Undergraduate Physics Lecture Notes: Exploring Symmetry in Physics

Joonsik: Very nice

United States on Aug 29, 2023

Hugh Calvin: The author is very skilled at making advanced concepts clear. I've studied many of the books he's written and been very pleased with each of them. It would be useful if he would provide problems for the reader to solve (either embedded in the text or at the end of the chapters). Solving problems is the best way to learn for some of us.

United States on Aug 10, 2023

Pieter Hamans: Big size, super quality paper, print and binding. Liked the setup better than the no-nonsense books by the same author. Moreover, I learned so much from this book. Typically one of those books you wanted to have read 30 years ago.

United Kingdom on May 20, 2022

Kindle Customer: You need calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, and group theory to follow the derivations in this book. Vectors and complex numbers would not go amiss. Not surprisingly, you should have a college physics course as well. Lagrangian mechanics wouldn't hurt.
If you have all this, you will find this approach to physics to be both interesting and beautiful.
I would give it five stars, but I am not sufficiently educated to have complete confidence in this approach. The author has other books that are impressive and well-written, so I expect five stars is probably merited. I'm glad I bought it.

United States on Apr 22, 2022

Michal Bires: This book is simple. You don't need to be expert, just to have common knowledge in Physics to understand, yet the explanation of topics crucial for higher understanding of especially QFT is very clear. Recommend this book for it's unique perspective from symmetry point of view. Also basic groups common in QFT are cristaly clear explained.

Germany on Feb 02, 2022

fjcaro: I've got a Master degree in nuclear physics but still i've got a lot of question unsolved about QFT and his applications.

This book has made me an incredible boost to improve mi knolewge of the matter and mainly a big perception about the group theory importance in the modern physics development and his deep consequences.

From first principles this book offers the perspective that there's not other way so simple to modelate de reality with so big consequences.

A must.

Spain on Oct 12, 2021

Matt N: I admired the premise of this book in terms of using symmetry as a starting point to see how the various pillars of physics like quantum mechanics, classical mechanics and electromagnetism are manifested and the connections between the subjects. In short, it is a masterpiece and actually demonstrates the line of thinking that most of my graduate physics professors only hinted at or suggested might be there (and I don't blame them, it's a deep and difficult topic that few have ventured into let alone mastered). Jakob walks a very fine line in trying to keep the math as simple as possible but also sufficiently powerful to connect and explain the ideas. The math is deep, there is no avoiding it at this level of exploration, but it's also very clearly annotated and described with the same clarity that other textbooks use to describe a simple pendulum. Keep in mind, this is not meant to be a quantum mechanics textbook or a reference for all of electromagnetism. The emphasis is on the origins of those areas, and the author does an amazing job. Bravo!

United States on Oct 06, 2021

Leeber Cohen: The review by MSE Fanatic is right on target. If you carefully read Chapter 3 on Lie Algebra behind the Lorentz and Poincare groups should become clearer. If you want to have a mathematical insight into spinors and spin this is a great place to start your study. This will help you approach the rotations,boosts, and translations seen in quantum field theory and other fields of physics. I would like to make clear exactly what math you need to get the most out of this book. As an example you will need to a clear understanding of tensor calculus, the Kronecker, Permutation tensors to understand math relating the K generator (formula 3.145 to 3.147) . The conversion between tensor format and matrices can be very confusing unless you have a foundation in both tensor calculus and linear algebra. (See author side note number 129). In places the author does a beautiful job demonstrating the switch from vector(tensor) format to matrix format.( Please see sections 3.157-3.158.) He also does a nice job of demonstrating the Taylor series for the first member of the Lorentz group. This would be a good time to refresh your memory on the hyperbolic sinh and cosh fuctions and series. In other...

United States on Mar 08, 2021

Alexis: É um bom livro para estudantes de graduação.

Brazil on Aug 07, 2020

Jean V.: I studied (did all calculations) the second edition of the book. The book aims at deriving the main equations of fundamental physics from symmetry principles. The book pursues this goal in a logic and clear way (a great number of calculations are done in detail), never drifting away from that goal. Having studied other books on symmetry, this purposefulness is quite unique. The book still has some flaws (which explains the missing star), but they are no reason to steer away from an insightful reading. I can testify that the author is easy to reach and that he welcomes comments and corrections. This is not always the case; I tried to send a long list of corrections to the author of another book on symmetry in physics: there was no contact information (no affiliation, no email address), and when I finally reached the author I was told my corrections where not welcomed!

Canada on Oct 29, 2019