Modern Physics

I highly recommend MODERN PHYSICS by Kenneth Krane. I found it especially conducive to a person such as myself who used it as a "self-study". Dr. Krane does an excellent job explaining things simply and clearly. Along with explanations are many solved examples showing use of the concepts. Answers are given in the back of the book to all the odd # chapter problems. Another thing that helped me immensely was the availability of complete solutions to all the problems in this book on-line which I could look at if I got stuck.Calculus is used extensively but no previous knowledge of differential equations, complex variables, or partial derivatives is assumed.Topics follow those given in a typical 1st yr college modern physics course:CH1 FAILURES OF CLASSICAL PHYSICSCH2 SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITYCH3 PARTICLE-LIKE PROPERTIES OF ELECTROMAGNETIC PARTICLESCH4 WAVELIKE PROPERTIES OF PARTICLESCH5 THE SCHRODINGER EQUATIONCH6 THE RUTHERFORD-BOHR MODEL OF THE ATOMCH7 THE HYDROGEN ATOM IN WAVE MECHANICSCH8 MANY-ELECTRON ATOMSCH9 MOLECULAR STRUCTURECH10 STATISTICAL PHYSICSCH11 SOLID-STATE PHYSICSCH12 NUCLEAR STRUCTURE AND RADIOACTIVITYCH13 NUCLEAR REACTIONS AND APPLICATIONSCH14 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES'CH15 COSMOLOGY: THE ORIGIN AND FATE OF THE UNIVERSEDr Krane even suggests a couple different ways to go thru his book: He identifies the core of the book as chapters 1-8 everyone should do. After that he says the student may continue with chapters 9-11 OR branch to chapters 12-14. Chatper 15 is left as an optional stand-alone chapter. I chose to do chapters 1-9, skip 10-11 (since I wasn't interested in those topics), continue thru 12-14, then conclude by doing chapter 15. I was able to do all of those without feeling I needed to know chapters 10-11,One thing I found very intriguing was chapter 14 on Elementary Particles. I never had a complete Particle Physics course when I was in college and plan to follow up on this topic by making David Griffiths' book INTRODUCTION TO PARTICLE PHYSICS my next book for self-study.

Hand a little bit of writing in it but other than that 100% usable for my Modern Physics course!

If you are buying this for a class: the book arrived on time and in better condition than I expected. It was certainly less expensive than buying it from a bookstore.If you are buying this for enjoyment: obviously, the material is dense, but the content of the material is certainly present. The way in which it is presented does require at least a moderate understanding of general physics (including electricity and magnetism, Newtonian mechanics, and thermodynamics). On the math side of things, you need to know some calculus and Taylor series.

This book contains a nice and in-depth overview of almost all aspects of modern physics. It is well written and comprehensive even for a second-year undergraduate physics student, who has already passed some basic physics and calculus courses. Each chapter comes along with helpful examples and a good series of questions and problems at the end. If you like physics, you should have this textbook in your library!

Overall not a bad textbook, the topics expected are well covered for the most part. My largest complaint would be that the book contains a lot of historical "filler" material, much of it not particularly relevant to the subject at hand. Also, the author has a very bad habit of simply skipping crucial and complex mathematical steps in the solved examples. It often reads as we start with equation A, then some magic happens, and we get equation B. This would probably be fine in a graduate level book, but for a book that is being used by students who have probably taken calculus only a couple of semesters ago, this can make some of the math in the book very hard to follow.Additionally, and it may just be that I got a bad copy, within less than 3 months of normal use, the binding at the spine has begun to come apart. I don't know if this is endemic with the printer involved, or whether I just got unlucky, but this is a fairly expensive book to only have a 3 month life span.

book as described, fast delivery.

I bought this used book since it is much cheaper than a new one. Although the seller says it is in very good condition, I expected it to some highlights or some folded pages. However, this book looks like it has never been used before! I couldn't tell if the seller sells it as a brand new one! This is amazing!

I litterally live by this book. It is my life, my love. Spends an awful amount of time talking about waves tho. Still I love it.