5 comments about Semiconductor Device Fundamentals.

1. While I maybe be biased in saying this is the best text I've had at a certain school (where the author teaches), I feel this book makes a solid effort at covering the material. The book is organized nicely and the end of chapter questions always relate to the chapter material.
   
   The section right before the questions also helps direct the student to the chapter section pertaining most to the question. It has helped me save time in looking up information! The only thing I would like would be a few more examples. Overall, a well balanced book with adequate conceptual explanation and a fair amount of examples. With this textbook, a good professor (or some determination on your part) and some work, you will do well in a basic semiconductors course.



2. I'm looking for a good reference book, for my PE exam. I bought this, kind of at Random. When I got it I was very dissapointed to see that it was written in 1996... This was written a year after I graduated from high school... Simiconductor devices have changed so much sense then... I hope it is a good book, but I wish I would have got a more recent book.



3. Reads like a novel. This book teaches semiconductor theory very well. It would be nice if it had some practical realizations of the theory it teaches, but it is overall the best book you will find in introductory semiconductors.



4. We use it as our textbook for an undergraduate course at Carnegie Mellon University.
   This book is fundamental enough. Once you are patient enough to read it, you will get a lot.
   It teaches concepts step by step, very good for beginners!



5. This Books provides a good idea in Semiconductor material for Physics Major students and Engineering students. This explains about solid state physics.
   
   Kiran Shrestha
   Univ of Massachusetts Boston

5 comments about Matter and Interactions I: Modern Mechanics.

1. I had the privilege of learning freshmen physics from the authors. The authors and their book present a new way of learning physics. Although the exercises are nontraditional, I find them to be more insightful than simple "plug and chug" problems.



2. I've used this text for my calculus-based intro physics course since before it was officially available (since fall 1999). There is no other text like it. The emphases on estimation, programming, and real world problems (as opposed to sanitized plug and chug problems) make for a VERY different experience for students and instructors alike. In my opinion, the highlight of Volume I is the treatment of energy concepts in chapters 4-6. No other text is as meticulous with terminology as this one. Instructors will have to rethink what and how they were first taught about this material. Volume I culminates in showing how mechanics and thermodynamics are united via statistical mechanics, and the approach is extraordinary. Students using this text will be better prepared for future courses than their peers who use the traditional texts; there is research to back this up. The authors provide unrivaled user support too.



3. This is a great book. It is a book you can read through, it reads better than any other text book I have read. It is not like most physics text books. If you are looking for just formulas and problems to plug and chug you need to look somewhere else, this is a far deeper book than that. This is for people that actually want a solid backbone in physics learn the how and why, understand the concepts. The problems in this volume can be pretty difficult, but the information to solve them are in the chapter, The book makes you think for your self. The questoins are structured so you can not memorize problem types and the equations to plug and chug, they test understanding. The result of this approch is you are far better positioned to handle physics problems that you have never seen before, where people that just want plug and chug fall apart on problems they have never seen.

   If you are taking a class with this book and problems are assigned from the book and you have not read the book and you want to just pick information you need to solve the problem... its not easy finding information in the book, you have to read it.

   This book and Vol 2 which I highly recommend also have taught me the most about physics... before this book and I was asked a Physics question that was "why" oriented alot of the time I would be I dont know I just know this is the formula you use. Now I know alot of the "whys".

   In alot of other Physics text books from chapter to chapter the information presented seems to be completely disjoint no real connection. This book connects chapter and chapter.

   The book does have some problems where you write computer simulations, but the language they use is free to download and pretty easy to learn compared to most programming languages. If you dont want to write the programs... you can download alot of them from the authors website to look over.

   There are different versions of this book out there, sometime in 2003 they re-printed and fixed some errors in vol 1 and vol 2... I think the ISBN number was changed when this happened... I would check with the publishers website to make sure you are purchasing the most upto date version.

   I have the old versions before the re-print with corrections... and I am going to go buy the new re-prints, normally I would not bother, but the two volumes are such great books.

   From the Physics classes I took with the two volumes, the people that did not like this book were people that did not want to understand the subject they just wanted to be able to memorize types of problems and the equations to plug and chug. They did not want to read the book, they just wanted through the class with the least amount of effect, understanding was not a priority.




