What are you reading now? (STEM only)

[vanhees71]

I think the symmetry approach to physics is very motivating for students. I learned about it reading some theory textbook already at high school, but it was a pretty tough way to understand it, because you lack the necessary math, particularly the calculus of variations and some elements of group theory. I think, it's a great challenge to work out the beauty of the subject given the limited math high schools nowadays provide.

 

[akashgupta27]

I was reading Shankar Quantum Mechanics but I had to take it back to the library.

 

[haushofer]

It's not written for teachers, but I think that teachers who can read between the lines can find a lot of ways to improve their teaching.

Could you give some examples?

 

[Demystifier]

Could you give some examples?

"I remember asking my teachers several times, especially in
mathematics, why we were taught certain topics. “What can
we do with this? Why is this important?” I didn’t get satis-
factory answers and was rewarded with bad oral grades."

"During the lectures, the professors repeatedly fill the black-
boards with formulas by copying the handwritten notes
they prepared in advance. The students, in turn, are busy
writing down each boardful before it gets erased to make
room for even more equations. At the beginning of a course
the professors usually claim that they’re happy to answer
any question the students may have. But if a student then
really asks a question, the professors’ rushed answer clearly
signals that this is not quite true. Each question is treated
like a disturbance since it takes time from their primary
goal: to copy all of their notes onto the blackboard before
the semester is over. Thus, the only questions that get asked
after the first lecture are about minor points of clarifications
like "Shouldn’t that be a plus sign?" or "Is that a two in the
denominator?""

 

[haushofer]

"I remember asking my teachers several times, especially in
mathematics, why we were taught certain topics. “What can
we do with this? Why is this important?” I didn’t get satis-
factory answers and was rewarded with bad oral grades."

"During the lectures, the professors repeatedly fill the black-
boards with formulas by copying the handwritten notes
they prepared in advance. The students, in turn, are busy
writing down each boardful before it gets erased to make
room for even more equations. At the beginning of a course
the professors usually claim that they’re happy to answer
any question the students may have. But if a student then
really asks a question, the professors’ rushed answer clearly
signals that this is not quite true. Each question is treated
like a disturbance since it takes time from their primary
goal: to copy all of their notes onto the blackboard before
the semester is over. Thus, the only questions that get asked
after the first lecture are about minor points of clarifications
like "Shouldn’t that be a plus sign?" or "Is that a two in the
denominator?""

Yes, that's a shame. Actually, I try to incorporate more of Feynman's curiosity and way of learning new stuff into my own lectures, but I too encounter a program which is crammed.

 

[haushofer]

I just bought Luke Barnes' book on finetuning,"a fortunate universe". Maybe he can convince me :P

Well, I just finished it, and I must say it's a delight to read and they treat all the criticism thoroughly. The only I still don't grasp is how Bayesian statistics is used in the arguments, but for that I have to turn to Barnes papers on the arXiv, I guess. Highly recommended. It changed my view on finetuning; it's more subtle than I thought.

 

[gleem]

I recently finished "Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and companies" by Geoffrey West. Geoffrey West a former high energy theoretical physicist head of Los Alamos HEP program changes professional focus after the demise of the superconducting super collider. The book is a summary of his work of about two decades on why certain systems, biological and man-made, have characteristics that correlate with size.

Getting on in age and concerned about his family's lack of longevity he investigated what is known about aging and finds out not that much. This leads him in an ever-increasing contact with biologists piquing his interest in why certain biological characteristics change in a predictable way with organism size as metabolic rate. Scaling has been observed in biological systems for amost a century. West set out to determine the origin of this phenomenon. Using network theory and fractals he shows how scaling occurs in biological and social-economic (cities and corporations) systems. His findings include; cities become more efficient as they increase in size and may live forever while corporations do have finite lives and are not too big to fail.

His was a "coarse grain" approach looking for those factors that produce overall trends. The book is meant for the general public and I might add especially traditionally trained sociologists and economists.

The book tends to wander a bit but is still informative.

To get a flavor of the book read this article on the work related to biological systems by West and Brown in Physics Today (2004).

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1809090

For an update (2018) on some new directions see

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20180126a/full/

or for a quick and dirty look/listen try West's TED talk

 

[AndreasC]

Reading Linear Algebra and Geometry by Yuri Manin and Alexei Kostrikin. Been a while since I had so much fun with a math book! It takes a "holistic" approach that emphasises connections between different fields of math and applications to physics. The problems are good too, because they're often not mere "tests" to check whether you know how to apply the results in a chapter correctly, but they are often actually interesting, or involve you defining concepts not introduced in the text based on what you learned. In that sense, they remind me of the problems in Kardar's statistical physics books, except they are not as brutal as Kardar (which were the hardest problems I have encountered in any book, including Jackson imo). Also it talks about 20 dimensional watermelons. So yeah, very nice book.

Also I am reading Topology by Munkres. Another great book, some people criticize it for being, like, too abstract or something? I honestly think it is hard to conceive of a clearer treatment of point set topology...

 

[martinbn]

Kostrikin and Manin is one of my favorate books. It is Bourbaki in style, but also very readable. It covers some QM, for example EPR.

 

[AndreasC]

Kostrikin and Manin is one of my favorate books. It is Bourbaki in style, but also very readable. It covers some QM, for example EPR.

I've read a couple of "Bourbaki-style" books, but I am still confused about what Bourbaki style is supposed to be... I guess one common feature seems to be being angry at other math books...

 

[Quarkman1]

Darn... looks like that book (Linear Algebra and Geometry) is out of print... sounds like an interesting read (I could use a refresher for sure).

