Re: Essential Physics Books

["RAUBER, JOEL" <JOEL_RAUBER@SDSTATE.EDU>]

I do not specifically disagree with the below, but still more or less stand
by my statement.

Some examples of alternatives to Jackson and MTW, offered in the context of
a limited book budget (what happens at our school, where we can make
recommendations up to a small dollar amount.) and the likely level of
students at the college including the odd few precocious ones and the likely
need of reference material for faculty (making some big guesses and
assumptions on my part)

Marion and Thorton, Classical Mechanics

Tayor and Wheeler, Space-time Physics.

"How Things work: the physics of everyday life", Bloomfield

"Flat and Curved Space-times", Ellis et al.

Griffiths, Electrodynamics.

These top ten lists are of course subject to much debate and opinion, I'm
simply saying that if I had to choose 20 books for Tina's situation MTW and
Jackson would not be on my list.  If I got to choose 100 books, they
probably would be on the list.

Joel

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John S. Denker [mailto:jsd@MONMOUTH.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 10:13 AM
> To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
> Subject: Re: Essential Physics Books
>
>
> "RAUBER, JOEL" wrote:
> > Generally I like John D's list,
> >  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/books.html
>
> :-)
>
> > however, IMO
> >
> > *) Misner / Thorne / Wheeler
> >     Gravitation
> >
> >  *) Jackson
> >     Classical Electrodynamics
> >
> > are probably not that appropriate for a two year college situation.
>
> 1) I don't expect everybody at WITCC to read Jackson and
> MTW cover-to-cover.  That's why they are library books
> not required textbooks.  I don't expect everybody to read
> the Encyclopedia Britannica cover-to-cover either (although
> I know people who have done so under similar circumstances).
>
> 2) One hopes that sooner or later there will be a student
> at WITCC who asks "suppose I continued in physics for more
> than two years ... what would come next?" and it would be
> nice to have one or two landmarks in that direction.
>
> > Unless of course, you have lots of book money to burn.
>
> IMHO the cost of having such things on the shelf is small
> compared to the cost of not having them on the occasions
> when they are wanted.
>
> > But there may be other choices
>
> Such as?
>
> > for spending money that would be better and more likely
> > to be read by students.
>
> The library is for faculty as well as students.  And if
> it really is a _community_ college there may be drop-ins
> from the wider community.