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Title: Physics of the Atom by M. Russell Wehr, James A. Richards, Thomas W. Adair ISBN: 0-201-08878-9 Publisher: Pearson Education POD Pub. Date: January, 1984 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $146.00

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (4 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: Not a good book at all
Comment: The book lacks to too many explanations, and universities shouldn't use it for classes at all unless the proffessors are planning to use it for assigning problems only.Unfortunatly the book has less than 13-20 examples in all of its ~500 pages, which is the worst thing you can do to for a physics student who is just trying to learn the material in an advanced way after General physics.The book has no advanced concepts to say its not meant for introductory, so in both cases the book is not an introductory nor advanced.If you are looking for a better book in a little advanced concepts (( after General physics)) as modern physics then don't waste time looking for a good book if there is an excellent book written by Rohlf its an excellent second year I've ever read -Modern Physics from aá to Z0-
James William Rohlf-
ISBN: 0-471-57270-5

Rating: 1
Summary: The authors appear to have been writing to themselves
Comment: This book tries to be complete at first but excludes many important concepts and basically just talks about developing atomic physics the correct way instead of doing it. It is riddled with bad errors and is actually often incorrect. For instance, when dealing with Einstein's work on lasers, the formula in the book is off by a cubic factor of the energies involved -- yes, that is to the third power. Furthermore, it doesn't derive most of the formulas, so most people would learn the (very) incorrect forms. And when it does derive the formulas, sometimes the derivations lead to the correct result but are not the correct way to get there. The book often deals with deriving equations and results by analogy, in a non-rigrorous form, but then at times it will all of a sudden introduce something completely rigorous and offer no explanation as to where it came from. If it does something from freshman physics like derive the wave equation, why doesn't it introduce other concepts with proper background? Finally, the answers in the back of the book are often wrong. All of this compared with the writing style make this book horrible. The authors sound like they are writing to themselves, as if they have hidden knowledge about some of the topics (as a previous reviewer noticed, it seemed as if there were things they weren't telling, making it appear as if the concepts were hidden somewhere). My advice: get a couple of other books if you are serious about learning this material. Even the format of the book seems as if it is a bunch of notes, as there is no textual organization or pedagogy at all. Because of the nice historical accounts, it almost gets two stars; however, the subject of the book is not history, so it gets just one star. Oh, and this book is in its fourth edition, so errors in actual concepts and formulas (for instance, being off by a factor of a cubic term) is unacceptable. The only reason this book ever got used is because a faculty member at Texas A&M University helped write it, and they required it to be used at the course here for many years (all the way up till 2002, even though the 4th edition came out in 1984). Horrible book, and the faculty's greedy disposition to profit off of it like this should be looked down upon.

Rating: 1
Summary: I wish i could give it less than 1 star
Comment: This is quite possibly the worst book I have ever tried to use for a class in my life. I was required to purchase this book for my Engineering Physics class at Texas A&M. By the way, Dr. Adair, co author, is a prof here (must be why its required) so I think Ill stay anonymous :). It is complete drivel written in a language that only a person with a doctorate in physics could understand. Its full of flaws, and has absolutely no example problems worked out. After having used this book I have no coice but to assume the authors were trying to keep this stuff a secret. I relied primarially on notes and used it only for homework problems assigned.