Probabilities of the Quantum World – Daniel Danin

Posted on July 21, 2012 by damitr 
What can take place of a particular interpretation? 
Only another interpretation - nothing else.

We now come to Daniel Danin‘s book titled Probabilities of the Quantum World.

The book traces the history of ideas in the conceptual development of Quantum Mechanics.

The opening chapter talks about how in the 1960s a group of scientists in Berkeley began an ambitious project to document the experiences of people who were still alive at that time and were part of the Quantum revolution. This group included eminent historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn and John Archibald Wheeler. Over the next three years this group did over 150 interviews with the remaining people.

“The quantum theory is very much like some victories” joked one of them:  ”for a month or two you are laughing and then you cry for long years.”

The book in the first two chapters tells you about struggles of Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Einstein at the beginning of the Quantum Revolution. The book has much to do with discussions of the Solvay Congress which led to many fruitful ideas of Quantum Mechanics. The historical roots of ideas of the Copenhagen interpretation are also discussed.

“Can quantum mechanics describe the fact that the electron is only approximately present at a given point and travels at a given velocity only approximately, and how far can we reduce this approximateness!”

 

You can get the book here. and here

Update: Jan 2020 Have added a new improved and a very clean scan at 600dpi.

All credits to the original uploader.

Update: Added Internet Archive link | 07 December 2015

Note: The scan quality is poor (though file size is large) maybe 100 dpi or less. OCR is not reliable and the text may be barely readable at times, definitely not so good for printing. If you have a better version please post.

And do post alternative links!

Sorry folks for the earlier  false post, it got published by error.

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Posted in books, history, mir books, mir publishers, physics, science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

World View!

Posted on July 11, 2012 by damitr

We have gone global now. Initially mostly people from India (though, even now they are majority) landed on the site, but now people from (almost) all parts of the world are visiting us! Just look at the visitor charts compiled over last two days:

… and apologies for trackers (WordPress Stats) on the site, which made these charts possible. They have been imposed, as we are using WP (on last count here are the 6 trackers that you might find on our site: Gravity Insights, Google Analytics, KissMetrics, Optimizley, Quantcast, Wodrpress Stats). In case you don’t know already what internet trackers are, then you must know, PLEASE take some time off to know more about them and how to beat them. If you are using Firefox (you should be using Firefox), then collusion provides a real time display of who is tracking you. Seeing for the first time how many people are tracking you, across different websites that you visit, and who is providing information to whom can be quite eerie and leave you cold.

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Energy and Entropy – Alekseev

Posted on July 8, 2012 by damitr

This title has been quite in demand, and rightly so! This is one of the most wonderful books that I have come across. So here it is!!

Energy and Entropy by G. A. Alekseev

Back cover of the book says:

With the discovery, between 1845 and 1847, of the principle of conservation of energy, the importance of energy for human life and progress was recognized, and scientists gave energy the romantic name of `The Queen of the World’. Some twenty years later scientists  discovered entropy, a measure of the dissipation of energy. This book outlines the history of the formulation of these two notions. Ideas and concepts that were crystallizing in the human mind for thousands of years as the result of observation, practical experience, and developments in technology are described, together with philosophers, scientists, engineers, and inventors who contributed to their formulation.

The book was translated from the Russian by U. M. Taube and was first published by Mir in 1986. I do not know of if it was translated in any Indian languages.

You can get the book here.

and here

PDF | OCR | 600 dpi | Bookmarked | Paginated | 208 pages | 17 MB

Update: Added Internet Archive Link | 07 December 2015

For magnet links/torrents go here.

 

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Posted in books, chemistry, history, mathematics, mir books, mir publishers, philosophy, physics, science, technology | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Relativity and Man – V. Smilga

Posted on July 7, 2012 by damitr 
Our task is to comprehend the purely physical essence 
of the theory, without going into problems which cannot
be explained here with sufficient clarity.

After seeing three books (RTG and STG) on General Relativity (GR) and one Special Theory of Relativity (STR), we come to yet another book on STR. In this post we will see a popular science book on STR titled Relativity and Man by V. Smilga. In other words this can be your first book on relativity, as opposed to the earlier three books 🙂

This book is about the special theory of relativity. A secondary schooling is adequate to understand it, but reading it calls for some mental concentration as well as an ability for mental abstraction. The unsophisticated reader may, therefore, find it difficult and boring. Nevertheless, since the discourse is abundantly interspersed with general statements and sundry examples and analogies, and insofar as most statements of fact are declared but not proved, the book can probably be classified as popular science reading.

