5 comments about Cosmos.

1. The best advice I can give, regarding this book, is to GIVE it to a young person interested in science or space. You will plant a seed that will grow forever. Sagan's masterpiece takes the mind on a wonderful journey through the stars as well as through other space centered events. Highest recommendation as a text for learning as well as a fine read for anyone interested in the subject.



2. I have read many many books pertaining to astronomy and cosmology over the years, but until this book, I had never read anything written by Carl Sagan. What interested me enough to purchase this book was not only the topic it covered, but that the book was itself written by Carl Sagan.
   
   I best remember Carl Sagan from those TV specials he narrated that were aired on public TV many years ago. I was always impressed with Mr. Sagan's knowledge and manner of presentation of the material. His enthusiasm to tell what he knew about the cosmos was never masked by a scripted TV presentation; his enthusiasm was very infectious. So recently, I thought I had to rectify my having never read a book written by Mr. Sagan and I purchased the book Cosmos. I was not disappointed; I felt as if I was watching one of those old TV specials narrated by Mr. Sagan. In my mind's eye, I could see everything I was reading and I did not want the book to end.
   
   Despite that the book may be dated, and cosmology has moved on a bit since the publishing of this book, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics and even history. I only wish Mr. Sagan was still alive to write something new. He is missed by me.



3. I first bumped into Carl Sagan when I saw his TV documentary series called "Cosmos" many years ago. It has only been recently that I have got off my rear and read the book. It has to be said that I had waited far too long to do this.
   
   "Cosmos" (the book) is a great overall introduction to the universe about us and the history of its discovery by people. Mixing hitsory and astronomy, Sagan covers the major efforts that went into discovering different things out there and what thos discoveries meant. There is also a healthy level of how astronomers do what they do, such as light spectrum analysis, radar mapping and so on. Despite this, there is virtually no mathematics involved, which is a good thing for general readers.
   
   The hardcover edition also has plenty of pictures, photos and diagrams relating to the text. This makes the book very interesting and quite amazing to read. I was very impressed with the quality of the photos and what they showed. They added a great deal to the text, especially for more visual people such as myself.
   
   The only drawback with the book is its age. It was written over 20 years ago and references to future missions planned for 1986 highlight this aspect of the book. There may have been discoveries since the time of writing that would add more to the reader's knowledge. However, in spite of this drawback of age, the book is still valuable as a very readable introduction.
   
   Carl Sagan writes with a very fluid and relaxing style. He doesn't overload the reader with specialised jargon, and when he does use it, he explains it very well. When the explanations are a bit heavy, I have noticed Sagan's tendency to supply diagrams. I was at no point confused or lost by Sagan's text.
   
   Overall, the book makes a great starting point into the world of astronomy, the path people have taken to get us to where we are today and just what is out there. This is a very interesting book about a very interesting subject. I definitely recommend it, despite the age problems refered to above.



4. 
   Carl Sagan's book and TV series called Cosmos has opened the vast universe to millions and millions of people. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and watching the series.
   
   It is not surprising that Cosmos is the best-selling science book ever published in the English language...and the series has been seen by half a billion people!
   
   Carl Sagan was able to accomplish this feat by tapping into his psyche as a little boy who asked many questions about the universe. He then wrote and produced the series from the heart. His enthusiasm and fascination with the earth, planets, stars, galaxies, extraterrestrial life and more is contagious! He took an incredibly difficult subject and made it fun, exciting and educational for anyone from 8 to 80 who has looked up at the night skies...and wondered.
   
   The book and series are not to be missed!
   
   The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking



5. I have to laugh that one of the tags for this book is atheist. Was he an atheist? I don't know. But I truly enjoyed this book, and it was a further shovel of dirt on religion in the ground for me. A number of things had led me to that point (taking a philosophy course way back when I was in college), but this book really gave religion in a frank light: nothing more than an explanation of the unknown for societies. The ones that took hold and didn't go away when science explained away are what we have today. But seriously, lets only go as far as agnostic, please.
   
