Modern Physics Textbook with Thought-Provoking Problems & Visual Explanations

[FlyingMachine]

I am taking a course on modern physics, and I want to get a textbook to help me out because nothing my teacher has given my class to work with has problems. They're all explanations that aren't even all that helpful (not many graphs/pictures, just words). I'm sick of it because I have nothing to test myself with, and I'm just sick of reading like I would for a history class or something. Any suggestions for a book that has good (i.e. thought provoking) problems and visual explanations?

Edit: Also, I am looking for a book on exclusively modern physics, not a textbook "with modern physics".

 

[Mindscrape]

I have a book called "Modern Physics" by Moses, Serway, and Moyer. It gives a good overview of modern physics, but mostly just because it describes the experiments. I wouldn't say it is at all outstanding or anything. The topics include: special relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and then some of the applications towards the end, such as lasers.

Anyway, the rest of the books I have are specific to the topics in modern physics, and I don't really know any other whole overviews. Perhaps you could look through amazon reviews for books with modern physics as the title, and find which one suits you.

 

[FlyingMachine]

I have Griffiths which has a 4 star rating on amazon, but I'm not that thrilled with it. I have used Knight and liked it, but it only has a 3 star rating. I don't know what to make of the ratings.

Books I have liked in the past explain things well, and have problems of different difficulty levels. Knight was easy compared to other textbooks, but I liked it because I could practice to prepare for harder problems. And I aced harder problems from other books when I had done all of Knight's problems first.

 

[Mindscrape]

Griffiths makes a modern physics book? If so then you probably have the best modern physics book out there, Griffiths is very good, but are you sure you don't mean quantum mechanics? His quantum book is okay, but it the material is kind of watered down in my opinion.

Knight is pretty good for introductory physics, he really makes you nail down the concepts, so if you are in intro modern or intro quantum then that is a good bet. He doesn't care so much for math formalities though.

 

[FlyingMachine]

I'm using Griffiths for another class.

I want something like Knight except modern physics only, not "with modern physics".

 

[malawi_glenn]

There is a subforum here concerning textbooks. Also there are some old threads about textbooks for Modern physics courses.

 

[gc2004]

you can go for "resnick and eisberg" for numericals and stuff... but unfortunately it is rather a book "with" modern physics, as you apprehend... another book purely on modern physics is beiser, which is very basic and real good...