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Particle Physics, 2nd Edition | 
 enlarge | Authors: B. R. Martin, Graham Shaw
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $65.00
Buy New: $58.50
You Save: $6.50 (10%)
New (10) Used (7) from $32.00
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 423325
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0471972851
Dewey Decimal Number: 539
EAN: 9780471972853
ASIN: 0471972851
Publication Date: August 28, 1997
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Product Description
Particle Physics, Second Edition is a concise and lucid account of the fundamental constituents of matter. The standard model of particle physics is developed carefully and systematically, without heavy mathematical formalism, to make this stimulating subject accessible to undergraduate students. Throughout, the emphasis is on the interpretation of experimental data in terms of the basic properties of quarks and leptons, and extensive use is made of symmetry principles and Feynman diagrams, which are introduced early in the book. The Second Edition brings the book fully up to date, including the discovery of the top quark and the search for the Higgs boson. A final short chapter is devoted to the continuing search for new physics beyond the standard model. Particle Physics, Second Edition features:
* A carefully structured and written text to help students understand this exciting and demanding subject.
* Many worked examples and problems to aid student learning. Hints for solving the problems are given in an Appendix.
* Optional "starred" sections and appendices, containing more specialised and advanced material for the more ambitious reader.
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| Customer Reviews:
Quite useless October 27, 2006
Cybertronian (Finland)
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have used the book as a lecture assistent, and helped students during class sessions to work out some selected problems from the book. The problems are quite all right, and hints to all exercises are in the back of the book, well actually their not hints but like shovels to the forehead! You just have to xerox them onto paper, some additional remarks or rephrasings and you're done technically.
The text, however, is awful, although, it's easy to read. The book is designed for undergraduates with minor knowledge of quantum mechanics, but if you don't know a lot of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, almost all interesting pieces come out of the blue including formulas and their "derivations". What is in this book can be learnt from popular science books on particle physics. Of course, you will miss out on the formulas, but at least you think you can understand it and you will see the historical development.
For example, P-parity, C-parity, CP-invariance and violation, CPT-theorem, weak & quark mixing, weak selection rules, decay rates, etc. are all ill-defined or not at all, so really understanding them is impossible:
(*) Parity is discussed for fermions without stating the Dirac equation, which does not give much insight to its origin and relevance. A discussion of fermions without it is useless, unless you use only the Pauli principle and some loose arguments that are dropped as experimental facts.
(*) The decay rate is never defined (properly) in the book, although many numerical values are given throughout the book for certain processes. Moreover, two exercises in the 10th chapter ask you to show that two decay rates are equal under certain conditions, which is quite impossible, if you don't know what it actually is that you should try to prove.
Some topics are done too briefly, because the authors don't want to be too technical, but feel they cannot leave things out:
(*) Drawing Feynman diagrams is discussed nicely, but the "notation" for certain propagators and external lines is not in accordance with literature. The purely topological aspect of these diagrams is competely neglected, so it's merely presented as a "neat thingy to do without any particular reason", unfortunately.
(*) The gauge principle is mentioned and shown for electromagnetism very briefly and in non-covariant form, but it does not deal with it properly: either mention it and leave it, or do it properly, but don't create a cliff-hanger and then cut the safety rope.
I know this book is not intended to give undergraduates complete understanding of particle physics, but I cannot recommend it, unless you want to know some "tricks" in processes before you do the real deal in QFT courses. The effort Martin & Shaw have made is nice, the result isn't.
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