4. In my freshman physics class we used this book. I had already taken an AP Physics course in high school but still did not know many things. The AP physics class actually confused me. This book has been able to clearify everything! It was a very readable book which is hard to say about textbooks.



5. This book does a horrible and insufficient job of introducing the student to physics. The book lacks examples to help understand the concepts. And because our authors dont have enough time to write up a solutions manual to their difficult problems we never gain an understanding on solving problems only partly understanding the theoretical.

5 comments about Introduction to Optics (3rd Edition).

1. The authors present optics at an intermediate level - not as detailed or complete as Born and Wolf, but it is a mathematical treatment and just slightly on a lower level than Klein and Furtak or Hecht. It is not just a survey. Certain parts of it are extremely good - for example, the chapter on Theory of Multilayer Films presents more useful data on antireflection coatings in a more concise, readable, well-illustrated format than any of the above books. It also presents common applications such as the Snellen eye chart used to measure visual acuity at your opthamologist in an "Optics of the Eye" chapter. Overall, a pretty decent first level optics book.



2. I have given recitations for a course when I was a TA. For my own reference it was very good concerning many matters, when one really needs the problems like reducing aberrations or like multilayer thin film optics or may be even non linear optics, this book is a very honest written book. But I do not know if it is a good idea to talk about aberrations for the people who do not have much idea about Gausssian geometrical optics for instance. Its level is not a graduate level, but, you know, for young people, they do not want to hear about the problems that they may face in life, untill they really do. I still have this book on my shelf, even after shifting to different topics. To me it is a compact and a real life book. Does not talk about myths, tells you the truth of life in optics. But of course Hecht s book is better may be as an introduction, gives a better overall map of the field. If you will have several optics book in your life this is one of them. But only if you work out the problems and think about the reason why they were asked. Every problem in this book is about a real life case in the optoelectronics laboratory and not about a fantasy.



3. I took a course in Optics from the author and he used his own book. It was awful. I had to acquire several other optics books to actually learn the material. If you're looking for a good optics book, look elsewhere. Hecht and Zach or Klien is a much better option.



4. I'd have to admit as an actual optics major, this book served my purposes very well. There really is no way way you can go through introductory optics in 1 semester, which is how all the physics departments do it - it doesn't do the subject justice.
   
   My favorite chapters from the book are as follows:
   
   -Theory Multilayer Thin Film
   -Matrix Treatment of Polarization
   -Production of Polarized Light
   -The 3 chapters dedicated to diffraction
   -Fresnel Equations
   
   These are all chapters that don't require Maxwell's Equations at all, even if you knew them. The optical properties of material chapters deals with Maxwell's Equations more or less for the entire chapter.
   
   The laser and subsequent chapters also give you a VERY BASIC flavor of expect in more specialized books.
   
   If I had to recommend a book for actually learning the material and that has worked out problems, this would be the one. Born and Wolf is great, but only as a reference, and still there are flaws in that book as well. Jenkins and White or Schaum's Outline for Optics might be useful supplements, as I used them from time to time. Hecht is not a good book to learn out of, but a good way to learn what optics is all about.



5. I used this book in an optics course, and I'd say that it was an okay book, not really something special.
   
   Pros:
   -Many nice illustrations
   -It describes many aspects of modern optics
   
   Cons:
   -At times really confusing, e.g. one equation contains two different variables, t, which describes both the transmission coefficient and the time. They could at least have added a subscript
   -The book is rather wordy, which means one looses one concentration rather fast.

5 comments about How Apollo Flew to the Moon (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration).

1. How was the pyramids built? Humanity tends to easily forget how great achievements are made, at least close to their actually performance. However, over time the question "how" is often subject to more debate and interest than the question "why" and "who". This book really fills the gap and explains in great detail the different technical aspects of Apollo's fligths to the moon. It's also written in such way that you really don't have to be a nobel prize winner to understand it or appreciate it. If you haven't read any books on this subject before, I strongly recommend you to begin with this!



2. Very informative book on the mechanics of getting to the moon in the 1960s; also,contains some very good photos.



3. A page-turner for those interested in the mechanics of spaceflight. Even though it records the events of nearly forty years ago, it is still hard to believe that men put their faith in such frail craft; the chances of safely returning from the voyage to the moon were put at no more than 50/50.
   
