3 comments about On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science.

1. As a student in Material Science and Engineering, I couldn't resist when I heard of this book, and I was not disappointed. Mrs. Frankel's photography is beautiful and illustrative without losing an artful touch as far as composition is concerned, and Mr. Whitesides' explanations can be easily grasped due to their intuitive approach. For someone who wants to know more about the science behind the effects the explanations may not be detailed enough, which is why I don't rate this book a ten, but whoever desires to gain an overview of surface effects and understand the basics of it, this is the book to read. I sincerely recommend this book.



2. This is not a science book ! The photos are really great, but the name fooled me...it is not a book on surface science ! Just a photography book that have some phothos that were taken with the help of scientific media.....



3. This book consists of a number of fascinating photos drawn from the world of science. The pictures are works of art in themselves, and include a simple scale indicator to give you a clue whether what you're looking at is microscopic or full sized. The accompanying prose explains in a short description what you're looking at and why it's so interesting. The prose is brilliantly written and easy to read.

   This book is not for scientists per se, but for anyone with a fascination for the world around them. A perfect accent to any coffee table.

1 comments about Introduction to CMOS OP-AMPs and Comparators.

1. This book focuses on two most important components of analog design: op-amps and comparators. A lot of new developments in recent years are covered in this book. It is very useful for any analog designers. I just feel two chapters which cover data converters could be more detailed and complete.

4 comments about Condensed Matter Physics.

1. The classic solid state / condensed matter text by Ashcroft and Mermin (A&M) is now 25 years old. It's a very accessible and elegantly written book, but condensed matter is a fast-moving subject, and it's embarassing that A&M is still used today. The alternatives have all been too specialized, too formal, and/or too leadenly written in comparison.

   This book by Marden may finally replace A&M. Like Ashcroft and Mermin, Marden is a member of the Cornell mafia. Some parts of the book practically echo A&M, and the writing style is at least as friendly to the beginning grad student ("Now it will be protested that atoms without dipole moments do not have dipole moments. This is true. However...") But the large number of new developments of the last 25 years are discussed or at least mentioned. In addition to the same-old band structure, magnetism, etc., liquids are covered (a surprising omission in A&M), as are surfaces, soft matter, optical properties of materials, etc. The book is fairly logically structured and works well as a text, except that there is way too much material here to cover in a year.

   The first printing is full of errors, listed on a web page created by the author. You may want to wait until the second printing before plunking down $95 (too high for impoverished grad students). Top and bottom margins are practically nonexistent. Photographs and shaded 3D drawings are poorly reproduced and murky; they appear to have been printed on a smeary $79.95 inkjet printer and then reproduced.




2. Note that a corrected printing (not 'new edition') came out in February 2001. Make sure you get this version, which is identified on the cover.



3. I used Marder's book (the corrected printing) during a solid state physics course this past Spring 2003 semeseter. While I have to commend Marder at his attempt to provide a great deal of breadth on the enormous field of condensed matter, I think he fell short on the details and pedagogy that are necessary for someone new to the subject. Too often, I found myself (and the others I worked with) having to refer to Ashcroft & Mermin's text to complete HW problems assigned out of Marder's book. Also, his notation in certain chapters was unnecessarily confusing, especially the chapter(s) on phonons. I have since read most of the book by Taylor & Heinonen, and I found it to be of much more use than Marder's book. T&H's book is very well written and the concepts flow smoothly from one to the next. In fact, many of the things I struggled to understand last semester were so clearly explained in their text, that I wondered how I could have been so confused! Marder's book has been praised by others as a modern improvement to the A&M standard, but up-to-date topics are of little use if the first-timer has difficulty understanding the nuances of core ideas (e.g., transport, band-structure, and electron-phonon interactions). My opinion is that a good library should include A&M's text for those fundamentals that never go away (crystal structure, semiconductors, etc.) and a book such as T&H's or Chaikin & Lubensky's for the more modern topics ("soft" condensed matter, mesoscopic physics, etc.).