The book in the first few chapters the classical concepts of Newtonian mechanics of length and time, so as to give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the paradoxes and “astonishing” results that we arrive at in STR. In my opinion the strangeness of results of STR (and for that matter of Quantum Mechanics also) paradoxes many times appears not so strange (they are just some theoretical results) to students, as they do not have much substantial understanding of the classical concepts themselves. So when something unexpected happens, the students are not in a position to appreciate that result well. Also discussed at length is the rise and fall of the stationary ether, and hence in this connection how the theories regarding light developed historically. The postulates of STR with their possible implications for observables (time, length) are discussed in details in the later chapters. The book has some really nice illustrations, ones that fit in a popular science book perfectly.

The book was translated from the Russian by V. Talmy and was designed by B. Zhutovsky. The book was published by Progress Publishers in 1964.

You can get the book here. and here

Update: 11 December 2015 | Added Internet Archive Link

PDF | OCR | 600 dpi| Bookmarked| Paginated| Covers | 356 pages| 20.4 MB

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Special Theory of Relativity – Ugarov

Posted on July 7, 2012 by damitr

After the two books on General Relativity (GR) viz. STG and RTG, we come to a great textbook on Special Theory of Relativity (STR). This one is by V. A. Ugarov titled Special Theory of Relativity. This book is a very comprehensive treatment of the Special Theory of Relativity with all advanced topics treated well. Also interesting is the article by V. L. Ginzburg (whose book Key Problems of Physics and Astrophysics we saw recently) which is  Who Developed Special theory of relativity and how? This may be of special importance to those who wish to know historical roots of development of relativity.

It is in this book that I first read about the superluminal speeds which are possible and are indeed result of STR. Section 8.1 deals with these phenomena and there are 5 of them discussed here. These are for real and are indeed observed in nature. For example the hot-spot in case of radio jets appeared to move at faster-than-speed-of-light. The easiest one which you can indeed do is to take a torch and make a spot on the wall, there is no limit on how fast the spot can travel. Let us see what Ugarov has to say on this topic:

Let us place a searchlight at the origin of coordinates and start rotating it at the angular velocity \Omega. Let us circumscribe a stationary sphere of radius c around the origin. Then the light spot will run along the surface of this sphere at the linear velocity v = \Omega c. This velocity can exceed the velocity of light. The example of such a beam is provided by a rotating pulsar. The light spot of the Crab Nebula pulsar runs along the Earth surface at the velocity equal approximately to 10^{22} m/s. But as in the previous cases no signal is transmitted at such a velocity. As a matter of fact, every point of a screen (the Earth) receives a new portion of light energy from a searchlight (pulsar), but not from a neighbouring point of the screen. Therefore, it is impossible to transmit information from one point of the screen to another.

The 4-forms, electrodynamics, transformations are discussed with substantial emphasis on the physical meaning. These kind of discussions make this book a wonderful resource to learn.

The book was translated from the Russian by Yuri Atanov and was first published by Mir in 1979.

All credits to the original uploader, thanks to atisundar for providing this link.

You can get the book here. 

and

French version here

and here

Update: 11 December 2015 | Added Internet Archive Link

Get the magnet link/torrent here.

 

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Posted in astronomy, books, history, mathematics, mir books, mir publishers, physics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Space Time Gravitation – Vladimirov, Mitskiévich, Horský

Posted on July 7, 2012 by damitr 
However, the main difference between this and other popularizations
is the third chapter, in which the authors try get to grips with
subjects such as cosmological singularities, generalizations of 
Einstein's gravitational theory, the quantization of gravitational 
fields, and the dimensionality of space-time.

After seeing some heavy stuff on Relativistic Theory of Gravitation (RTG) in the last post, we come to yet another book on General Relativity (GR) which is titled Space Time Gravitation by Yu. Vladimirov, N. Mitskiévich, J. Horský.

