Recommend good intro to PDEs book?

[elemental09]

I'm taking a first course in PDEs this term (I'm a physics student) and we are using "Beginning Partial Differential Equations" by Peter V. O'Neil, which I find almost unreadable. Can anyone recommend a good book appropriate for an introductory PDE course? I have taken a standard ODE and standard multivariable calculus course previous. The focus of the course is fairly applied, i.e. there is an emphasis on finding solutions to first and second order linear and quasilinear equations, particularly those important in physics (wave equation, diffusion equation, etc.). There are few proofs and the question of well-posedness is given only a quick treatment.
Thanks.

 

[ice109]

the book by richard haberman is supposed to be good.

i used strauss and thought it was pretty good but my professor was pretty good.

 

[BobbyBear]

I think
Differential Equations and the Calculus of Variations by Lev Elsgolts
is great, and so is
Ecuaciones Diferenciales - Aplicado a la Física y Técnica by Puig Adam
(though it's in Spanish) :P
I specially recommend them for 1st order PDEs (linear, quasilinear, and nonlinear), these books were my mentors in the subject :P They are concise, precise, and contain examples that arise in physics.

 

[elemental09]

Thanks for the replies. One problem is I want to look at textbooks before I buy them, but mostly they have to be bought online. Do you have any online textbook suggestions?

 

[stargazer_iq]

Linear Partial Differential Equations and Fourier Theory by Marcus Pivato is available online for free:
http://xaravve.trentu.ca/pivato/index.html

it is a good introductory book

 

[BobbyBear]

My notes are not bad either lol:

http://bobbyness.net/NerdyStuff/notes.html

I'm still updating them btw.

 

[n!kofeyn]

http://books.google.com/books?id=DL...equations farlow&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false" by Farlow
Use Google Books to look at previews of books.

 

[jonjacson]

¿what do you think about this book?

An Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations, by Earl. A Coddington

(¿can I put the link to Amazon?. There is the "look inside" option to see the topics)

 

[kzhu]

Personally, I recommend Habberman's book as an undergraduate textbook on PDE. The english is plain and the subjects are very application oriented. The author simply takes his time to explain the details, which makes it a standalone piece of work. My favorite chapter is on Sturm-Liouville's theory.

My first exposure was Strauss' book, 1st edition. Personally, I find it alittle harder to chew since the discussion is terse and the text is frequently interrupted by equations/symbols. If the instructor uses it, that will be good. As a self-study material, it is hard.