nuclear reactions, and their relevance in reactor design, etc.
   - Engineering considerations around nuclear reactor design and operations
   - Administrative considerations around waste disposal.
   
   To conclude: if you have some background in physics, math and/or economy, and you need a no-nonsense introduction in the field of nuclear energy, then this book is for you. However, if you just like to read prose, (and you don't enjoy technical details being sprinkled during the exposition) then the book migth be too high-level.

4 comments about Foundations of Modern Cosmology.

1. I got this book from my university library. Pretty easy reading considering I'm an engineering student. But then, this book isn't just for physics/astronomy students, as the authors have mentioned. It starts by giving a brief history of cosmology, continuing to current understanding before going to the current problems. The book is not math intensive as it emphasize on understanding the concepts. That's why it is something like a popular-science book. For those who have an interest in cosmology, consept-wise, I recommend this title. Those requiring intensive math, look elsewhere. The other cosmology book I've read is by Martin Roos.



2. This is a serious yet easy to read book on a facinating and popular subject and its main commendation is its accessibility and rigour. It is an excellent antidote to some of the glossy and expensively packeged books by "pop" writers and TV programmes.

   As the introduction of the book makes clear, the authors aim for a wide audience for whom Cosmology is not a core discipline. Not only do they do a good job in meeting this goal, but they also present the physical concepts and experimental results in a way that provides new and deep insights to those whose main interest is Physics. For instance, the discussion of the Big Bang and the cosmic models provides an excellent complement to the mathematical presentation of authors like M.V. Berry. Equally, there is a plethora of material that describes experimental results like those for General Relativity: bending of light under the infulence of the sun's gravity, the Eotovos experiment to demonstrate the Equivalence Principle, etc.

   The book covers a broad field: Some historical aspects, Special and General Relativity, the Big Bang and various cosmic models, dark matter, and large scale structure.

   The glossary and the authors' web site provide further information on the subject.




3. I took the class given by Hawley and he makes the book extremely easy to comprehend. Granted, he wrote it, the man is a hilarious comedic genius. He makes the concepts in the book very simple, and easy to understand. I've learned the concepts before in this book, and havent fully comprehended it. This book made it all come together. Get it!



4. I order the book relatively close to the date i needed it for class and got it just in time! Thanks a lot!

5 comments about Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions).

1. This is a short book, and that is its only advantage, unfortunately.

   Granted, that the author is eminent in this field and was himself a student of the great Paul Dirac. However, this book does not sit easily in a series designed to make a subject approachable to the novice. It has far too much esoteric maths than is good for a book of this genre. An ever stronger criticism is the fact that instead of keeping to basic physics ideas such as the double slit experiment (which this book does well!) and then developing the ideas of atomic structure, and the uncertainty principle, it dwells on things like operators and such like.

   If you want a good introduction to Quantum Theory, look no further than the books by George Gamow's "The New World of Mr Tompkins" or "Mr Tomkins in paperback", or, "Uncle Albert and the Quantum Quest".




2. This book does its best, but in the end suffers from something that I think is inherent in the material itself. I did learn a little more about quantum theory from this book, but not much more than I already knew to begin with. And this book didn't really make many of the main concepts any clearer. I don't think is the author's fault, I think it's almost impossible to try to explain these things. Most of the problem, (and similar statements go for cosmology, cryptography, etc.) is that it's almost impossible to explain concepts whose fundamental expression is mathematical language without using mathematics. What inevitably results is some kind of vague, touchy-feely idea of what's meant, but little understanding. And I say this as a mathematician.

   To give just one example, at one point in the book, the author talks about "probability amplitudes", for several pages. The only problem is, he never says what this term is supposed to mean, but he does mention that complex numbers are involved, and other facts. The result after this happens several times is that the reader starts to read entire paragraphs consisting of terminology that's never been defined clearly. The word "operator" is the best example here. It's fine to talk ABOUT operators in indirect, oblique language, but really you don't have a true understanding of what that word means unless you know its precise mathematical definition, or unless you have a clear understanding of the notion of vector space (axiomatically, not "stuff you can add together"). I didn't have this kind of problem with most of the mathematical terminology, because I know it, but the problem comes with the physics -- the physics concepts are essentially mathematical, and trying to explain them without using mathematics is like trying to understand Shakespeare without being able to read English -- you can always give a vague, hazy account, but not much more.