4. I admire anyone who attempts to teach all of condensed matter physics in one book. That being said, being comprehensive and being comprehendible are two very different things. While being the former it sacrifices the latter. Marder does not do a good job of explaining the physical concepts needed to build a better understanding of advanced material. In addition, his end-of-chapter problems can be relatively uninformative and tedious i.e. you are left asking why did I just do this problem? Inevitably I find myself going back to Ashcroft & Mermin's wonderful but dated book. Hopefully one day they will publish a new edition...

3 comments about Many Particle Physics (Physics of Solids and Liquids).

1. Un excellent livre sur un sujet d'actualite. G. Mahan discute de nombreuses en detaillant a chaque fois les etapes necessaires et en ne negligeant pas les explications ni les liens entre les differentes theories. Vu le prix, courez a votre bibliotheque pour vous le procurer!



2. Unfortunately, the 3rd edition of Mahan's book contains enormous number of misprints. Sometimes, it is impossible to understand what is meant by the author without consulting the previous edition. For example, in Sec. 4.1.5. the author refers in the text to the equation which apparently should be between Eqs. (4.126) and (4.127) but which had been omitted. At the same time, some evident drawbacks of the previous edition have not been corrected. For example, the definition of the thermodynamic average used in Sec. 3.6 is different from that used in the previous sections, although it is not mentioned in the text. Despite the book is an excellent introduction into the field of Many-Particle Physics, I would recommend to the customer to either buy the previous edition or to wait for a new one.



3. This book is massive and covers a huge spectrum of material. Probably not cost effective in comparison to Fetter and Walecka unless you get it for under eighty bucks. I enjoyed it quite a bit until the Postal Service stole it from me.

5 comments about Principles of the Theory of Solids.

1. For students who have Kittel or Ashcroft/Mermin under their belt, this book provides a somewhat more mathematical presentation of fundamental concepts in solid state theory, as is clear from the contents shown on this site. I might add, that Ziman is a highly respected physicist, well known for his work on superconductivity. This was the first book I got into my hands that said something like "as the group of lattice translations is abelian, Bloch functions that are translated change only by a phase factor", which made me hungry for more.



2. The book is surely an advanced treatment of solid state physics and as such, the uninitiated reader may not necessarily appreciate the beauty of the treatment at first. Indubitably, however, Ziman presents a coherent and clear exposition in which the principles of the solid state are explained in a unified manner --a merit many books are missing. It is a joy to read if you have the basics covered in an earlier course and/or self-study. Ziman's Shakespearian flair is virtually impossible to not realize and in turn, further enhances the quality of the exposition. For those who would like to kick their theoretical background up a notch, this book is the right answer.



3. I used heavily the first edition of this book, and have not seen the second, but it is no doubt as good as the first, which was packed full of insights into the many rich phenomena that exists in solids. It has served, and will serve, future generations of students in the 21st century in their development of new ideas and technologies based on condensed matter physics.

   Writers of physics texts should follow the strategy that this author does, in his statement that "a treatise expounds; a textbook explains". The emphasis of any book in physics should be in developing the reader's intuition; the mathematics sometimes takes hold and moves the reader away from the essential ideas. The author is one of the few who has not done this, and that is no doubt the reason for this book's popularity.




4. This book deserves to be much more widely used. Ziman's prose is simply wonderful, where Kittel is unreadable, and Ashcroft & Mermin often dense. It's a bit quirky (how on earth did he find the epigrams for each chapter?) but that is what makes it lovable. Anyone who doubts his scientific soundness should check out his massive "Electrons & Phonons."

   The main advantage of this book is that it emphasizes conceptual understanding over mathematical manipulation. That's also its weakness: Ziman often glosses over or just sketches what in other texts would be occasions for massive algebra. Perhaps if you are a true theorist type, you can fill in the blanks on your own. As an experimentalist, I feel like I need some other intro texts to make me feel like I can do *some* math in the field. On the other hand, I don't know of any textbook that makes me feel I could do the truly heavy lifting.