   Religion aside, this is truly a magnificent travel through space. I read it whilst camping that really assisted in its fine journey. A little outdated, but highly recommended nonetheless.

5 comments about Schaum's Outline of Signals and Systems.

1. I don't even know how to start to express how much i love this book...i almost have tears in my eyes as im writing this LOL This book saved the rest of my studies in Electrical engineering. The book by OPPENHEIM is a WASTE of money AND time!!! It's a huge book that confuses students for nothing! But this one instead is more detailed and waaaaay smaller than OPPENHEIM's book. So that you actually learn waaaaay faster! It doesn't contain no stupid stories that we don't give a **** about LOL It goes straight to the point.
   For me it's been the best book EVEEEEEEER!!!!! PERIOD!!!



2. Not one of Schaums good books. Skips too many steps in solving problems. Other EE students and also complained about this one. Usually Schaums a safe bet, just not this time.



3. this book is terrific.
   It is short and concise relatively speaking.
   It is not too wordy and fairly mathmatically based. It should be used in conjunction with other textbooks of course as it is a workbook or outline only but the math is everywhere explained and there are many examples worked through from beginning to end.
   agree with previous reviewer "teddy", an absolute gem!



4. I am currently taking my first semester in systems and signal analysis. While the subject matter is a little intimidating in terms of math, this outline cuts through the generalities and provides great, worked out, stepped out examples for everything from the basic properties of LTI systems to convolution, laplace transforms, z-transforms, fourier analysis, and space state analysis. Between the class text and this outline, I am very well prepared for future classes in signals and systems. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels they may need a little help with signal analysis, especially since the price is right.



5. Book almost like new - in great condition!! Would purchase from same seller again... And it was delivered quite quickly.

3 comments about Energy: Its Use and the Environment (with InfoTrac®).

1. Energy provides comprehensive information on basic energy principles, electricity, fossil energy resources, nuclear power, renewable energy resources, energy conservation, and the impacts of energy use on the environment. While it contains all the requisite equations and problem sets, the concise, clear coverage of the environmental and policy issues surrounding our energy use really distinguishes this book from other energy texts.



2. This pertains to the 4th edition (published 2005). The material is solid and informative, but the photos are all black and white. I find this unacceptable in the twenty first century. Additionally, many of the photos are of very poor quality.



3. I've been teaching at a community college for 16 years in the field of energy efficiency, Passive solar, building science, healthy homes, sustainability, green issues. I have used this book and its earlier versions in my classes because it gives the best science basis for energy. It is also written by a physics professor as a textbook, with review and questions at the end of each chapter.
   
   This book shows the "systems efficiency" of energy sources, which is the correct way to examine any proposed alternative energy. This is the way many of these topics is presented in other books. I like the book also because it starts at the beginning--physics--in the discussion of energy.

4 comments about The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory (Complete Idiot's Guide to).

1. This is a very well written book, easy to read, flows very well from topic to topic, doesn't spend too much time on any single area and has excellent coverage.
   This book is for you if:
   -You are looking for a good overview of the challenges that String theory is trying to solve
   -You are not interested in a book of Math formula's (there is no math) or a book that just reprints the theory
   -You are interested in a balanced view including discussions of alternative theories (it mostly covers String theory but it does highlight how other theories deal with the problem) as opposed to bashing other theories
   -You have read several other books but still don't see the big picture
   -You are not interested in a history lesson on how great the author is and all of his friends and all the other guys are nuts
   Hope this helps



2. I am still basically an idiot on this subject, but now with a little enlightenment. I have been out of school for some30++ years and this
   stuff is a bit out there for me. But, it is written clearly and I am
   very happy with the read.



3. how could i resist? my education/degrees are in biophysics, so there's a lot i've missed out on. fascinating to read and learn and not over the top in levels of difficulty.
   take a chance!



4. A chunk of the book covers relativity.
   Quantum mechanics is presented with its incompatibilities.
   With these formalities over with, string theory is discussed.
   
   There are some difficulties here.
   Profound conclusions are presented without much background.
   The conflicting view points get tiresome.
   There is not much of a climax at the end.
   But these problems are inherent to the subject matter.
   