   The book is well-written (aside from an overly-biased presentation of the philosophical aspects), but I think it tries to have its cake and eat it too. It says it's free of mathematics, but this isn't really the case. The whole text is fully of talk about operators, vectors, vector spaces, equations, probability theory, and so on. It's the _symbolism_, not the math, that's missing (except for the appendix, which thoroughly confused me, mainly because terms were introduced without precise definition, and the notation was the physicist's notation, not mathematician's notation...)

   This book was confusing to me, but the reason was because it had too LITTLE math, not too much.




3. I'm thoroughly unimpressed by Rev. Polkinghorne's account of quantum physics. Even though he is technically competent, Polkinghorne seems to get every major interpretation wrong. For example, he thinks Bohr in error to consider free will and determinism complementary. But Bohr's colleague and Nobel Laureate Max Born did say that Bohr's complementarity applies precisely to this situation.
   
   Right on page 1 Polkinghorne shows his tendency to misunderstand. Speaking of Laplace's conjecture, the physicist-turned-Anglican priest writes "In fact, this rather chilling mechanistic claim always had a strong suspicion of hubris about it. For one thing, human beings do not experience themselves as being clockwork automata...."
   
   This is like accusing someone of arrogrance because he said "If I were the president of the United States I would eliminate poverty..." He did say "If," didn't he? Laplace always said this prediction of the future is only possible in principle, but impossible in practice. In fact, in making his "thought experiment" - not a factual "claim," as Polkinghorne thinks - he made two assumptions which he knew to be UNTRUE. First, that such an ideal intelligence exists. (When Napoleon asked him about the Creator after reading his theory of the solar system, Laplace gave this magnificent reply: "Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis.") And second, that this intelligence can analyse absolutely all data at once.
   
   As for what humans "experience," the fact is that not even a frog feels like a clockwork automatum. But what we feel is irrelevant if our belief in free will is due to the unpredictability of our volition, and this unpredictability is due in to deterministic chaos, which leaves no room for free will at all, no matter how irregular we might feel. In fact, no machine can perfectly understand another machine of exactly the same level of complexity, even without chaos added to the difficulty. A machine may be able to understand another of lower level of complexity. The same goes for humans: We may always have difficult understanding ourselves although we may eventually understand simpler organisms. We humans have enough trouble understanding the nervous system of something as simple as a dog. What Polkinghorne should have asked is: What would be the effect of quantum mechanics on this "thought experiment" of Laplace? An honest answer would be: None. Indeed, Laplace did not need chaos or quantum uncertainty to know that his conjecture is no more than just a thought experiment, though a very worthwhile and instructive one.
   
   Polkinghorne puts down other physicists (and auto mechanics in general) by saying "The average quantum mechanic is no more philosophical than the average auto mechanic." Born, however, said that theoretical physics IS actually philosophy. Bohr always said that there are important epistemological lessons to be drawn from the world of physics, especially elementary particle physics. It's as though Polkinghorne has been asleep through all the major developments of the past century. On the few occasions he is awake, he misunderstands and misrepresents. Polkinghorne himself may be no more philosophical than an auto mechanic (maybe even less so), but don't drag people like Schroedinger, Bohr, Born, Pauli, Heisenberg, Wheeler, Bell and Weinberg through the mud with such silly statements.



4. In an introduction to a topic, one expects lots of figures to explain just about every topic. This book, and indeed the entire series, generally has rather few figures. The series also, generally, focuses on the historical development of the topic and not necessarily on the current understanding of the topic. Therefore, the series sacrifices a better explanation of our current understanding to explain who thought what and when. Nonetheless, this book serves adequately in the capacity of a "very short introduction."



5. This pocket-sized, 92-page text--113 pages with appendices and index--professes to be a "very short introduction" to an understanding of quantum theory, to the unseen world that's so many millions of times smaller than even atoms.
   
   It's not at all a bad summary of the field of quantum mechanics, written fairly lucidly, concisely, and with interest, but I'd have to say it's lacking as an introduction to the subject, in that it really does assume its readers are intelligent people with something of a science background. Do not buy this expecting it to be QUANTUM THEORY FOR DUMMIES, because it's still fairly dense and heavy, and not written as clearly or as startlingly as much of Stephen Hawking's stuff. To some readers, this assumption of their intelligence may be refreshing, and it is to a degree, but with a subject as complex and bizarre as quantum mechanics, most non-scientists will need as much help as they can get, help not necessarily to be found in here.
   
