What are you reading now? (STEM only)

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.

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

Hill said:

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.

martinbn said:

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

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

Hill said:

##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.

Hill said:

##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.

Hill said:

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

it wasn't obvious to you and distracted you true

Hill said:

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

haushofer said:

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 said:

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.

Hill said:

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.

Frimus said:

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.

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.

Hill said:

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

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

haushofer said:

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

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

haushofer said:

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

I see. Sorry.

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

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...

Hill said:

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

ateixeira said:

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.

Hill said:

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.

ateixeira said:

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.

ateixeira said:

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 said:

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.

PhDeezNutz said:

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.

ateixeira said:

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!

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.

romsofia said:

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.

romsofia said:

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.

decisivedove said:

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.

Welding Metallurgy, by Kou.