   What struck me most about this book was the depth of research, and the revelatory nature of some of the material. For example, while I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the mechanics of Apollo, having eagerly consumed anything and everything I could get my hands on since I was a kid watching it on TV, I was surprised to find out the accuracy required to safely enter lunar orbit. This book reveals that an SPS burn even 2 seconds short or longer than planned could result in either a crash into the Moon or slingshot into solar orbit. And that, once in orbit around the Moon, the time between loss-of-signal and re-aquisition was pre-calculated to the second, and their calculation was invariably right on the money. All this in the era of the slide-rule.
   
   If you have even a passing interest in the technical detail of Man's greatest accomplishment, get this book. Guaranteed to please the hard-core space fan.



4. First of all, I second all the wonderful things that folks have said about this book in the other reviews. It beautifully fills in the gaps as to what was actually going on, and explains in relatively simple terms how the systems work. An engineer or space enthusiast won't have any problems with the terminology. A less educated reader might be somewhat less able to understand - but then again, they're probably not the target audience, anyway. As someone who spent his teenage years watching Apollo live, I'm very happy to have the book in my collection.
   
   There are a few quirks that stuck out at me:
   (1) The book literally stinks. I don't know what kind of paper and ink combination they used, but the book smells AWFUL. There's something in it that I'm allergic to. It makes me sneeze if it's within 18 inches of my face, so I have to hold it at arms length to read it without my eyes watering and my nose running. I hate to mention that, but it's enough of an issue to be more than just annoying. I have never had that problem with any other book.
   
   (2) Most of the black and white photos are reproduced very darkly. Some of them are so dark that it's difficult to tell what we are supposed to be seeing in the photo.
   
   (3) The author says up front that he will insist on using metric instead of English units because that's the way the rest of the world measures things. As someone who has memorized all the pertinent dimensions of the Apollo from his youth, it's very disconcerting for me to see them expressed solely in different units. In some cases, the author's writing around the units makes this even more bizarre to my American sensibilities. For example, we would say the F-1 engine produced 1.5 million pounds of thrust. On page 19, the author says the F-1 "produced a force that could balance 680 tonnes of mass." I only recall him using the word "thrust" once in the book - the rest of the time, he speaks of balance tonnes of mass.
   
   (4) The editing was a little sloppy. Perhaps the book was not intended to be read sequentially, but there are examples when entire paragraphs are reproduced almost verbatim in several chapters. One section has a footnote that refers the reader to the previous chapter - the one we just read - for a discussion of a concept. The author also introduces verbatim transcripts of transmissions from actual missions to illustrate points about systems that he is discussing. However, he tends to include more of the conversation than is pertinent to the issue in question. It's as if someone is showing you film clips that go on a little longer than they should, past the punch line.
   
   These are relatively minor quibbles, though. Again, I believe this is an excellent book than any fan of the Apollo era will want to have in his or her library.



5. I have over 200 books on the early space program and the race to the moon but this book is by far the best and most detailed I have ever read on just how it was done. I couldn't put it down. If you ever wanted to know, for example, what every abort mode meant during launch or why and how the crew made certain burns during the flight, get this book! It takes the reader from liftoff through splashdown explaining in fantastic detail every step of these wonderful voyages. This book is not a techno-geek's only book. It explains to the common man in the street everything from transfer orbits to gimbal lock. Get this book! I guarentee, even if you thought you knew a lot about it, you'll be amazed at what it took to fly to the moon.

5 comments about Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang.

1. Doubtless one of cosmology's greatest mysteries concerns the origins of the universe. What happened at the Big Bang, and how? What precipitated this momentous event? What existed before it, if anything? Was time born at that same instant? Is ours the only universe? Have others existed or exist even now?
   
   Prevailing scientific belief suggests that the universe as we know it began roughly 13 billion years ago with a "point-centered" Big Bang, followed by unimaginably rapid expansion, then enough slowing and cooling to allow the formation of atoms and molecules into planets, stars, and galaxies. In 1997, Lee Smolin's book THE LIFE OF THE COSMOS proposed an alternate theory in which multitudes of universes form at the output ends of black holes, each universe having its own characteristics and unique set of values for its controlling constants. Now, physicists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok offer a vastly different theory in THE ENDLESS UNIVERSE.
   
