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The book was exactly as ordered and arrived in great shape in a timely manner.
I bought it brand new and several pages had fallen out of the binding just weeks after purchase. The history is nice, but that's something the professor should be interjecting. Also, this book is poorly manufactured.
To me, the key issue is that the plum pudding model can not predict the large scattering angles observed in Rutherford's experiments and if one wishes to theoretically model the experimental results one requires a nucleus.3) History stressed over physics. I am hard pressed to find any question/problem that tests a student's conceptual understanding. All most exclusively, the authors explicitly define each numerical value as opposed to describing a story or circumstance where students would have to determine this.2) Often the key concept is lost. They require little if any active thought from the students.
The authors spend far too much space devoted to history and they spend far too little time considering student conceptual understanding. Great discoveries from the Cavendish Lab bear 2 pages with a neat table mentioning the discoveries and the Nobel prizes. For example, the authors spend a great deal of space (with little explanation that students can follow) developing the Rutherford scattering equation. There are better books on the history of modern physics and there are much better texts when dealing with modern physics concepts.
The problem sets are for the most part simple plug-N-chug problems (there are also mathematical proofs). Fourier Series and Gaussians (both later used to describe waves and wavefunctions) bears 1/3 of a page total.Upside1) I suppose its better than no text at all. Downside1) The problem and question sets leave much to be desired. Virtually all of the questions can be answered by skimming through the text and finding the appropriate sentences.
That was when I stumbled upon a 1981 version of "Concepts of Modern Physics" by Arthur Beiser. Or, perhaps it's just a case of most Modern Physics texts being very similar. I just finished a Modern Physics course using this book and was not happy with it at all. To my dismay, Thornton's text seems to be a cheap knock-off of this much older (and better) text. All I know is I won't be using this text again. The exposition is less than clear in many places and the problem set is sub-standard in my opinion. Some sections were so poor that I found myself searching through other texts for a better treatment of the subject.
The web site's errata page for the 3rd edition shows just 2 typos. There's also a Yahoo discussion group, "modern_physics" for the course (you have to be a student in the course to actually post questions).Many of the end-of-chapter problems have a simple "twist" to them that requires some thought; you can't just mindlessly "plug and chug" your way through equations.Previous reviewers have panned earlier editions for allegedly sloppy editing and errors. Thornton feedback from a teacher's viewpoint.The publishers publish a Student Solutions Manual which shows worked out solutions for about 25% of the problems which I recommend. That's about as tight an editing job as I've seen in any large science or engineering textbook.This book can be used by any smart student that's had freshman physics and calculus. Dr. I'm about to finish the on-line course taught by one of the authors, Steve Thornton (University of Virginia).
Many of the students are traditional physics and engineering undergraduates, but many others are career high school physics teachers that give Dr. I've worked probably 200 examples and end-of-chapter problems and caught zero typos. The book lends itself to self-study and the 3rd edition is partly the result of Dr. Thornton's course web site has additional worked out problems, streaming mini-lectures, syllabus, and simulations -- see.modern.physics.virginia.edu. Where multivariable calculus or differential equations are needed, the authors walk readers through the mathematical calculations more thoroughly and with greater explanation.I highly recommend the book, the solutions manual and the on-line course. Thornton's teaching an on-line course for several summers.
Answers to many other end-of-chapter problems are listed (without explanation) in the back of the text book.
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