Other What are you reading now? (STEM only)

[spiceagent11]

I was reading Shankar Quantum Mechanics but I had to take it back to the library.
Now I am browsing Whittaker, Analytical Dynamics, and also Torge, Geodesy.

 

[Hill]

Penrose's The Road to Reality. I am enjoying the contents a lot, but distracted by way too many typos, like this:

 

[martinbn]

Penrose's The Road to Reality. I am enjoying the contents a lot, but distracted by way too many typos, like this:

View attachment 340296

My speling is terrible, you have to tell me what the typos are.

 

[Hill]

My speling is terrible, you have to tell me what the typos are.

$gab$ instead of $g_{ab}$

 

[PhDeezNutz]

$gab$ instead of $g_{ab}$

I was tempted to say you are quibbling but I don’t think you are. Lower vs upper indices are important to distinguish and if it’s all in one line it’s ambiguous.

 

[martinbn]

$gab$ instead of $g_{ab}$

That wasn't obvious to you and distracted you! I only saw it because i reread the sentence a few times looking for typos.

 

[spiceagent11]

$gab$ instead of ##g_{ab}##

it wasn't obvious to you and distracted you true

 

[haushofer]

Penrose's The Road to Reality. I am enjoying the contents a lot, but distracted by way too many typos, like this:

View attachment 340296

It's the metric of a theory which is invariant w.r.t. upper and lower indices :P

 

[Hill]

It's the metric of a theory which is invariant w.r.t. upper and lower indices :P

No, it's metric in a general (pseudo) Riemannian geometry.

 

[Hill]

Penrose's The Road to Reality. I am enjoying the contents a lot, but distracted by way too many typos, like this:

View attachment 340296

I suspect that most of the "typos" are not typos in the printed book, but rather result of bad conversion of the book to Kindle version. Here is another of many examples:

I don't think there supposed to be empty boxes.

 

[Frimus]

I suspect that most of the "typos" are not typos in the printed book, but rather result of bad conversion of the book to Kindle version. Here is another of many examples:

View attachment 340405
I don't think there supposed to be empty boxes.

I'm definitely done with buying math and physics books for kindle. In most cases, it's a useless scumbag. I don't understand why Amazon didn't stop doing this a long time ago.

 

[Hill]

I'm definitely done with buying math and physics books for kindle. In most cases, it's a useless scumbag. I don't understand why Amazon didn't stop doing this a long time ago.

My experience differs. I am glad they didn't stop, for many reasons.

 

[Florian Geyer]

Sears and Zemansky's university physics 14e... it seems I am the only David here between so many Goliaths *_*
BTW it seems I will take a lot of time studying it.

 

[haushofer]

No, it's metric in a general (pseudo) Riemannian geometry.

I know. I tried to make a joke and failed.

 

[martinbn]

I know. I tried to make a joke and failed.

No, no, we got it. It was a good one.

 

[Hill]

I know. I tried to make a joke and failed.

I see. Sorry.

 

[haushofer]

No hard feelings. My kids also never laugh about my science jokes. Maybe when they turn 4 this year.

 

[ateixeira]

A few books on my part:

1. Vector Calculus by P. C. Matthews
2. A Course of Modern Analysis by Whittaker, Watson and Moll
3. Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering by Riley, Hobson and Bence
4. Mathematical Methods for Physicists: a concise introduction by Tai L. Chow
5. Classical Mechanics by Tai L. Chow

I am studying 8 hours per day to prepare for my upcoming PhD program and this is the first block of study...

 

[ateixeira]

I suspect that most of the "typos" are not typos in the printed book, but rather result of bad conversion of the book to Kindle version. Here is another of many examples:

View attachment 340405
I don't think there supposed to be empty boxes.

What is the page of this part of the text and the first one that you provided. I have the first edition of the book (I have been away from physics for more than a decade so I don't know if they were any posterior editions and/or reprinting) so that I can check if these typos are there

 

[Hill]

What is the page of this part of the text and the first one that you provided. I have the first edition of the book (I have been away from physics for more than a decade so I don't know if they were any posterior editions and/or reprinting) so that I can check if these typos are there

The first one is on p. 320, near the end of chapter 14.7. The second, p.385, the last paragraph of chapter 17.1.
I doubt that page numbers in the Kindle and printed versions correspond.

 

[ateixeira]

The first one is on p. 320, near the end of chapter 14.7. The second, p.385, the last paragraph of chapter 17.1.
I doubt that page numbers in the Kindle and printed versions correspond.

Thank you. I've checked and both of them are correctly printed in the book version. The second type of error appears due to the mathematical symbols he is using, which might not be supported on kindle.

 

[Hill]

Thank you. I've checked and both of them are correctly printed in the book version. The second type of error appears due to the mathematical symbols he is using, which might not be supported on kindle.

Thank you for confirming. This is an unusually bad Kindle edition.

 

[PhDeezNutz]

A few books on my part:

1. Vector Calculus by P. C. Matthews
2. A Course of Modern Analysis by Whittaker, Watson and Moll
3. Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering by Riley, Hobson and Bence
4. Mathematical Methods for Physicists: a concise introduction by Tai L. Chow
5. Classical Mechanics by Tai L. Chow

I am studying 8 hours per day to prepare for my upcoming PhD program and this is the first block of study...

What is the page of this part of the text and the first one that you provided. I have the first edition of the book (I have been away from physics for more than a decade so I don't know if they were any posterior editions and/or reprinting) so that I can check if these typos are there

I must commend you for returning to physics after 10 years. Good luck on your qualifiers, studies, and research.