   The digressions and historical bits are always interesting.
   The endless analogies to everyday life are better than you would expect.
   There is a joy about the audacity of the subject which comes through.

5 comments about Chaos: Making a New Science.

1. James Gleick changed my view on the scientific world forever in his book Chaos. I feel that I've removed my old, Euclidean perception of the world and have replaced it with a more complex, organic, and dynamic view. This book is a great introduction to chaos and is not meant to describe the applications of this theory. The applied sciences of chaos, complexity, or systems theories are readily available in journals and other pubs, just do a little research.



2. Okay, so it was a bestseller. That doesn't mean you didn't miss it. It doesn't mean you shouldn't read it again. Order in chaos and vice versa, the butterfly that creates a typhoon, fractal geometry, wildlife populations and dripping faucets (about which, more in a future Soupletter) - a book about ideas formerly on the scientific fringe that are now considered on a par with Relativity Theory (which, you will remember, made a considerable bang). ContempIating this review, I picked up CHAOS at the library (three or four years had elapsed since my first read) and was sucked in afresh. Meet a scientist who experimented with 26 hour days, another who found an operational definition of free will. Fascinatin' Rythms, Smooth Noodle Maps, Ice Ages and heartbeats. This is physics where the rubber meets the road. You don't need to follow the math (I don't, I just roll on by ...) to appreciate the ride. "Beautifully lucid," according to the San Francisco Chronicle which one notes, is published beside a once lucidly beautiful bay.



3. A popular science type of book (the popular part you can see from the numbers), where Gleick takes a look at the science of Chaos theory.
   
   Not in a rigorous mathematical way, but more in a history of and introduction and overview of the subject, with of course examples of what he is talking about throughout.
   
   
   3.5 out of 5



4. Nutshell review - a good book, written well and very entertaining. A good introduction to chaos and complexity science for us lay-people.



5. Chaos by James Gleick is a must read if you like keeping up with science or just like reading things that broaden the perspectives of your thinking. Gleick does a masterful job of simplifying the science of Chaos to a level any bright kid can understand while not diminishing any of its importance or ignoring any of the details. If you're curious about what a Klein bottle actually is or a Lorenzo's butterflies, this is the book for you. The illustrations of the Mandlbrot sets are truly amazing and worth the cost of the book just to look at. With his clear, concise style Gleick leads the reader through the history of Chaos science while building a strong foundation for the understanding of it. You don't need to know how to use a slide rule to read this book and it would be a memorable gift for any adult or child interested in science.

No comments about Inquiry into Physics (with InfoTrac 1-Semester Printed Access Card).

5 comments about The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe.

1. excellent general primer for Quantum Mechanics and modern physics. Penrose is writing at a level for the reader who is willing to do some work to understand a very complicated subject. A much more educational experience than the usual books on quantum mechanics for the general reader



2. This is definitely the most comprehensive book ever published on theoretical physics, written by one of the most influential theoretical physicists alive! But the reader should be forewarned : it is not easy reading, even if one skips the maths, as Penrose suggests in the Introduction...
   Now, if one wants to understand everything, then it becomes really challenging, and I don't think many readers would be up to it. By understanding everything, I mean understanding enough to be able to do the exercises, and , believe me, this is no easy task!Especially that the author forgets most of the time that this is supposed to be a book for the "general public",so he writes as if he were giving a lecture to his graduate students.That is, he assumes that the reader knows already a lot about the subject at hand. Take, for instance, his explanation about the "clock paradox" of Special Relativity : not only is this explanation very special to Penrose, but he does not even explain what the "paradox" is all about! And so the reader who encounters it for the first time would tend to think that the paradox is only the fact that the voyager ages slower than the observer who stays behind, which is not altogether true...There are other examples showing Penrose not at his very best: the presentation of the Davisson-Germer experiment,at Chapter 21, leaves much to be desired, as it does not explain its true predictive property, that of interference fringes.
   The other aspect of the book that struck me is that Penrose distances himself from mainstream physics on two very important paradigms: spontaneous symmetry breaking in the early Universe, and inflationary cosmology. For him, there is no sufficient observational evidence for these two "speculative theories", as he calls them. Many cosmologists and physicists would surely disagree with him, but he has the honesty to express his beliefs, even when they are "out of phase" with those of other "pundits".And he has some very solid arguments, stemming from a deep insight into the Second Principle of Thermodynamics. It would be very interesting to see what the "inflationists" have to say about Penrose's arguments!
   Another very significant fact is that Penrose does not show any sympathy whatsoever for Superstring Theory, preferring his own "twistor" approach to QFT. In this, he joins other theoretical physicists, such as the Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow, and lesser figures like Lee Smolin(see his book The Trouble with Physics) and Peter Woit(Not Even Wrong), who have been complaining about the non-falsifiability of SST for quite some time...Let's hope that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be able to settle this issue, one way or the other, in the near future.
   But be that as it may, I would not hesitate to recommend this book to all those readers who, like myself, are passionately looking for an explanation to the laws that govern "Reality", i.e the Universe we live in.
   
