Favorite compact physics textbooks

[ergospherical]

There's a number of "small" (in size) paperbacks which I've quite enjoyed reading, e.g. Schroedinger's <100 page statistical thermodynamics lectures, J.W. Leech's classical mechanics text, etc.

Books of this sort are very portable and easy to dip into whenever you get a free 15 minutes or so. What are your favourites? (Looking for some other nice ones).

 

[vanhees71]

My alltime favorites are the 6 volumes of Sommerfeld's Lectures on Theoretical Physics. The German edition consists of 6 "pocket books" of the kind you describe.

 

[Hamiltonian]

you could check out Dirac's, Lectures on Quantum Mechanics(around 87pgs).

 

[Frabjous]

Dimensional Analysis by Bridgman
Elements of Classical Thermodynamics by Pippard

 

[ergospherical]

you could check out Dirac's, Lectures on Quantum Mechanics(around 87pgs).

Dirac has a tiny one on GR too! His style is so terse that the lectures are the textbook equivalent of neutron stars. I think I borrowed the QM lectures last term but stopped before even halfway because of time constraints. Maybe worth another shot!

 

[ergospherical]

Elements of Classical Thermodynamics by Pippard

Speaking of thermodynamics, Fermi also wrote a very tiny introductory text which I read before a thermo course last year. I don’t recall it being anything too special, but was a nice primer.

 

[Frabjous]

Speaking of thermodynamics, Fermi also wrote a very tiny introductory text which I read before a thermo course last year. I don’t recall it being anything too special, but was a nice primer.

It’s better to read after knowing some thermodynamics.

 

[ergospherical]

It’s better to read after knowing some thermodynamics.

I’d say the opposite! It covered only the very fundamentals. Decent prep reading for a more thorough lecture course.

 

[Mayhem]

Be careful. In STEM, book length is inversely proportional to difficulty as thorough explanations are left as an exercise to the reader.

 

[ergospherical]

Be careful. In STEM, book length is inversely proportional to difficulty as thorough explanations are left as an exercise to the reader.

There's only some truth to that. Terse writing styles can result in greater precision and clarity, since the author has to think carefully about how to condense the most important information (e.g. the Landau series). You can on the other hand have massive books like MTW which are way too verbose for their own good and cause you to drown in word-soup.

 

[vanhees71]

Indeed, if you have a good writer, who is motivated to explain things as simple as possible but not simpler, the shorter the book the better it is. One extreme example is Dirac's book on GR and, as @ergospherical says, the Landau&Lifhitz series. But indeed such authors are very rare. Some authors rather leave out the details of explanations just to make the text shorter, and then @Mayhem 's statement applies ;-)).

In theoretical physics another measure is the formula-to-text ratio. Usually the more gibberish without math you have the less understandable the book gets ;-)).

 

[Andy Resnick]

I second (third?) a recommendation for Fermi's "Thermodynamics". I would also add Prigogine's "Thermodynamics of irreversible processes" and deGennes "Introduction to polymer dynamics"

 

[gmax137]

Dimensional Analysis by Bridgman

I have not read this one, but I very much like other writing by Bridgman.

I second (third?) a recommendation for Fermi's "Thermodynamics".

The Dover press paperback is $9, new. A real bargain these days.

 

[Frabjous]

I very much like other writing by Bridgman

Are you a high pressure person?

 

[Frabjous]

I am not saying that these are great books, but they are nice little books
Applications of Green‘s Functions in Science and Engineering by Greenberg (132 pages of text)
Vibrating Strings: An Introduction to the Wave Equation by Bland (92 pages of text)

 

[hutchphd]

One of my early favorites (which apparently taught me well enough) was

Errors of Observation and their Treatment (Science Paperbacks)​

by J. Topping (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0412210401/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[gmax137]

Are you a high pressure person?

No, I read a book of his essays on various topics. I think it is "Reflections of a Physicist." Can't seem to spot it on my shelves now...