   I do have to say, though, that this is a book worth reading, and, then, re-reading. After I read it, I went back through and looked up a few of the more major concepts--quantum entanglement, in which two particles that interact will continue to affect each other no matter how far apart they're separated; Schrödinger's Cat and the idea of a state between life and death, between here and there, between being and non-being; Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and how you can't have a knowledge of both position and momentum of a particle; et cetera--and just that brief re-reading was a huge help to me.
   
   The book will teach you a lot about the subject, and will give you a good start toward further educating your knowledge of this awesome and frustrating topic, this topic which has already done so much toward unlocking the secrets of our existence and our universe--and toward confusing everyone.
   
   Its glossary is lacking, its author has a subtle but evident Christian bias, but overall it's a good little book, and I enjoyed it. I recommend it.

5 comments about Quarks and Leptons: An Introductory Course in Modern Particle Physics.

1. Excellent introduction to Particle Physics. Q and L should be accessible to anyone with one semester of a standard quantum mechanics course.

   As for graduate students, I'd offer that Q and L is as good a book to fall back on in a graduate particle physics course as is Griffith's book is in a Jackson Electrodynamics course.




2. If you are a grad student in high energy/nuclear/heavy ion physics, experimental or theoretical, do yourself a favour and buy this book. It starts really from the begining (scalar fields, spinors, dirac equation, propagators) and slowly but steadily reaches the point of gauge field theory, QCD, partons, electroweak interactions , spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Weinberg-Salam model. Dont expect to find anything rigorous about renormalization. Chapter 7 has some calculations about running coupling constants etc. but most of it is intuitive (describing rather than proving) in order to give you a glimpse about these matters and serve as a tool for later chapters. Although I knew the basics of Quantum Field Theory before I read this book, it helped me understand topics like deep inelastic scattering, parton distribution functions, scaling, weak interactions,spontaneous symmetry breaking. Caution: It is not a Quantum Field Theory book, it is a particle physics book. If you are looking for gribov anomalies,ward-takahashi identities, and renormalization of the weinberg-salam model and stuff like that then this is not the place to find it. The book is about particles and their interactions. Its purpose is to prepare the serious student for more rigorous Quantum Field Theory books and give him/her the big picture of the standard model (the forest) rather than the little details of field theory (the tree). I strongly recommend it to any student in the field. The language is clear and the concepts are easy to follow. Its a down to earth approach trying to explain things in a clear cut manner rather than confusing the student with "big words" and terminology. A nice suplement to this book is the book by Chris Quigg (...huge number of references). In short, this book is worth its money ! Buy it !



3. I love this book, mostly because this book told me very well about how to do every kind of particle physics problems.
   Before you read it, you needn't have much background in Quantum Field Theory (while it should be quite good to read this book before studying QFT), and you can get almost all ideas of High Energy Physics in an aspect of phenomenology.
   If you wanna prepare for a professional particle physics test (such as a PhD Qualification test), for sure this book is the best one to read --- you can pass any kind of these tests if you concentrate more than 2 days on this book.
   And even you are not worrying about any test, this book is very good for a beginner to know particle physics quantitatively.



4. This is a very good treatment of particle physics. Unfortunately, its one of those textbooks where exercises are dispersed throughout the text and which form an integral part of the pedagogy. In other words, the reader must work through the problems as they appear in the book as subsequent material is based upon it; not to do the exercies will result in an incomplete and fragmented exposure to the material. Some might like that approach but I personally find it irritating and slows down the reading. As I mentioned its a very well written expose of particle physics but it could have been great if its format had been more traditional.



5. This book is really a jewel. It was used extensively to support two famouse theoretical courses at Imperial College London, namely, Unification and Advanced Particle Physics. It doesn't have typos, its extremely concise and the mathematics are extremely well presented and explained (without hand-waving anything). It explains very simply and clearly hard-to-grasp concepts (a lot of it as part of the Appendix) such as symmetries and their link to particle physics, spontaneous symmetry breaking, Feynman diagrams, Abelian and Non Abelian groups, Fermi theory and in general an excellent explanation of the properties of particles. I would recommend buying this book to any Theoretical Physicist taking Advanced Particle Physics courses or interested in knowing the mathematics of High Energy Physics (and not just the theory, because for that there are many other good story-teller books!).