   Finally, I would like to add here that "Publishers Weekly" makes a comparison between this book and Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". But this comparison is untenable: Hawking's small book is but child's play compared to this treatise!



3. A book with this breath and sublty comes along a couple of times in a generation. There have been Feynman's Lectures on Physics, Misner Thorne Wheeler Gravitation and others. Penrose is a world class mathematician and physicist (but you already know that). I cannot begin to adequately review this book even handedly because his audience is really other stellar mathematical physicists which I certainly am not.
   
   I had the requisite math background so I understood most of it from cover to cover. But I am under no illusion that I have mastered the material. I can say the content is superficial and tricks the lay reader into thinking he has mastered something when he has not.
   
   We are talking about maths that are even beyond the Ph.D. level of mathematical physics here folks! How can even Penrose condense tens of thousands of pages of textbooks that one routinely must grasp to get where he is with so much facility? The publisher must have thought (and Penrose rationalized) that they could sell more books if they touted that even a mathematically challenged reader could get something from it. This is not the case.
   
   True, I was thrilled at Penrose's intuitive grasp of difficult abstractions that had me puzzled from studying more pedestrian texts on these subjects. Simply breathtaking. I was a page turner from the get-go. However I was under no illusions that I was learning something other than vaporware.
   
   The most interesting idea that caught my eye was his critique of symmetry. Animals have evolved to be pattern recognition machines. Survival goes to the brain that can see the "tiger burning bright in the forests of the night. Who has framed thy fearful symmetry?"
   
   Physicists and certainly mathematicians have been guided by a mystical belief that Nature must follow some beautiful elegant mathematical plan. What is the platonic world of ideas but the symmetry of our own evolved brain functions? -- Good for this time and place but not generalizable. It has worked so far but what if looking for symmetry is wrong. What if framing our equations in terms of groups is wrong. What if Nature is chaotic, asymmetric, fractal?
   
   Penrose entertains that the last 30 years has produced nothing which makes sense or is even observable. Yet physicists blindly 'theory-on' capivated by their presumptions. The point is they have lost sight of the physics, the data, the observations.
   
   As Firesign Theatre once said "The People! Give them a light and they will follow it anywhere!" Well, we know from history where this goes. Penrose suffers from his own criticisms and wants to create something like Einstein's elegant relativity applied to quantum gravity. Who can blame him? What is learning but man's vain search for God?
   
   But what if QFT's incredible accuracy is only an accident like the resonance particles. Feynman and others fudged enough to get the answers they were looking for even though QFT is not in principle normalizable. It is not even beautiful!
   
   What if Einstein and unitary quantum mechanics was the last hurrah of this sort of elegance in our species? Strings are beautiful but we will never know if the theory is observable. I'm afraid the measurement paradox is confusing what side of the experiment the measurement is taken.
   
   It is consciousness and evolved brain structure that is the problem. Penrose in other books has the (admittedly crack pot notion) that quantum gravity collapses the wavefunction and thereby creates consciousness. But maybe he was looking in the right direction?
   