This book is basically divided into three sections which are aptly titled Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and they discuss the historical aspects, current situation and future advances respectively regarding GR. The back cover of the book says:

An historical survey of our ideas about space, time and gravitation. In three chapters, the authors consider how space and time were perceived from ancient times to the present (as marked by the publication of Einstein’s theory of relativity) how they are now perceived, and finally how this field of mathematics and physics might develop in the future. Although there are many presentations of our current understanding of this subject on the market, the topics covered in the second chapter of the book are not those usually examined. However, the main difference between this and other
popularizations is the third chapter, in which the authors try get to grips with subjects such as cosmological singularities, generalizations of Einstein’s gravitational theory, the quantization of gravitational fields, and the dimensionality of space-time.

Written for students and professionals specializing in
physics or related sciences.

The book was translated from the Russian by A. G. Zilberman and edited by F. I. Fedorov. This book was first published by Mir in 1987.

You can get the book here. and here

PDF | OCR | 600 dpi | Cover | Bookmarked| Paginated | 220 pages | 19.5 MB

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Posted in astronomy, books, history, mathematics, mir books, mir publishers, physics, science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Relativistic Theory of Gravitation – Logunov, Mestvirishvili

Posted on July 7, 2012 by damitr 
The gravitational field is constructed as a physical field in the 
spirit of Faraday and Maxwell, and this field has energy, momentum, 
and spins 2 and 0.

In this post we see book titled The Relativistic Theory of Gravitation by A. A. Logunov and M. A. Mestvirishvili.If you think the title is a bit scary, then it is. Without a proper background in General Relativity (GR) and associated subjects (tensor calculus, etc.) this book is not readable. The topics are mostly at advanced level and already assumes that the reader is familiar and well acquainted with the subject. In other words this is not the first  book to be  read on the subject. It is a rigorous presentation of a gravitational theory which differs from results of the Einstein’s version of General Relativity.

This book presents the authors’ Relativistic Theory of Gravitation

In this book we give a detailed exposition of the relativistic theory of gravitation or RTG, developed in Logunov, 1986, Logunov and Mestvirishvili 1984 , 1985a , 1985b, 1986b , Vlasov and Logunov, 1984, an d Vlasov , Logunov, and Mestvirishvili, 1984 . In these works RTG bas been built unambiguously, using as a basis the relativity principle, the gauge principle, and the geometrization principle.The gravitational field is constructed as a physically in the spirit of Faraday and Maxwell, and this field has energy, momentum, and spins 2 and 0. RTG revives the concept of a classical gravitational field that no choice of reference frame can destroy since it is a material substratum. The gauge principle is formulated on the basis of the local infinite dimensional non-commutative group of super-coordinate transformation.

The theory considered here rigorously obeys the laws of conservation of energy momentum and angular momentum for matter and gravitational field taken together. It also describes the entire body of gravitational experiments. We show that Einstein’s formula for gravitational waves, (15.56 ),  follows directly from the theory. In analysing the evolution of the universe, RTG concludes that the universe is infinite and “flat” and predicts a large “latent” mass in it. This “latent” mass exceeds the observable mass of the universe by a factor of 40.

We also show that in general relativity, GR, there are no fundamental laws of conservation of energy -momentum and angular momentum of matter and gravitational field taken together, with the result that the inertial mass defined in GR is not equal to the active gravitational mass. We have established that GR gives no definite predictions concerning gravitational effects. Finally, in GR the gravitational field is not a physical field possessing an energy-momentum density. Consequently, Einstein’s formula (15.56) for gravitational waves does not follow from GR.

The book was translated from the Russian by Eugene Yankovsky and was first published by Mir in 1989.

You can get the book here. and here

All credits to the original uploader.

For magnet links/ torrents go here.

PDF | OCR | Cover (Front Only) | 37 MB | Pagination | Bookmarks| 235 Pages

Page: 103 missing

Note: The scan quality is poor (though file size is large) maybe 100 dpi or less. OCR is not reliable and the text is barely readable at times. This is especially true when there is a lot of tensor notation. See sample below. Maybe we should LaTeX it! If anyone has access to a better link please post the link.

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Posted in astronomy, books, mathematics, mir books, mir publishers, physics, science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

From Crystal to Solution – Krestov, Kobenin

Posted on July 4, 2012 by damitr 
Crystal and solution. The two words often go together. Crystals of 
salts dissolve in water, and saturated solutions of mineral salts 
precipitate crystals ...

We now come to a wonderful little book titled From Crystal to Solution by G. A. Krestov, V. A. Kobenin and edited by P. B. Dobrotin.