3 comments about Radiation Protection and Dosimetry: An Introduction to Health Physics.

1. This book is the coolest. Buy this book so my family can have more money, but it is a very well written, insightful book, with jokes tosses in at the right times.
   
   Check out his beard!



2. This is an excellent book for students of radiation protection and dosimetry. It provides a great overview of health physics from radioisotope decay to non-ionizing radiation. The technical content is balanced with good practical examples. I would like to recommend this book for anyone studying health physics or preparing for the certification by the American Board of Health Physics.



3. This is a much needed book. I good modern overview of what you would encounter in the field of radiation protection and dosimetry. The coverage of standards and their development is often missed in other works. Since you will spend a great deal of time referring to these standards knowing the actors and history is important. As someone in the field I would have liked to have seen a little more on international standards development. It was very refreshing to see a text where equations were defined clearly. So many physics books seem to revel in making you figure out that particulars authors flavor of equation definition.
   I have found the book to be a great general reference and starting point for those new to the field. It is actually an enjoyable read. And having a joke thrown in once and a while was great.

5 comments about Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos.

1. This is an excellent book for students of almost all ages (14 up). I was 14 when I read it, with no education in atoms, and I understood it perfectly. Asimov writes in a way that is extremely provocative and very informative. I highly recommed this book.



2. Isaac Asimov's Atom is an interesting premise for a book...the evolution of the smallest aspect of an element which is the basic aspect of life and existance. Asimov intends to take the reader across centuries explaining simply, interestingly, and concisely how this fascinating little thing came to be as it is and why it is so important.

   However, Asimov explains the atom neither simply, interestingly, nor concisly. Let me rephrase...Asimov's writing style is extremely dry in this book. It is understandable to a certain extent...the book is divided into 51 small sections of between 3 to 7 pages each. If a reader attempts to read over more than one or two of these sections at a time, it becomes nausiating. Explainations of experiments are extremely difficult to understand, and the book drags and lacks any interest whatsoever in many parts.

   Redeemed by interesting tidbits, it is easy to understand how a science buff can enjoy this and understand it, but to the average reader, the prose is uncommonly dull and loquacious. The diverse gallimaufry of scientists govered begin to combine in the mind, and it is difficult to remember who did what.

   As the book stretches onward passed the three-hundered page mark, the reader is constantly questioning "Why do I care? I have learned what the atom is today, and how it came about originally. Why on earth to I need to know all the errors in between?"

   In conclusion, Asimov's Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos may be perfectly suited to the literature taste buds of a science afficianado, but nobody who takes no particular interest in the subject should be forced to read such a dry and useless account. Asimov has talent, which he beautifully and powerfully demonstrates in certain parts of Atom and in almost every single other work he has written, but here his talents need to be reserved for the most scientific amongst us. It is unfortunate that so many Chemistry teachers require this book as reading for their class. This difficult narrative will only succeed in fogging the perception even more.




3. This book is an excellent summation of the progress made in discovering sub-atomic particles, It may not now be up to date (it was printed in 1991), but I would not forgo the learning within, or the Asimov method of presenting it. Isaac Asimov specialty was explaining difficult subjects to his readers. He did an admiral job keeping the subject matter interesting. Each short chapter is dedicated to a particle, ex. mesons, quarks, bosons. Each chapter also gives a little historical background of the search and discovery behind each particle and how it fits within the sub-atomic world. Nuclear physicists may have progressed far beyond this by now, but this is still a good book for piecing together the subatomic puzzle of particles.



4. Of course this book is written in lay terminology. Aren't all Issac's books? Matter is marvelously discussed and taken down to the smallest particals. Nothing better to kick back with this book and sip coffee and put your feet up and enjoy.
   
   Wish Issac was still around. Nothing is the same.



5. Overall Asimov did an excellent job explaining some pretty difficult concepts. I most especially enjoyed the discussion of nuclear breakdown, ie, the conversion of one radioactive isotope into a completely different element. I never really understood the relationship between mass and energy and now I believe I do. Fascinating to say the least. My only problem was the amount of material covered in the book. I was not really interested in that much history and the discussion of the antiparticle. However, I knew what I was getting into prior to buying the book.

No comments about Nature's Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force.

5 comments about A First Course in String Theory.

1. Top quality and well revised.
   To emit my opinion I will have to complete the readings, but before that I am studying Quantum mechanics and Relativity



2. I still think advanced physics needs advanced mathematics to explain and explore. With limited depth of mathematics in this book, even though lots of ideas can be expressed, the process is tedious. This introductory book can satisfy my curiosity but not enough to envision the potential study advancement.



