David J Griffiths

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics 2nd Edition

1 stars (Typical Griffiths Drivel) - As usual, Griffiths replaces formalism and math with hand waving nonsense. While that may work to some extent in E&M, it fails miserably with a topic such as quantum mechanics. Also, as others have mentioned, Griffiths leaves a good chunk of the actual learning to exercises, which would be fine if there were answers in the back to select important problems or *gasp* a solutions manual, but Griffiths lacks both. Save yourself the grief and buy someone else's book. Griffiths, as usual, just doesn't cut it. 5 stars (Book Review) - excellent book for studying QM with a very comprehensive set of highly instructive problems. 1 stars (Terrible book to learn from QM) - I decided to refresh my QM skills and decided to buy Griffith....bad idea. At the university I used Messiah, B.H. Bransden - C.J. Joachain and Cohen - Tannoudj. All these manuals are much more better than Griffith. If you are not following a course don't buy this book, everything is an exercise, it is interesting to prove your skills and awarness on the matter, but every real stuff is left as an exercise then no explanation at all: for example Ehrenfest theorem and all the mathematics used in Schrodinger equation...these as a starter.... I really don't understand the love for this book, probably as the author tells you QM with an hippy style...if you don't believe me go to the author site.... If you want to learn QM start with Feynman and Greeinstein then read Bransden or Liboff if you are at an undergraduated level otherwise go to Cohen or Sakurai. ...
Prentice Hall :: Science & Physics :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Quantum Theory :: Quantum Mechanics :: Physics :: David J Griffiths :: :: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (2nd Edition)

Introduction to Electrodynamics 3rd Edition

5 stars (The Best I've Seen) - This book is probably the most used one I own. I refer to it for just about everything. You need all the vector calculus equations? There they are on the front cover. Need more info on them? First chapter covers vec. calc. pretty well. As a beginning grad student in physics this book was invaluable. I lacked the EM background many around me had, but this book saved me. For instance, mutual induction...what the heck is it? I never learned that in undergrad and if I did, I sure don't remember. Well, I could scour my grad text Jackson for a couple hours and still never find a decent explanation or find it used in a much to technical context. Or I can look it up in Griffiths and find it explained with clarity and simplicity. Of course, if you've mastered undergrad EM, Griffiths may be baby food. But I can't imagine living without it. Jackson does go way more into detail but often when looking something up, that is more of a hindrance. The problems in Griffiths are good because they range from trivial to very difficult. But as far as I know there are no Jackson type problems where you also don't learn anything valuable from them after the first time. Griffiths problems tend to actually teach you and not just drive you to suicide. In fact, I would recommend do many problems from the text that are not assigned because you will learn a lot from his problems. I think that is a sign of a good text book where every aspect of it lends to the learning process. 2 stars (Lack of practical insight) - It's been years since I've been in school when I took a course using this book. Years in the real world, I came back to this book to clear up an issue I had when designing an electronics device that required knowledge of magnetization and, magnetic field density, susceptability, etc. What I came to realize from consulting the book was there are basically no real-life practical problems that have real-life results with real computed values. All t...
Prentice Hall :: Science & Physics :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Physics :: Electromagnetism :: Electrodynamics :: David J Griffiths :: :: Introduction to Electrodynamics (3rd Edition)