5. There are few physics books that I can say I enjoy reading for fun (and I'm a student of physics) but I must admit that this book is excellent. It holds true not only to its reputation but to what the author's original intent was. It is thorough, enlightening, to the point and fun to read, the author's sense of humor not only aids in ease or reading but makes retention and elucidation all the more easy! This is an excellent graduate text on basic solid sate physics, even though it was published in 1975.
   
   It covers all the bascis areas, from periodicty to lattice waves, phonons, semiconductors etc at an accessible level to the beginning graduate student. A must read.

1 comments about Quantum Liquids: Bose Condensation and Cooper Pairing in Condensed-Matter Systems (Oxford Graduate Texts).

1. It is a truely collection of insightful ideas. What is the BEC in real strognly correlated system? Most of books in this field just tell us the name of "order parameter" and "off-diagonal long-range order" but no further explanation and cites Penrose and Onsager's 1956 paper. That's all. But, here, this book explains THE IDEA what the physicist want. What is BEC, why does it occur, and how can we define it in general system?
   
   As the title of book shows, Leggett explains superfluid and superconductor in the integrated point of view. Like the BEC chapter, he doesn't avoid the key ideas even if they are quite complicated in other's book. Moreover, Leggett give us very sharp and critical arguments about many things which are usually treated as typical or trivial in other's famous book.
   
   One of the advantage of this book is difficulty. Most of readable books in this field are too out-of-date and old. Modern books are usually based on field theoretic formula and have tones of diagrams. But this book balances phenomenological, microscopic explanation, more over, experimental data and published in 2006. (It contains some arguments about rescent discovery such as supersolid and BEC-BCS crossover.)
   
   In addition, the author is Nobel prize winner in 2003 about his ground-breaking papers about 3He. Hence this book not just a good book but also authoritive book. Highly recommended.

2 comments about The Materials Science of Thin Films.

1. This is a very good book for coating engineers. The richness of the explanation of a variety of subjects is worthy of reading it carefully, from beginning to the end.

   And in addition, I find the process of reading the book is quite a happy thing of enjoying the beauty of English, though I am not a native speaker.(I'd like to look forward to reading similar comments so as to confirming this impression of mine)

   The book is precise and in depth.




2. sorry for the fella who authored the book, he still has a long way to reach the level at which the interested customer finds the book of reference for the field of study;

2 comments about Optical Properties of Solids (Oxford Master Series in Physics).

1. I thought this book was a good basic introduction to the field of optical properties of solids. The strong point of this book is that it is well organized and gives many examples. It starts with the basics of Maxwell's equation, then moves on to talk about luminescence, excitons, quantum wells, luminescence centers ... I enjoyed reading about the examples given. It gives many basic descriptions of how optoelectronics device work such as light emitting diodes and Ti:sapphire lasers.

   This book is geared toward anybody who has taken one semester of basic quantum and one semester of electricity and magnetism. It is easy to read and contains many diagrams. Chapters end with a useful list of references that go into more details. This book is not a reference for graduate level treatment of optical properties of solids. The nonlinear optics part is short and shallow. The quantum mechanical description is basic.

   Overall, I would recommend this book to anybody that is learning for the first time about optical properties of solids. Solid state physics textbooks by Ashcroft & Mermin and Kittel do not contain a useful and up-to-date section on optical properties of solids. This book fills the gap.




2. I have used this book as reference manual while developing multilayer coatings for use as reflective coatings for nuclear radiation scinitilators.Ecellent reference on optical properties which are not readily available to us.

5 comments about Boundary-Layer Theory.

1. This is the best and the most classical fluid mechanics book that i have read. Read it through carefully and you will get much from it. Reading it from time to time can give you many new knowledge every time.



2. this is a classic book. however, the new 8th edition is not translated very well. i have an older english version (6th edition, 1968) that is translated much better. even where the content is the same between the two editions, the "updated" translation is worse that in the original version.



3. This is the classic book on the subject to be ever written and retains its class by incorporating some of the recent developments in the boundary layer theory.
   
   A great collection for anyone in the field of turbulence, aerodynamics ...



