Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics

by Kip S. Thorne, Roger D. Blandford

A groundbreaking text and reference book on twenty-first-century classical physics and its applicationsThis first-year graduate-level text and reference book covers the fundamental concepts and twenty-first-century applications of six major areas of classical physics that every masters- or PhD-level physicist should be exposed to, but often isn' statistical physics, optics (waves of all sorts), elastodynamics, fluid mechanics, plasma physics, and special and general relativity and cosmology. Growing out of a full-year course that the eminent researchers Kip Thorne and Roger Blandford taught at Caltech for almost three decades, this book is designed to broaden the training of physicists. Its six main topical sections are also designed so they can be used in separate courses, and the book provides an invaluable reference for researchers.

Presents all the major fields of classical physics except three classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and elementary thermodynamicsElucidates the interconnections between diverse fields and explains their shared concepts and toolsFocuses on fundamental concepts and modern, real-world applicationsTakes applications from fundamental, experimental, and applied physics; astrophysics and cosmology; geophysics, oceanography, and meteorology; biophysics and chemical physics; engineering and optical science and technology; and information science and technologyEmphasizes the quantum roots of classical physics and how to use quantum techniques to elucidate classical concepts or simplify classical calculationsFeatures hundreds of color figures, some five hundred exercises, extensive cross-references, and a detailed indexAn online illustration package is available

Genres: Physics, Science, Textbooks, Technical, Nonfiction, Mathematics, Academic

1552 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 4, 2013

About the author

Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist and writer known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.
A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and speaks of the astrophysical implications of the general theory of relativity. He continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.

Reviews

[Matt Heavner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed making the time to work through this. It would be fun to work through in a class, even more fun to teach. It was an interesting overview of "modern classical" physics. Lots of assumed knowledge (no real intro to particle physics / standard model, but required for several sections). Some of the chapters were very uneven in style and presentation.

A challenge, but a fun challenge.

Read through it close enough to find several typos.. ;)

In Chapter 1, I was told - we are all in on frame/basis free geometric representation, it is going to blow your mind and revolutionize your understanding of physics. I was ready! Chapter 4/5, it was back to coordinate systems. I didn't see the "pure geometry" in much of the rest of the book - there was lots of vector decomposition, non-full-tensor discussion. I was a bit underwhelmed from the setup, honestly.

I wondered if the whole book was just a setup for equation 7.31 - kinda funny/punny in a nerdy way.

There was several instances of really horrible notation - I think this was due to the "mash up" / coverage of so many different physics sub-fields. However, that is no excuse. This is the opportunity to do better, not propagate confusion! (p 571 - sigma vs sigma; p478 g vs g - no confusion at all if handwriting notes, for example)

Typo on page 1408!

And (for good cause), some gratuitous "hey, did I tell you about LIGO?"

[George Percivall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geometric Principle: laws of physics must all be expressible as geometric (coordinate-independent and reference-frame-independent) relationships between geometric objects (scalars, vectors, tensors, ...) that represent physical entities.

Einstein was led, not by experiment, but by philosophical and aesthetic arguments, to reject the incorporation of gravity into special relativity.

Gravitational-wave power output is roughly 10**24 times the luminosity of the Sun, and 10, 000 times the luminosity of all the stars in the universe!

[Leif Lui · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to share my thoughts on this my favorite text on classical physics. It's become my favorite because it covers topics that many other books don't. At the beginning, the authors emphasized that they would be taking a geometric approach to understanding mathematical concepts, which really resonated with me. There are many topics I could discuss, but I've chosen my 2 favorites.

The first topic I enjoyed learning about was elasticity theory. I found the discussion on elastodynamics waves and their relation to earthquakes particularly fascinating. I was surprised to learn that earthquakes could be modeled using biharmonic waves. Additionally I really enjoyed the discussion on nonlinearities and Love numbers, as this had some connection to my research in years to come.

Here's a fun fact: My graduate program supervisor was a student of Roger D. Blandford, one of the co-authors of this book, so technically I am Roger's "Academic Grand-Disciple." After asking Roger to sign my book, we had a discussion about this particular chapter. The motivation for writing it was that K. S. Thorne was based at Caltech and Roger at Stanford, and they experienced a lot of earthquakes.

The other topic I thoroughly enjoyed was the chapter on nonlinear optics. I especially liked the discussion on the modes of the Fabry-Perot interferometer used in the LIGO detectors. The figures depicting the angular patterns of the modes were truly beautiful. Moreover, I liked the fact that they were hinting that we needed quantum optics to understand the noise generated in gravitational-wave interferometers.

Another fun fact: When I was a visiting student at Caltech, I had the pleasure of meeting Kip Thorne for the first time, and it was truly a pleasure to chat with him, especially about gravitational-wave physics, for which he is a master.

Overall, I highly recommend this book for any graduate student, or perhaps an advanced undergraduate who has had previous exposure to classical mechanics.

[Sudip Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of exercises that walk you through interesting physical phenomena.