 

[robphy]

Since p<100 is quite restrictive and since some suggestions have p<200 (not to mention p<400),
here are some p<200 suggestions:

Burke - Div Grad Curl are Dead ( https://people.ucsc.edu/~rmont/papers/Burke_DivGradCurl.pdf ) (trying to decode this)
Bondi - Relativity and Common Sense
Feynman - The Character of Physical Law
Feynman - QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Geroch - General Relativity: 1972 Lecture Notes
Geroch - Geometrical Quantum Mechanics: 1974 Lecture Notes
Robb - Optical Geometry of Motion (trying to decode this)
Woodhouse - Special Relativity

 

[jasonRF]

Most of the small books I'm familiar with are math books. For example, a few on distributions and Fourier analysis are

Lighthill - Fourier analysis and generalized functions
Richards and Yoon - Theory of Distributions
Strichartz - a guide to distribution theory and Fourier transforms

For physics, one small (but quite specialized) book I enjoyed was,

MacDonald - Noise and Fluctuations (~120 pages, undergrad level)

I'm not sure if it is too big, but I also really like

Kittel - elementary statistical physics

which has many short chapters (I think each is one lecture) so is pretty digestible in small chunks. It is longer (> 200 pages), but the old hardback I have is remarkably compact and I'm guessing the Dover paperback is pretty small as well. I only read the last half of the book which covers noise, fluctuations, non-equilibrium situations and kinetic theory. It says 'elementary' in the title, but I believe it was for a graduate-level course taught in the 1950s.

A quirky text written for an undergrad mathematical physics course at University of Iceland is,

Jonsson and Yngvason - Waves and Distributions

It starts with continuum physics and properties of plane-waves, but for me the core of the book is chapters 4-6. Those cover distribution theory and Fourier analysis, then use those tools to study properties of waves (Green's function and radiation, multipole expansions, Huygens principle, mean-value theorems, etc). The best chapter is the last one on waves in dispersive media, and I wish I had read it prior to taking graduate courses in plasma physics. It doesn't go into all of the pre-cursor physics, though. For that there is another small book,

Brillouin - waves and group velocity

The first few chapters my fit the bill, but if I recall correctly some of the later chapters dive deep into things like asymptotic expansions of integrals with poles near saddle-points and such, so are probably not what you would want to read in 15 minutes on the bus...

jason

 

[gleem]

"Analytical and Canonical Formalism in Physics" (Dover 1963) by Andre Mercier, Former head of The Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Berne, CH. 213 pp sans index.

Based on lectures showing how much of modern (quantum) field theories are,

quote from the preface

" of mere classical, i.e.. pre-quantic classical character".

 

[ergospherical]

My alltime favorites are the 6 volumes of Sommerfeld's Lectures on Theoretical Physics. The German edition consists of 6 "pocket books" of the kind you describe.

Funnily enough, today my supervisor and I spent a whole hour on three pages of lecture IV on partial differential equations in physics. I wouldn't say the copy I have (which clocks in at about 300 pages) quite qualifies as a little book, but it certainly deserves an honorary place on the list because of its terseness. Stuff of dreams and nightmares.

 

[hutchphd]

I wouldn't say the copy I have, which clocks in at about 300 pages, qualifies as a little book, but it certainly deserves an honorary place on the list because of its terseness. Stuff of dreams and nightmares.

Have you looked at the Dirac(s)? They are in fact short...but

 

[ergospherical]

Have you looked at the Dirac(s)? They are in fact short...but

At least for the GR one (which is the only one I've thread through and through), only the last few chapters (pages...) about variational principles are really valuable. Most up until that point is a cursory review of differential geometry and index gymnastics. I mean I imagine the book would be most suited to someone who's previously studied GR, been out of practice for a few years and needs a quick mental refresher.

(I can't comment on his QM ones because I haven't finished them.)

 

[andresB]

"Analytical and Canonical Formalism in Physics" (Dover 1963) by Andre Mercier, Former head of The Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Berne, CH. 213 pp sans index.

Based on lectures showing how much of modern (quantum) field theories are,

quote from the preface

Seems interesting, though a bit old for dealing with QFT. How much of it is still relevant?

 

[martinbn]

"Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics" - George W. Mackey
"Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics" - van der Waerden

 

[George Jones]

At least for the GR one (which is the only one I've thread through and through), only the last few chapters (pages...) about variational principles are really valuable. Most up until that point is a cursory review of differential geometry and index gymnastics. I mean I imagine the book would be most suited to someone who's previously studied GR, been out of practice for a few years and needs a quick mental refresher.

A short nice modern treatment is "General Relativity: A Concise Introduction" (2019), by Steven Carlip., who has put some thought into what to include.

 

[ohwilleke]

Not quite a textbook, but Feynman's collected and edited lecture transcripts entitled "QED" is the best and most readable introduction to high energy physics that I've ever encountered.