   It is time to examine ourselves and our inherited prejudices as Nature is not only stranger (non-symmetric, anti commutative) than we suppose; it is stranger than we can suppose (Arthur Eddington). The future of physics and maths lies in understanding the limits of our own brains. Maybe the largest symmetry group that exists (the "Monster" of 196K dimensions) is the symmetry group of the thinkers which discovered it. And there are no groups bigger than this!



4. This book is perfect for where I'm at right now, which is at an advanced undergraduate level of studying physics. It covers pretty close to all of the ideas in physics that are out there right now, and most of the major areas of mathematics that are involved in explaining these physical theories. As such, it makes a great review of what I've encountered so far, and gives the clearest exposition I've yet encountered for many of the advanced ideas that I've only thus far encountered tangentially. Even for "basic" ideas, Penrose often chooses a way of explaining an idea that is significantly different from how most texts will explain them. His explanantions of complex numbers and the uses of the complex plane, differential forms, and 4-velocity and 4-momentum pop out in my memory as particularly good, and are concepts that I don't feel I entirely "got" until here. Also, he builds the concepts upon each other slowly and systematically, giving the entire book a "story arc" that's rare among physics and mathematics texts. Most of the second half of the book is devoted to what could be considered "cutting edge" physics, and he does an excellent job of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the various approachs.
   
   That being said, if this is your first exposure to these topics, you will be lost. The math is generally more clearly built up from what would be a non-mathematically minded person's starting point, but even that has points at which an extremely subtle mind is needed to fill in the intervening steps. The physics is even more difficult if you've had no exposure, but I personally found this to be one of the books virtues. For instance, you will probably come away with no understanding of electromagnetism and how electricity and magnetism came to be seen as unified if this is your first exposure, but for those who already have encountered it at an undergraduate level, you will come to a much deeper appreciation of its symmetries.
   
   All in all an excellent book, but the publishers should reconsider the way they are marketing it as a book for the layman.



5. It is not possible to express the ideas of modern physics without using mathematics very different from what one studies in high school. But a popular physics book can hardly assume more than a high school level of math. Therefore popular physics books are impossible.
   
   Penrose's 'The Road to Reality' is a demonstration of this proposition. Penrose must be congratulated for facing the problem head on, not shying away from the formulae and trying to teach his readers all the mathematics needed. Penrose is more capable than most for such an undertaking, and often he comes up with clever, intuitive ways of explaining difficult concepts. But ultimately the beautifully-crafted intuition collapses due to the lack of a supporting structure of necessary technical details and hard proofs and the reader is left holding fuzzy ideas which he cannot independently apply.
   
   The book would be a great way for a graduate student in physics or mathematics to see the big picture. Others would do well to stick either with less ambitious popularizations or to go straight to the textbooks. For the former, my recommendation would be Penrose's own The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science) while for the latter there is no better place to begin than Singer and Thorpe's Lecture Notes on Elementary Topology and Geometry (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) and Needham's Visual Complex Analysis.

5 comments about College Physics.

1. This book was a great help while taking the course to better understand problems and answers.



2. hey, notice it is only the second half of the book, equals second semester or phys 2b or something, i made the mistake of buying it and i needed part one... anywho



3. Is the $20 price for the solution manual or is it actually for the text book. Please highlight me before i make a purchase. Email me as soon as possible.
   
   email: bechband@yahoo.co.uk



4. this manual does not have all the answers or explanations to them. the detail is poor, and none of the conceptual questions or multiple choice have answers at all. it helps sometimes, but comes up short often.



5. This book is poorly written and the problems worked out within it often skip steps making it hard to follow unless you are a master at Math. If you have to use this because your school requires it I feel bad for you.

5 comments about Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs: Interstellar Travel, Crashes, and Government Cover-Ups.

1. Just because you have a degree in science (masters in physics) doesn't automatically make everything you do scientific. In fact, very little research that Stanton Friedman has done recently could truely be called scientific, historical maybe, but not scientific. He speaks with the most authority when discussing exotic propulsion systems based on his record of employment decades ago, but he seems to have lost the concept of science since then. It is highly unlikely that memories of an abduction recovered via hypnosis would even be accepted as evidence in a court of law and it certainly couldn't be considered scientific. In fact, Mr.Friedman may be slightly paranoid on this point because he spends a good deal of print blasting those who think differently than he does.