The editor says in the Preface:

Fascinated as we are with the perfect beauty of a snow flake, we must remember that when it melts on the palm to turn into water, its inner structure is not fully destroyed but only becomes invisible to the eye. The structure persists in the mutual arrangement of molecules, in the intricate ice-like structure of liquid water …

As substances dissolve in water, they occupy their own “apartments” in this invisible but orderly “molecular building” partly destroying its separate sections and partly introducing their own new order around the ions and molecules.

So it is not for nothing that crystal and solution are put together in the title of this book. They are related and the modern scientist believes that the study of the close connections between them will give him the clue to understanding the nature of solution, which is perhaps the most important state of matter.

The book was translated from the Russian by A. Rosinkin and was first published by Mir Publishers in 1980.

You can get the book here.

and here

PDF | OCR | 600 dpi | Paginated | Bookmarked | Cover (Front Only) | 145 Pages |8.3 MB

Update: Added Internet Archive Link | 04 December 2015

For magnet link/ torrent go here.

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Posted in books, chemistry, mir publishers, science | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Trigonometric Functions – Problem Solving Approach

Posted on July 4, 2012 by damitr

We now come to another Problems and solutions book titled Trigonometric Functions (Problem Solving Approach) by A. Panchishkin and E. Shavgulidze.

The  back cover says:

This study aid is to help the student to master the basic techniques of solving difficult problems in trigonometry. The book contains theoretical material, many worked competition problems, and some problems to be solved independently (the answers being at end of the book.) Intended for high-school and precollege students.

The book has some interesting things, for example it introduces the trigonometric functions as a feature of a trigonometric circle instead of a right-angled triangle as many books do. Also the second chapter (Identical Transformations of Trigonometric Expressions) will help you understand many combination formulae (which we learn by heart in many cases without understanding). Chapter 4 (Investigating Trigonometric Functions) treats the trigonometric functions graphically and analyzes the meaning of graphs, also with help of their derivatives.

The book was translated from the Russian by Leonid Levant and was first published by Mir in 1988. This book also has an ISBN Number 5030002227.

You can get the book here. and here

PDF | OCR | Bookmarked | Paginated | 300 dpi | Cover | 9 MB

Update: 11 December 2015 | Added Internet Archive Link

For magnet link / torrent go here.

 

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Posted in books, mathematics, mir books, mir publishers | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Key Problems of Physics and Astrophysics – Vitaly L. Ginzburg

Posted on July 4, 2012 by damitr 
This unusual book is a rare personal exploration of a wide range 
of current physics and astrophysics by a distinguished scientist; 
it was planned to educate budding scientists on important new
topics. 

The book is excellent reading for intelligent undergraduates and 
for graduates facing a decision on the field in which they will 
work. It should prove an education for specialized research 
scientists, teachers and Federal-agency decision-makers and
planners.

The discovery of Higg’s Boson was done today (04 July 2012), we would see a book whose title resonates with the meaning of this discovery. In this post have a book by Vitaly L. Ginzburg titled Key Problems of Physics and Astrophysics.

About the book author says:

 “I came to the decision to write this book having in mind that there was so much interesting in various areas of physics and astrophysics and yet many budding physicists and students were not aware of this and could hardly find out for themselves. So I decided to do something constructive in this way, to describe briefly some urgent problems of physics and astrophysics.”

One of the reviewers of the book in Physics Today (July 1977) says following about the author:

Ginzburg is a generalist whose encyclopedic reading and depth permit coverage of a variety of such novel, specialized material. He uses order-of-magnitude (nearly dimensional) formulas, sufficient to provide quantitative estimates. He appreciates the experimenter’s contribution. The book provides a model of how non-theorists can judge what realms of theory may be illuminated by work in a new range of photon and particle energy, how new technologies may be used to good effect.

The book has three sections dealing with Macrophysics, Microphysics and Astrophysics and in the end is full of references for each of the fields.

This book was translated from the Russian by Oleg Glebov and was first published by Mir in 1976 with a revised and enlarged edition in 1978. Link below is for 1978 print.

You can get the book here. and here

Update: 06 December 2015 | Added Internet Archive Link

 

For torrent/magnet link go here.

Please seed, share the torrent.

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Posted in astronomy, books, mir books, mir publishers, physics, science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments