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Re: particles book



I have a student who wants to do an independent honors study project next
fall on particle physics.

I haven't kept up with the books on this subject. Does anyone know of a
recent, good book at the Jr. level?

I agree with the comments by Dan. I'm presently teaching a
particle physics course for juniors and seniors, and I've decided to use
Dan's Option #3. The official text for the course is Griffiths'
"Introduction to Elementary Particles" which provides the clearest
treatment, but it suffers from the weaknesses described by Dan. In fact,
for the first half of the course, I've spent most of the time developing a
lot of the machinery (e.g.,time dependent perturbation theory in the
interaction picture) and background (e.g., non-relativistic QED) which
bridges the gap between the physics they know (1st semester quantum) and
particle physics. In this way, I hope to provide some deeper understanding
of what the Feynman diagrams really mean and motivation for the Feynman
rules that Griffiths just writes down.
While looking around for texts, I found (in addition to Kane's book
which I believe is now out of print) "Particle Physics" by B. R. Martin and
G. Shaw, "The Fundamental Particles and Their Interactions" by W. B.
Rolnick, and "Subatomic Physics" (2nd ed.) by H. Frauenfelder and E. M.
Henley. I didn't like them nearly as much as Griffiths, but you can check
them out for yourself.
Hope this helps!


Dennis


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* Dennis E. Krause Phone: (413) 597-3306 *
* Department of Physics Fax: (413) 597-4116 *
* Williams College E-mail: dkrause@williams.edu *
* Williamstown, MA 01267 *
* http://www.williams.edu/Physics/dkrause/ *
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