2. Stanton Friedman does UFOs as a profession, lecturing, writing so my question is how can he research this topic in an objective manner? Also, it seems stranger than the topic to continue to use the old term "Flying Saucer" I think the material in this book is too one sided.



3. Readers looking for a scientific appraisal of the UFO phenomenon or even a coherent overview of the subject should look elsewhere. Friedman's rambling polemic achieves neither objective.
   
   The author spends the first third of this rather slender volume rehashing a number of reports issued decades ago. He presents no new evidence and basically insists that a careful reading of these old documents will prove that some UFOs are alien spacecraft.
   
   The remainder of the book is largely dedicated to claiming a government cover-up and rebutting his critics, many of whom are dead. Ironically, he denounces the critics for making unwarranted assumptions about the motivations of a reputed alien civilization, then proceeds to do exactly the same thing himself. For instance, he suggests that one reason the aliens don't reveal themselves is that they would want little direct contact with beings who spend vast amounts on armaments while permitting 30,000 children to starve to death each day. Moreover, they might avoid landing on the White House lawn because it is in a "no fly" zone and heavily defended.
   
   Apart from its superficial content, the rambling and repetitive text has the feel of a compilation of dictated notes. For example, Friedman informs us at least five times that the stars Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli are only 1/8 of a light year apart from each other, and he repeatedly notes that 300,000 documents in the Eisenhower Library are still classified. Numbered points that promise a concise examination of some issue frequently drift into petulant asides or long lists of irrelevant facts. Someone named Kara Reynolds is identified as the book's editor. She must have been on holiday when this book passed muster.
   
   This is a poor effort, especially for someone who has spent a lifetime investigating the subject.



4. Finally a book on Flying Saucers/UFO's that gets away from the old genre and brings us into the 21st century. Stanton Friedman's handling of the subject is befitting a man of his education as a scientist and stature as a life long researcher and believer in the phenomenon. This should be required reading in every news room across the globe. Let every empty talking/writing head who ever made fun of the idea or derided those that reported the sightings take a sobering look at themselves and the matter. I hope I live long enough to see this government 'give it up' and open up their UFO files to the world. Best work yet on this issue.



5. Probably your best bargain in the ufo category written by a physicist once employed by the Air Force. Despite what the nay-sayers have written here, this is your best buy on the subject, from a no-nonsense researcher.
   
   Mr. Friedman summarizes the best cases, though providing many resources for you to look up on your own. He explains in detail the fallacies of arguments against these best cases. In fact, he encourages you to read the original sources and so follow in his footsteps.
   
   I admire this man for his courage to speak out when to do so, brings censure and derision. Good work! And a very good buy for you.

1 comments about Physics for Scientists & Engineers, Vol. 1 (Chs 1-20) (4th Edition).

1. This book is well organized, fairly rigorous, and contains lots of useful examples and problems. This text requires, at very least, a semester of calculus for an excellent understanding. 3 semesters of calculus will allow the reader to have a truly complete understanding of the text. The organization is mainly by color/font and is self-explanitory. The text is calc-based and the level of this material is the hardest that is actually covered in any freshman physics course in the country. (This is based off the info that that this text is used at MIT, which has one of the most difficult and best physics programs in the U.S.) The examples in this text really top it off; they lead the reader through the text and make all the problems at the end of the chapter feasible.

   The main difference between this book and Serway's calc-based text (Serway's larger set ISBN: 0030317169) is that Serway's is slightly harder. (One review believed the Serway text to be easier, but I am guessing this was one of Serway's non-calc texts. Serway's calc-based text covers more than what is needed for the AP Phys-C Exam.)

   Topics covered: Classical Mechanics, Oscillations/Waves, Fluids, and Thermodynamics.

   THIS BOOK IS EXCELLENT FOR SELF-STUDY.