   In a book that challenges its readers' scientific capacity while remaining within a layman's grasp, Steinhardt and Turok eschew the Big Bang singularity for what they term an ekpyrotic or cyclic model. Derived from underlying principles of advanced string theory, they posit our universe as a three-dimensional brane that co-exists with another, mostly parallel brane of more or less equal size. The two branes are separated along an unseen fourth dimension, although the distance of this separation is small and alone among all known physical forces, only gravity can travel this fourth dimension and exert an attractive force between the branes. The authors use this model to posit a trillion-year process in which the branes collide and then separate to their maximum distance apart. During the collision, a birth process for both universes takes place in a manner that looks like the Big Bang. Radiation gradually gives way to matter, allowing stars and galaxies to form, until finally dark matter exerts itself and accelerates the universes' growth and spreads out the galaxies. The branes then become increasingly flat and parallel (as opposed to having been wrinkled but not intersecting as a result of their last collision), allowing the interbrane (gravitational) force between them to begin pulling them back together for another collision.
   
   THE ENDLESS UNIVERSE is loosely divided into three sections. The first section combines a recap of the Big Bang theory and its development during the 20th Century with far less interesting or relevant information about the authors' respective backgrounds, how they met and decided to collaborate, and how their conception of the cyclic model came to pass. Apparently, they failed to see any irony in commingling discussion of the birth of the universe with a full chapter of numbingly trivial personal background and details like, "In August 1981 my wife, Nancy, and I moved with our four-month old baby, Charlie, to Wayne, Pennsylvania, about tweny miles outside of Philadelphia..." Zzzzzzz...Oh, excuse me. What was that baby's name again?
   
   The second section of the book elaborates on the authors' cyclic model, explaining how the branes interact with each other to cause a "big bang" event and how they are influenced by the accelerating expansion of the universe, gravitational effects, and the increasing role of dark matter. Most of the last section of THE ENDLESS UNIVERSE is taken up with discussions of the various technologies being employed to test the Big Bang and cyclic theories. These chapters are some of the most interesting parts of the book, since they offer a fascinating if complicated view of the intersection between cosmological theory and astrophysical oberservation.
   
   Excepting the authors' space-filling personal stories, the bulk of THE ENDLESS UNIVERSE presents an exciting theoretical proposition in one of Science's most exciting fields of theoretical endeavor, the question of what is the universe and where did it come from. Readers will need to make an effort to absorb this material, but they will be rewarded with a fascinating ride through current cosmological thought and experimental efforts at confirmation.



2. No matter how long, deep and hard we dwell on existence of the Universe, it is impossible to avoid concept of infinity. What (or Who) is able to be eternal? If this is God, then not Universe. If Universe is such, then there is no need for God. Interestingly authors briefly muse about it in the middle of the book. Saying this and taking theology/philosophy aside I highly appreciate the huge effort taken by both scientists to present their quite stunning, and as for today, extravagant theory - theory challenging inflation. It was easier for me to comprehend Inflationary models (for example in Vilenkin's "Many Worlds in One"). Endless Cycling model is by far the most difficult one, since it is based on String Theory and assumption of extra dimensions. Part of the book evaluates supersymmetry vs. simple string theory in particle physics. Most of the time we read about advantages of Ekpyrotic (Cycling) Universe theory when compared to Inflationary models. Swinging back and forth (in a bit of chaotic and repetitive manner ) authors drill voraciously in systematic fashion all possible holes in the Guth/Linde's Inflationary as well as in Susskind's Landscape and Vilenkin's Multiverses models. And how dedicated, convinced, passionate, determined and eloquent they are!! Though certain fragments are truly exhausting (for example: how colliding branes convert one type of energy to another), numerous repetitions and attempts to emphasize how things happen, are actually often helpful. What has been planted in my head is that: extra "D" + branes + dark energy + potential energy related "spring-like" force between the branes = ekpyrosis. Be it. The final judge deciding which model represents true reality appears to be gravity. Authors list number of proposed and being in progress projects aiming at DETECTING gravitational waves. Unfortunately we will not be able to do so in the next decades, especially if it comes to very weak inflationary waves. However detection is not a single dilemma. We still cannot EXPLAIN the essence of gravity and I did not find anything related to it in this book. Physicists sometimes talk about a concept known as "Mach's Principle", but that principle has never been successfully developed and fails to explain apparent instantaneous action-at-a-distance. In the end comes the last strong punch: Cyclic Ekpyrotic model is free of Anthropic Principle dilemma!! It is very important to cosmology to have competing models and unanswered lingering questions about their validity. In general: very brave and colorful popular science book, recommended for curious and following "strange" cosmology ideas readers.