4. Although I have only the first edition, I still find it to be of immense value, and hands-down superior to any other book on the subject (save the newer edition perhaps). It seamlessly weaves together theory, mathematics, and experimental observation, into a very readable and (surprisingly) interesting text. Because it explains the fundamentals so well, Schlichting's book is one of those rare engineering classics that will continue to be of value for a very long time to come.



5. Good value - well worth the money. I also like the updated sections available in the Springer edition.

5 comments about Solid State Electronic Devices (5th Edition).

1. I'm an undergrad physics/engineering student. I thought this book was reasonably well written and clear. It could benefit from more example problems, and some solution techniques.
   Also, I like to have my textbooks be at a slightly higher level than the associated class. This book kind of fell short of that mark in some cases (particularly with heterojunctions and optoelectronics).
   Another observation, which isn't really a complaint, is that the book is written as a textbook rather than a reference. The formulas and charts are presented in logical sequence with the text, which makes it nice to read, but leads to a lot of paging to find that graph of mobilities vs. doping, or the formulas for the currents through a BJT, etc... (Kind of the opposite of Sze, where the formulas are collected nicely, but the exposition is virtually nonexistant).
   A final thing that somewhat annoyed me, but didn't really detract from the book, was that the author insisted on using Laplace transforms to analyze some things. Which is a bit overkill for solving things like y''=y.
   Overall, it's a good book, which explains the underlying concepts clearly.



2. I just finished reading chapter one. I know it is quite early to make judgements, but already I'm starting to feel uneasy. As someone who has always enjoyed physics and math(and done well) I feel a little more insight into what is trying to be explained would be great. Im a student at the authors institution so I think thats why we have to use this book. I agree with others that there is a lot of waisted commentary so far, but it may prove to be usefull later. It just seems like a lot is thrown into one chapter and doesn't really mix well. More time, or more explanation about what is trying to be explained would greatly benefit the first chapter.



3. If you are an EE sophomore/junior or senior and want to buy a book on semiconductor physics or devices that is both comprehensive in its depth and coverage of topics, I'd highly recommend this book. Its explanation of the working of FETs is very lucid and takes you all the way up to III-V HEMTs; similarly derivation of drift-diffusion/continuity equations for BJTs are explained in great detail and advanced devices like HBTs are also covered. Furthermore, if you are confused about energy band diagrams, this book is for you.
   Let me briefly compare it with other similar books:
   1- Semiconductor devices --Physics and Technology, 2nd edition by S. M. Sze--Standard, very good, but a little advanced textbook on semiconductors. Its explanation of FETs working and its assoicated band diagrams is not very comprehensive. Semiconductor Devices: Physics and Technology, 2nd Edition
   2- Semiconductor Device fundamentals by R. F. Peirret-- An excellent book on the fundamentals, especially concepts of band diagrams, but again I found its coverage of FET devices not as good as that of Streetman. Semiconductor Device Fundamentals
   3- Physics of semiconductor devices by M. Shur-- Shur is an expert on III-V devices modelling and simulations, but for fundamentals of semiconductor devices I won't recommend this to a sophomore! Physics of Semiconductor Devices
   4- Semiconductor Device Electronics by Grung-- An excellent book with very good coverage of FETs, but a little more advanced than Streetman. Its explanation of band diagrams and discussion on potential, voltage, electric field, capacitance and their inter-relationships is very intuitive and clear. Semiconductor-Device Electronics (Holt Rinehart and Winston Series in Electrical Engineering)



4. Wordy. Hard to understand. Meandering.
   
   As a beginner I find this book difficult and wordy and all those other adjectives. Unfortunately my university uses this book exclusively.



5. I would recommend this book for those upper-level undergraduates and graduate students who are studying this field of solid state electronics. I was familiar the Streetman's 3rd edition many years ago and this latest edition is dramatically expanded and improved. Considering how quickly technology develops, this book is reasonably current. There's a good amount of material on III-V semiconductors. One strong point of the this book is the large number of practice problems and a self-quiz at the end of each chapter. The problems are not simple but require some effort. There were a couple sections where the wording was a little confusing at first reading but this is minor.