I hope to do the same some day.

 

[ateixeira]

I must commend you for returning to physics after 10 years. Good luck on your qualifiers, studies, and research.

I hope to do the same some day.

You know the passion of Physics never let me alone during those years. Fortunately I was able to get some financial stability and now I am returning to my life long dream. I hope that one day you can do the same.

 

[romsofia]

A few books on my part:

1. Vector Calculus by P. C. Matthews
2. A Course of Modern Analysis by Whittaker, Watson and Moll
3. Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering by Riley, Hobson and Bence
4. Mathematical Methods for Physicists: a concise introduction by Tai L. Chow
5. Classical Mechanics by Tai L. Chow

I am studying 8 hours per day to prepare for my upcoming PhD program and this is the first block of study...

I see you have a lot of mathematical methods so I'll recommend this youtube series as I enjoy the lecturer's approach to a lot of topics (although can be hard to hear):

Sadly, he has passed away. He used to have problem sets/solutions on his website but they recently removed access to it. Luckily you can still access them from the waybackmachine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20230711184103/https://inside.mines.edu/~aflourno/MathPhys/511.shtml

I also recommend his Physics X series as it's a good introduction to a lot of fun topics:

Good luck with your studies!

 

[MidgetDwarf]

Rereading Gallian's Algebra book in combination with Artin (the chapter dealing with field extensions). May just go cover the sections related to Galois theory again.

Oh and also Simmons Topology, to prepare for Lee's books series on manifolds. It's been a while since I did Topology for its own sake. I think Munkrees would be better than Simmons in this regard, but I let a friend borrow my copy.

 

[ateixeira]

I see you have a lot of mathematical methods so I'll recommend this youtube series as I enjoy the lecturer's approach to a lot of topics (although can be hard to hear):

Sadly, he has passed away. He used to have problem sets/solutions on his website but they recently removed access to it. Luckily you can still access them from the waybackmachine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20230711184103/https://inside.mines.edu/~aflourno/MathPhys/511.shtml

I also recommend his Physics X series as it's a good introduction to a lot of fun topics:

Good luck with your studies!

Thank you for sharing these materials. I will try to check them out after I am finished with the books.
I have a lot of math methods because after I started studying I found out that most of my difficulties are with the math portion of physics. The second block of study material will be more more physics based though.

 

[decisivedove]

Sadly, he has passed away.

I was watching his videos on the Higgs Mechanism and Electroweak symmetry breaking like 3 days ago. I did not know he passed away. That is sad indeed.

 

[ateixeira]

I was watching his videos on the Higgs Mechanism and Electroweak symmetry breaking like 3 days ago. I did not know he passed away. That is sad indeed.

I saw a couple of minutes in some of his videos after @romsofia shared that link and I must say that I really liked his style.

 

[ChemAir]

Welding Metallurgy, by Kou.

 

[Frabjous]

Classical Dynamics and its Quantum Analogues by Park

Here’s the toc

It’s written at the upperclassman level.

 

[gmax137]

Let us know how you like that book, @Frabjous !

I took a number of classes from Prof Park back in the 1970s. A brilliant guy. His "pop sci" books are mostly slanted towards history of science, very well written and thorough.

 

[Frabjous]

Let us know how you like that book, @Frabjous !

I took a number of classes from Prof Park back in the 1970s. A brilliant guy. His "pop sci" books are mostly slanted towards history of science, very well written and thorough.

You’ve mentioned his Image of Eternity several times. I’ve ordered a copy.

 

[gmax137]

mentioned his Image of Eternity several times

Oops. If I start to tell that story again please let me know. Thanks

 

[Frabjous]

Oops. If I start to tell that story again please let me know. Thanks

Your consistency is what made it attractive, so keep doing it.

 

[gentzen]

Ulrich Warnke "Gehirn-Magie - Der Zauber unserer Gefühlswelt". The author studied biology, physics, geography, and pedagogics, but mostly worked on biomedicin, biophysics, ... psychology and psychosomatics. He does try to describe how he interprets quantum physics and QFT. It is not overly wrong in the first two chapters, then gets "more wrong" in the third chapter when he tries to describe the weak force in the context of the biological relevance of chirality, and dives into gravitation, mass and spin. Then I skipped forward to the appendix in chapter 7, which was pure homeopathy, acupuncture, and esoterics and the reference section, which was much less esoterics, but more stuff related to what he actually worked on. (I currently read chapter 4, it doesn't seem to be as badly wrong as chapter 3, but already well on its way deep into esoterics.)

It is not pseudo-science, but it is not science or popular science either. It would say it is scientifically inspired speculation. I learned which physical questions are actually still unresolved from a biological perspective. Things like The Chiral Puzzle of Life, or the stuff that Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose worked on. Actually, the reason why I write this now is that I accidentally came across Stuart Hameroff defending himself in the comment section of Scott Aaronson's blog post “Can computers become conscious?”: My reply to Roger Penrose. The speculations themselves are obviously misguided, but the open questions they try to address are real.

 

[Mayhem]

Molecular Orbitals and Organic Chemical Reactions Reference Edition (Ian Fleming*)

Probably only going to use the first 100 pages or so. Great semi-quantitative treatment of MO theory for people who have a life.

*not the James Bond author.

 

[haushofer]

My name is Bond. Molecular Bond.