3. In spite of being published only two years ago, this book does not make any mention of Professor Susskind's Landscape theory, the single most important advancement in string theory since anomaly cancellation was discovered. The book does a disservice to the students it is intended for, letting them think they understand string theory while depriving them of key mathematical and physical concepts, such as the Lanscape or Calabi Yau manifolds.



4. Until chapter 10, the book is a pleasure to read. It is very systematic, everything is explained in great detail, and the different concepts are very clear and well exposed. The author succeeds in turning a rather obscure scientific topic into an exciting adventure. If I should judge the book only for this first part, I would give it 5 stars. In fact the book is misleading since when you start reading, you get the illusion string theory can be made accessible even for beginners with an average background.
   
   However, this illusion is in vain since the panorama changes dramatically in chapter 10, where the author enters directly into quantum field theory, without any further preparation. An this is the real problem, because the author who developed from the ground up the classical approach to strings mechanics, takes for granted the reader is highly knowledged in quantum mechanics. In spite of his efforts to introduce the subject in successive approximations, all is in vain because the subject is too intricate. The book is not any more systematic for readers lacking adequate quantum theory background.
   
   Certainly this is not a book for beginners. The book requires previous deep understanding of quantum mechanics. Beginners can still learn some interesting concepts from the first part of the book, but a complete reading would require deep study of less advanced quantum mechanics bibliography. That said, I must also point out if the level of the book is maintained in its second part, it may become a top ten for more advanced readers.



5. For any advanced undergraduate student in physics who is interested in string theory, this book is ideal. It starts off very easily, reviewing concepts of free point particle actions in special relativity and then gradually introduces classical strings, which are then quantised in the light-cone gauge. It doesn' get too technical, but it provides one with a good foundation in string theory's concepts. The topics are discussed very clearly, both in words and in formulae. At the end of the book, black holes are discussed very briefly (in connection with the Hagedoorn temperature) in an easy way, covariant quantisation (as an "improvement" on the light-cone gauge, which does not preserve Lorentz invariance all the way through), and D-branes.
   This book is intended for advanced undergraduates, but for those who find beginning graduate courses in string theory too complicated at the outset, buy this one, read it and you'll probably understand more of the classics by Polchinski or Green/Schwarz/Witten. Those who have a solid knowledge of QFT might go passed this book, but it might be a good back-up for what more standard textbooks might call "trivial calculations".

5 comments about Introduction to High Energy Physics.

1. I just took an intro to particle physics class as a fifth year undergraduate who has had all of the usual courses that one is supposed to have to be able to at least gain a glimpse into the world of particles. This book by Perkins is one of the worst textbooks that I have ever had to use. The examples were limited if any, and the problems seemed not to correlate with the content of the chapters at all. The problems that I did work on I had to reference other texts just to get an idea of what he was talking about. I have to say that Griffiths' (whose EM book was great and his quantum book not all that bad) was much more mathematical and clear, as well as Halzen and Martin. I agree with the other comment. Get another book before ever buying this book. Plus my Professor was not too thrilled with it as well. I ended up buying the Griffiths text in the end, which helped a lot.



2. I used Perkin's book for a one sememester 500 level graduate course. I honestly believe that of the 20+ books that I have used in undergrad and grad school, that this is the absolute worst text I have encountered. The equations in the text are mearly thrown in without the slightest justification or hint of the possible method of derivation. If you would truly understand the significance of the equations, then you would need a background knowledge that I can hardly believe anybody looking for an introduction to high energy physics could have. However, this is far from its biggest pitfall. The book is choppy to read. There are almost no quantitative examples and yet the questions are mostly quantitative. I am sure that I could think of more specifics dislikes, but I think that the reader has seen my opion. To anybody considering buying this text I suggest instead purchasing griffiths "introduction to elementary particles." My class was so displeased with perkins text that our professor has promised to switch to griffiths next year. To reiterate.... Perkins book is the epitome of bad writing. I give my apologies to the author, but I don't want others to waste their time and money on this text. Buy Griffiths Book, it is good!