3. Great read on a great subject and a fast read!
   Not only does this book contain a lot of info on the evolution of the universe, it also touches on the exciting ideas of M-theory and "branes", flurting the idea that two, higher dimensional, branes may have collided to create the beginning of our universe. But, as you'll see, it may NOT have been THE beginning as we think of it!!! Unlike some other popular reads, this book is pretty focused on the Big Bang vs. the "Big Splat"... Very interesting for anyone looking for a focused read on THE BEGINNING. Highly recommended. The tone of the book is great and easy to read.



4. Steinhardt and Turok masterfully outline and simplify their "cyclic model" of the universe in Endless Universe. This book could also serve as an introduction to M Theory, which unifies numerous string theories. Even if you don't buy their theory, you should buy this book because it addresses a number of issues that the traditional big bang theory (or the "inflationary model") fails at answering or explaining. Although the authors' own theory seems a bit far fetched (the first two stages of the model take only a few billion years while the "dark energy" stage takes a trillion), it is a needed rebuttal to the shortcomings of the inflationary model.



5. The big bang theory of the origin of the universe has been almost unchallenged for about half a century. Once the discovery of cosmic background in 1963 disposed of the steady-state model proposed by Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold in the 1950s, it was essentially the only game in town. Oscillatory models never entirely went away, but the inflationary model seemed to explain nearly all the data. At the same time it had some flaws that would not go away: it left the first second after the big bang a total mystery; it left the highly homogeneous distribution of matter and energy after the violent beginning unexplained; it seemed to require absurdly precise values for the physical constants (giving apparent support to the "strong anthropic principle", allowing some physicists to claim that the universe must have been designed by an external intelligence so that it could have us living in it); it failed to explain the origin of the "dark energy" driving the expansion; and so on. Any one of these difficulties could probably be explained away in terms of incomplete knowledge and understanding, but taken together they require so many arbitrary assumptions that it becomes hard to escape the conclusion that the big bang universe has become a patchwork of arbitrary assumptions, added ad hoc to cope with a series of problems.
   
   Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have developed an alternative way of seeing the universe, in which the big bang was not the beginning but simply a cataclysmic moment in a history of cycles, with no beginning and no end, and in their book they explain all this in terms that are by no means too difficult for the non-physicist to understand. Their model explains everything that the inflationary model explains, but it does so on the basis of fewer and less arbitrary assumptions. It is too soon to feel confident they are right, but if they are right they provide two comforting thoughts for non-physicists: we no longer need to think of time as something that began for unexplained reasons 14 billion years ago, but can return to thinking of it as something that stretches as far back into the past and future as we like to consider, and we don't have to take the strong anthropic principle as a serious argument for an intelligent designer.
   
   This is a book that I enjoyed enormously. If I could give it six stars I would.

No comments about University Physics Volume 1 Chapters 1-20.

5 comments about Fundamentals of Photonics (Wiley Series in Pure and Applied Optics).

1. If you could only have one general photonics book - this is the one to have. It must have been a 'labor of love' to write - and it is truly outstanding in its comprehensiveness and clarity.
   
   I use it constantly - wouldn't be without it.



2. I found out about this book when I was looking for some materials on Photonics Switching and Computing. These topics and All-Optical Switches and Bistable Optical Switches, Optical Interconnections are covered in Chapter 21
   But Chapter 22 containing Fiber-Optic Communication is very brief and for more detail one needs to go look for Kaiser's book.
   All in all this book tries to encompass all the components in PHOTONICS and in doing so lacks the depth in some topics. But the good thing is that the references and journal publications are listed at the end of each chapter.



3. If you are in the field of optics or biomedical optics, there are three to four books which would be the most essential to own. The is one of them. This book is comprehensive, dealing with all the most critical areas in field, yet easy to read. It is either outstanding in understanding the most basic concepts, yet a phenomenal reference on the derivations of relationships whose origin is left to the imagination in most textbooks. This is a must buy.



4. The book arrived in great condition, but I bought it new. This is a great text for Senior students with an EE or Elctro-Optics background. It would also be a great text for first year Master's students. The book tries to do a bit of everything and is a great reference for anyone interested in optics to the professional optical/electrical engineer.



