Missing solutions to exercises in Shankar's book?

[mikepinkerton]

I just checked out the 1980 version of Shankar's "Principles of Quantum Mechanics" from the library and started reading it after reading many rave reviews on Amazon.

In the prelude, on page xviii, he says "The answer to each exercise is given either with the exercise or at the end of the book." This could not be further from the truth. Most exercises have no solution, and the number of exercises solved at the end can be counted on all your fingers and maybe a few toes.

What am I missing? He clearly states the solutions are provided.

Now, before this degrades into a thread on whether or not I should be using answers, please don't. I know there are opinions on both sides. I just want to know what I'm clearly missing from the author's words. Sometimes I may want to use the solutions, that's my choice, and the author feels it important enough to provide them that he claims they are present.

Thanks
-Mike

[mikepinkerton]

A few other posts mention a solutions guide. Is that what I should be on the lookout for, or...?

-Mike

[Moonbear]

Is it a terminology issue? Are there "exercises" within the chapters that provide examples of how to apply the chapter content that are distinct from "problems" or "questions" given at the end of chapters? Or, it might be a sentence carried over from an earlier edition...instructors using the text may have provided feedback that they didn't want all the answers available so they could assign some problems as homework, so maybe they removed solutions and left them just for "selected" examples?

[mikepinkerton]

I don't think it's a terminology or an edition issue. The exercises are inline, there aren't any at the end of chapters or sections. I'm looking at the first edition (1980). I'm not sure if the 2nd edition is any better, but given that there have been thousands of views of another thread looking for solutions, I'd doubt it.

-Mike

[will.c]

I only have the second edition handy, but it reprints the preface to the first edition, where he says only that answers for "most" of the exercises are provided. It does say in the prelude that the answer to "each" is provided, so I don't think it's a terminology thing, but definitely a mistake - and even so, when there are answers, that's all there is; no solutions.

I've never seen a solutions guide for Shankar (then again, I'm not a teacher) but it seems a lot of professors like using Shankar problems. If you need a solution, sometimes just a google search for the key words in the problem will deliver one.