3. As many previous reviewers have already pointed out, this book is not nearly as good an introduction to theoretical high energy physics as Griffiths' "Introduction to Elementary Particles". The primary reason for this is that Perkins' book was never meant to be read as a theoretical course in the first place. This is why Griffiths introduces Feynman rules and gamma matrices near the middle of the book and uses them extensively throughout the rest; Perkins mentions them in passing in the first chapter and then completely forgets them. In Perkins you will find little rigorous math, but a lot of experimental physics. If you want to understand the theory behind T violation, use Griffiths. If you want to know how physicists measured the electric dipole momentum of the neutron ( thus putting an upper limit on the magnitude of T violation ), Perkins will explain it in detail, together with the schematics of the apparatus they used.
   Overall, this book does not fit its title well - it is not a good introduction to high energy physics ( unless you are so totally averse to math that you can't manage Griffiths or Peskin/Shroeder ). However, it has its own purpose - that is, to teach experimental methods in high energy physics. It probably should be studied after Griffiths by those who are interested in experimental side of particle physics.



4. Basically, If you want theoretical approach stop reading this and buy griffiths' book, it's a lot better.
   I'm using Perkins for a course mainly made up of senior undergraduates. First of all, a lot of the other reviewers have ripped the book to shreds, and most of their complaints are valid. I'd like to point out that this book actually attempts a fairly difficult task of introducing relatively advanced concepts which require qft, to students without any background in field theory.
   The long and the short of it is... Perkins' book is geared for learning with a phenomonological, experimental approach. This results in a lot of hand waving, and not many mathematical or theoretical insights. If you're expecting these things, the book will be dissapointing.
   All of this aside, there are some major flaws in the book. First of all, it kind of lacks on organization. There are a lot of charts, tables and graphs thrown about at random, and with little reasoning or thought. This makes Perkins' fairly useless as a reference, since you might have to look at four or more different charts to find out the relevant properties of a given particle.
   My other major complaint, is that Perkins uses a lot of jargon without sufficiently introducing the terminology. While, this is fine for people who already know particle physics, I'm guessing that if you're reading this book, you don't already know particle physics.
   Finally, despite being a fourth addition, there are still a bunch of misprints/omissions. For example, there's a question (which i conveniently had for a homework assignment) totally based on a concept not mentioned anywhere within the book. Google searches on the topic led only to obscure and inaccessible papers.
   Basically, if you have to use this book for a course be prepared to read and re-read each section of it, and to suppliment with other books. I'd suggest buying griffiths along with it, event if you're not into the whole theory thing.



5. This is a book whose content is close to that of most 'traditional' undergraduate courses on particle physics. Yet, you will probably be tempted to throw it in the dustbin after a few pages unless you have trained yourself into thinking that it's better reading it than failing your exam and have already read a book like Giffiths' before, where you will find some good theoretical basis for all this stuff.

2 comments about Experiments in Modern Physics, Second Edition.

1. I purchased this book with hopes of gaining some insight into the theoretical aspects of the modern physics experiments I was working on in a junior laboratory. I must say that this book has been invaluable. The author masterfully details the most fundamental experiments in modern physics, making the material accessible to beginning undergrad students, yet still theoretically rich enough for advanced experimental practice.
   
   Most modern physics experiments can more than likely be referenced somewhere in this book, which serves as a lab manual complete with data samples and example analysis. For myself, the analysis techniques employed in the experiments contained within this book were the most helpful. Any physics student with experience in an advanced lab would agree that data and error analysis are the most critical part of any lab, making this book ideal as a reference.
   
   I give this book five stars, but I must admit only one disappointment with its binding. I read a review, prior to buying this text, stating that the hardcover binding is somewhat prone to wearing out quickly, and indeed I think I have seen the beginning of this demise. However, I have made extensive use of the book, which has undoubtedly contributed to this problem.

   Otherwise, I have gotten every cent's worth out of this book!




2. The 1st edition by Adrian Melissinos is a classic reference book with a wealth of practical information and data. That book was published in 1966; yet much of the theoretical treatments and methods are still applicable today. This 2nd edition either deleted or replaced some important original material. The 2nd edition did not do a good job in discussing new developments since the publication of the last edition. For instance, in the discussion of the Fabry-Perot method for high resolution spectroscopy, there was no mention of using a piezoelectric actuator which is commonly used at present and a significant development since the publication of the 1st edition. Useful data in nuclear experiments were deleted. A chapter of useful techniques in the 1st edition that deals with useful procedures such as pulse height analysis and basic vacuum technique was deleted.