 

[AndreasC]

Darn... looks like that book (Linear Algebra and Geometry) is out of print... sounds like an interesting read (I could use a refresher for sure).

Unfortunate... I got it from the library, maybe look there.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

I guess one common feature seems to be being angry at other math books...

Now I envision a fight on my book shelf. What gives you the above impression?

 

[AndreasC]

Now I envision a fight on my book shelf. What gives you the above impression?

Well, they tend to diss other books for all the stuff they approach the wrong way. Especially Dieudonne, he goes off. I remember reading his book on real analysis. He carries seething hatred for Riemann integration and he also dissed some other concept which I didn't even know what it was, I think it was Cauchy summation, which he called nonsensical. I can easily imagine him throwing a book against the wall because it mentioned Riemann integrals or something similar. Manin isn't as angry at everything as Dieudonne, but he does occasionally slight "other texts" for following the wrong approach.

I guess it kinda makes sense since in a way Bourbaki started because some French students were angry at their textbooks.

So yeah, if you have any books by Dieudonne, better not put them on the same shelf as books that teach Riemann integration. I wouldn't risk it.

 

[mpresic3]

I was reading Shankar Quantum Mechanics but I had to take it back to the library.

I said the same thing 3 years ago in this thread. I have since bought the book and finished it up, except for maybe the last chapter.

I am currently reading Carroll, Geometry and Spacetime. When I have trouble understanding a point, I sometimes refer to Wald, General Relativity, but this text is harder.

I have looked at Weinberg, General Relativity. It seems good but is a different treatment than Carroll. I do not know which is better. Hartle book is less mathematical, but has many more examples. It may be upper undergraduate level, where Carroll and Weinberg is probably graduate level.

 

[Demystifier]

The new (2020) book on quantum foundations by Durr and Lazarovici:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085Z9LZKZ/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[vanhees71]

That's a very good book. I know the German edition from 2 years ago.

 

[BWV]

Finished

and onto the sequel

 

[BWV]

great science writing in the books above, the analysis detailed and quantitative. Rather than tell the typical gee-whiz popular science story, McGhee lays out clearly what are observed facts and then details range of explanations currently under debate without having an obvious axe to grind. The first book details the rise of plants and land animals, which as the title suggests, had to start over after the End-Frasnian extinction event, which the book describes as likely caused an anoxyic ocean triggered by runoff of phosphates from weathering of newly created mountain ranges. Only downside is a fair amount of jargon that I had to Google to follow

 

[Demystifier]

That's a very good book. I know the German edition from 2 years ago.

Unfortunately the first author, D. Durr, passed away a couple of days ago, due to Covid-19.

 

[haushofer]

I finally started with Zee's third book, about group theory. And again, for me it's the best book on the subject. It's one of those books which gives a clear intuition on the subject, filled with historical anecdotes and nice insights, instead of the dry "theorem-proof" ad infinitum. Highly recommended.

 

[Mayhem]

Eric Mazur's Principles and Practices. It's terrible; don't buy it.

 

[docnet]

Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum.

A Mathmatician's Apology

 

[Frabjous]

Vibrating Strings by D R Bland, 95 pages (1960)

I found it in a used book store. It is an introduction to the wave equation using transverse motion on a string that is suitable for a lower level undergraduate. It is a pleasant evening’s read for someone more advanced. It includes a section on air resistance and external forces that I had not seen before.

 

[weirdoguy]

Highly recommended.

It's funny how differently one book can perceived by different people. For me this book was a nightmare

 

[BWV]

Free on Kindle and the Springer website, good because it tries to explain why the rigorous definitions are framed a certain way and not some other - which seldom happens in textbooks
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-20103-6

 

[Demystifier]

V. Allori (ed), Statistical Mechanics and Scientific Explanation: Determinism, Indeterminism and Laws of Nature (2020)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/981121171X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[pinball1970]

EDIT. the image is small
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
Second addition
David J. GriffithsThere are problems at the end of each chapter so I can test myself.
I have read some of this before but must have bailed at some point, probably when I moved. (or it got too hard)

 

[atyy]

EDIT. the image is small
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
Second addition
David J. Griffiths

Does this have a picture of a cat climbing a ladder?

 

[Frabjous]

Does this have a picture of a cat climbing a ladder?

Or a cat dead from falling off a ladder. You cannot properly motivate QM without a dead cat.

 

[pinball1970]

Does this have a picture of a cat climbing a ladder?

This only in Green

 

[atyy]

http://astro.dur.ac.uk/~done/qm2/catladder.jpg

Hmmm, the ladder is important, maybe you'll find it inside the book (around the operator treatment of the harmonic oscillator)?

 

[pinball1970]

http://astro.dur.ac.uk/~done/qm2/catladder.jpg

Hmmm, the ladder is important, maybe you'll find it inside the book (around the operator treatment of the harmonic oscillator)?

Got it, page 45

 

[pinball1970]

http://astro.dur.ac.uk/~done/qm2/catladder.jpg

Hmmm, the ladder is important, maybe you'll find it inside the book (around the operator treatment of the harmonic oscillator)?

@atyy

Why is this important?
Schrodinger’s cat, ladder, harmonic oscillator?
If this is so hard it requires diagrams to illustrate points then I am probably not going to able to follow it.
If it’s a physics joke then I don’t get it.

 

[Frabjous]

@atyy

Why is this important?
Schrodinger’s cat, ladder, harmonic oscillator?
If this is so hard it requires diagrams to illustrate points then I am probably not going to able to follow it.
If it’s a physics joke then I don’t get it.

It‘s a joke. There are these important things called ladder operators, so of course physicists want Schrodinger’s cat to be climbing a ladder. Physicists are simple folk.