In this post, we will see the book Questions and Answers in School Physics by Lev Tarasov and Aldina Tarasova. This post is for the LaTeX version of the book, earlier scanned book can be found here.
This book holds a special place for me, as this book helped me understand many subtle points in physics. Also, this was the first book that I have ever scanned and had added to gigapedia when it was extant. Also, this was one of the first books that I took to typeset in LaTeX, almost a decade back, but gave up after many attempts and the project was untouched for several years. At end of 2019 I restarted the work and here we are.
One major challenge remains to convert the 130 odd diagrams to purely LaTeX using TikZ. I have done this for some figures (~6-7), but most of them are from the scans. I will do it as and when time allows. And of course you are free to contribute as well. Any help in this regard would be highly appreciated.
I have done a round of copy-editing, but still minor typos may exist here and there, (hopefully there are no major typos or screw-ups). So do report if you find any. Earlier scan had two pages which were missing (pages 36-37), they have been added in the current version, so this version is complete. We have also re-scanned the full page figures of section heads and coloured them. Many thanks to psmitak for the scans!
About the typesetting
The typesetting was fun, and I am pleased with the results. A lot of help was derived from questions on tex.stackexchange.com.
The main font used isURW-Garamond with mathdesign, while the sans font is TeX Gyre Adventor. The template used for the typesetting is tufte-book and the paper size is b5. The colour scheme used is Maroon and SteelBlue from svgnames of xcolor package of LaTeX along with DarkGray. I have, at times, highlighted questions using Maroon and answers or pedagogically significant remarks using SteelBlue. This is mostly done, if not completely done. Hope that this typeset version is helpful!
PS: Next in line is Tarasov’s Basic Concepts of Quantum Mechanics – one round is done, final copy-editing is currently in progress. A few glimpses from that project:
Mir Books 
Hi Mitr
I’d like to volunteer for diagram conversion if you still need help.
Quick disclaimer though I am a complete noob with LaTeX but I have heard about it and will learn it if needed.
LikeLike
Thanks for the comment. Please have a look at the source files and acquaint yourself with LaTeX. Drawing figures with TikZ might take some practice (and a lot of time at times). Happy LaTeXing
LikeLike
Hey Mitr any suggestions for study references for latex/tikz?
LikeLike
For LaTeX perse use a graphical editor (texmaker if on GNU/Linux or windows), texshop if you are on Mac. There is
A (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX which is good for basics
https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/
There is a minimal TikZ document which introduces very basics this should get you going. The TikZ PGF manual also has some introductory tutorials in the initial sections
But be warned it is ~1200 pages !covering a variety of things that TikZ-PGF can do! You would be surprised the kind of things that TikZ is capable of.
Both the documents can be found at
https://www.ctan.org/pkg/pgf
You can use some GUI programs like TikZit or QTikZ/KTikZ to help you.
Another approach to producing TikZ graphics is to draw them in applications like GeoGebra or Inkscape and then export to TikZ. Though this typically produces files which have a lot of redundant commands, you can clean these files to get a much smaller TikZ code.
LikeLike
Great book
LikeLike
Hir Mitr.
This book is a masterpiece for me. It helped me so much on truly understanding some concepts on physics, specially because some of them happened on entrance exams I’ve done almost 10 years ago. I still advice on studying strategies, and now I’m finishing a book of advises, on which I’ve put this book on the “getting deeper” category.
I’d like to contribute to your project. Today I’m a data scientist, and I’m familiar with LaTeX, and I’ve already draw a line or two with TikZ.
LikeLike
Thanks for the reply. You can see some of the figures that I have drawn in TikZ in the gitlab repo. There are many packages that can substantially reduce the amount of work for certain figures. For example, tkz-euclide op pgf-optics. See which chapter you would like to work on.
LikeLike
Cool. I’ve just looked the files. I’ll give a try on figures of chapter 3 (figures 15 to 17), since it looks like you’ve draw until figure 10. Maybe we could use a telegram group to talk better.
LikeLike
Thank you very much for all the efforts you are taking to do this. Really appreciate it.
LikeLike
Hello, my friend. I think I can help you with the figures. Please send me an email 🙂
japbcoelho@hotmail.com
LikeLike