19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Plasma Goodness, Aug 2 2005
By P. Leblanc "TFG" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Fundamentals of Plasma Physics (Hardcover)
I'm currently a student working in plasma research facility. I had a problem in the fact that I could not take the plasma physics course that is offered here for scheduling reasons. I therefor needed a book that has all the basics of plasma physics, yet is simple enough that i could teach myself this field of physics. This books is exactly that. For any student with a good background in electricity and magnetism, this book will pick up right from the maxwell equations and derives all the needed equations quite explicitly making the reading much easier to follow. Also, the good thing about this book is the sheer amount of material it covers on the topic. It contains all the basics an undergrade needs to know and even for graduate students, it is a great read. It is well written and never boring. For it's explicitness and it's broadness of topics, I absolutely recomend this book.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Book, Self Study Friendly, July 26 2009
By Moto - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Fundamentals of Plasma Physics (Hardcover)
I have worked through a self study/directed reading course with this book and I can say that I enjoyed it. I think the statement made in the description of the book about 'emphasizing physical meaning' more than formality is a bit of a stretch. The book does have a great reading flow, but there are many times where just a short sentence detailing the geometric/physical meaning would make the reading go by so much faster. There were a few times where I had to spend 30+ minutes straightening out a claim made by the author that would have been resolved in two minutes with a another sentence and some reflection on my part. With that said, this book is still in the top tier of any physics book I have read, not the best, but it is still done very well. I enjoyed the detail that was gone into in the mathematical development - there is not much hand waving here. The bottom line is, if you are looking for a detailed mathematical approach to plasma physics (heavy calculus), this might be your book.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, Nov 15 2007
By F. Scharf - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Fundamentals of Plasma Physics (Hardcover)
I am a PhD student in Electrical Engineering, focussing on plasma physics. I have access to a lot of text books, and normally you find that one book is good for topic A, but not so good for topic B. However, in this book I could find all the topics that were of interest to me (in particular the Boltzmann equation and its moments), well-written and easy to understand.
Calculations are easy to follow and normally are explained by physical explanations using text and figures. The notation is reader-friendly, tensor analysis is avoided by using indices instead.
The book is a text book, so one should not expect the latest and most detailed science results, or derivations "from scratch" (like the BBGKY hierarchy). Instead, the reader should expect a solid and detailed introductory text into plasma physics that covers a large amount of topics.
To conclude, I can only recommend this book to every grad or undergrad student looking for a book to start with, or to brush up on some basics.