5. Beautifully written. Very clear.
   Second edition has gorgeous color illustrations.
   Extremely comprehensive and covers all important facets of photonics:
   lasers, nonlinear and classical optics, photons/atoms, electromagnetic theory, fiber optics, and tons more.
   But most importantly, it explains things in plain old English so you can understand the concepts, then walks you through the math.
   Typically considered an undergrad book but I think it has plenty of material suitable for grad level learning in this field and is better written than many grad-level books out there. If you want to learn about lasers, optics, fiber optics, etc. this is a good addition to the library.

5 comments about Harmonograph: A Visual Guide to the Mathematics of Music (Wooden Books).

1. For anyone wanting to learn some interesting math related information without taking classes that make you sweat bullets then the Wooden Books are a great source to turn to. For the series in a whole, the information is easily grasped and the diagrams and pictures are intersting.
   
   As far as the Harmonograph book in particular, I had no idea that such things existed. I used this as a source for my senior research project entitled "The Mathematics of Music". I got the information I needed, but even afterwards, I couldn't put the book down. Fortuneately, not being able to put the book down is a problem that will only last about an hour. The book is short and to the point, which Mathematics students will love.
   
   After reading this book, all of my friends were impressed with all of the cool things that I told them about Harmonographs and other devices that geometrically plot music. They called me geek, but they were still impressed.
   
   
   So my overall diagnostic is: The language is eloquent and simple, and you'll wow all of your friends with all of the cool junk you'll learn in this easy-to-read book.



2. After about 5 pages into this thing I found myslelf becoming more and more baffled, as the author continually threw out various terminology with no explanation of it. I kept at it for a while and it didn't get any better. He has all sorts of drawings and diagrams, but again -- he does not define his terms or even give you a clue as to where find any definitions. If the book had a glossary this would be marginally tolerable, but it doesn't and it isn't. This is too bad, because the topic is fascinating and the author is obviously very knowlegeable. Unfortunately he seems incapable of sharing this knowlege with the reader.



3. Short and easy to read with beautiful illustrations, this is a nice addition to your collection if you are interested in the connections between sounds and visuals.



4. I didn't know what quite to expect with this book; I wasn't familiar with the term "harmonograph" before getting this text.
   
   This is a small book with about 25 topics, each discussed on 1 or 2 pages. It links together many concepts from our past (including the 19th century harmonograph) and the mathematics underneath them. This is one book which satisfyingly explains the concept of an even-tempered scale -- something I had been pondering for a long time.
   
   You could say this book is a group of different stories about the vibrations in music, and the relationship between those vibrations. Vibrations are important for us to understand: our bones float; our bodies are springy and resilient. The math and physics of vibrations -- scientists call it "simple harmonic motion" -- can get rather tricky. Most of use stop our math classes before they get to this point. On the other hand, there are many topics in this field that are understandable without all of those complicated scribbles; this book lovingly explores many of them.
   
   My main gripe is that there are few links for the DIY types to go try this stuff hands-on. There must be some websites which have virtual harmonographs; the author should have found these. And it's a darn shame that so few of these machines are around. I make it a point of seeing lots of science museums; I've never seen a harmonograph.
   
   We forget how many wonderful things before we had computers. Things like the harmonograph have a delightful physicality; that's something we've lost in our "modern" society.
   
   I highly recommend this book to a young high-school student. There are hidden delights in the drawings and historical references. For such a small book, there is a surprising depth of detail.
   
   I can't wait to explore the rest of this series.



5. Humans have known or intuited that sound not only has form but it organizes matter.
   Throughout history individuals have found ways to demonstrate (and make visible) this profound fact.
   We know that music & sound is vibration. (within the audible range)
   Scientists and mystics understand that EVERYTHING is vibration.
   Therefore Everything is Sound.
   The notion that EVERYTHING is in perfect order & can ultimately be understood by number is purely a Pythagorean notion. "Harmony of the Spheres" were his expression that "our solar system, the cosmos, everything that IS... IS a perfect symphony".
   The "Harmonograph" is a simple classic for the individual interested this subject.
   I recommend it for children and adults alike.

5 comments about Radiation Detection and Measurement.

1. This is an excellent text and considered the prime source for an detailed overview of it's field.



2. I believe that there is an accompanying solutions manual for those individuals who will be self-studying. Nothing shows up on the search. How do I obtain the solutions manual?



3. I have used this book for my studies and for working, and it's really beautiful: it starts with basic principles and after few pages you are deep inside the detector, and you start feeling it. The next step is to take an article of Nucl. Instr. Methods and read it.



4. This book is a must for anyone working in the field of
   radiation detection, and contains a clear, readable description
   of the working principles of quite a lot of detector types.
   The weaker point is the description of the associated front
   end (analogue) electronics that goes with those detectors: it
   is a bit concise.



5. It's a wonderful reference for a practiing medical/healt physicist. It's concise but deep in terms of cotent.

5 comments about Quantum Chemistry (6th Edition).

1. I am amazed at the sheer depth of detail that Levine succeeds in conveying while somehow keeping the subject highly organized and extremely readbale. Like a good teacher, he has a knack for anticipating your questions and problems and addresses them. He also seems to know exactly which points deserve attention and emphasis, and which odn't. His constant referencing of previous equations even when not absolutely necessary minimizes the student's chance of getting lost or forgetting previous material and not remember where to find it again. Very mathematical, but all required mathematics are expertly reviewed before being introduced. My only complaints are a few critical typos in the angular momentum section, and the fact that that section and the section on symmetry could have been more clearly presnted (especially the section on symmetry!). But overall, nobody's perfect, and this is as close as you get. Definitely a class about Lowe's textbook.



2. writen by a teacher, with a great teaching art. As a beginner ( satellite engineer) , it provides me a clear first understanding of how atomic & molecular waves functions are computed. I appreciate the approach, very oriented to understanding the computation aspects. I agree that symmetry introduction should be more developped. References are systematically documented (in the text). Gives me understanding of "basic" explanations which are usually only shortly referenced in many other chemistry books I open.



3. quantum chemistry a special field of the quantum-mechanical theory has always been a very tricky course for all the chemistry students around the world, because of the demanding mathematical background they have to possess in order to comprehend the extremely difficult concepts and applications of
   the best - up to now - theory we have to understand phenomena at the atomic and molecular level.
   This textbook is the best i know in the field because Pf.
   Ira Levine provides the necessary Maths in a really instructive way which chemists will appreciate with a great relief!
   All the mathematics they will need is contained in this book
   so they won't have to study it from a different sourse , wasting time and getting disappointed!
   On the other hand, the order of the chapters is excellent
   and the problems at the end of each chapter solidify your understanding of what you have already read during the chapter.
   There are also answers to selected problems at the end of the book
   I higly recommend this textbook to all the chemists who would love to really understand Quantum Chemistry!



4. I'm a grad physics student, rather than a chemist. But I'm using this book in a Physical Chemistry class because my school doesn't have an Atomic & Molecular class. Now, maybe I'm saying this because I already have a background in Quantum Mechanics ... but this book is awesome. My instructor assigns all or nearly all of the end-of-chapter problems each week. And I'm able to flip to the back of the book and check to see if my numbers agree. It may be be Quantum Chemistry, rather than Quantum Mechanics, but aside from the chemical modeling which isn't as applicable for physicists, Levine just does a better job of conveying quantum mechnics than most Q.M. books I've seen. He's able to keep things simple, and not clog up the logic process with mathematical proofs. If you need a math proof, he gives you the reference. But the important stuff is proven, and he gives a lot of examples to help the process. As a bonus to physicists, a lot of the problems require some number crunching. And in this age of physical symbolism, it is easy to get rusty at dealing with real numbers, real units and real dimensions. I'll even go so far as to say that before I read Levine, I never really had a complete grasp of Q.M.. And I've used decent books before this; Merzbacher, Saxon, a little Cohen-Tenoudji, Ter Har, Lim and Griffiths. This one is my favorite, and imagine, it's not even officially a physics book!



5. This book is very well written until the section on many electron atoms and molecules, starting from the helium atom. The section on many electrons systems is not well written and is very ambiguous. It is not possible to follow the math that is written. The chapters of the book until this are very well written and could be understood easily. I don't know if the author himself is well familiar with the many electron systems mathematics or not or he intends to make it so unclear. In general this book is better than other quantum chemistry books that I have and with the only deficiency of the explanation of the many electron systems I think It is a good quantum chemistry.