Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: The Theoretical Minimum 1st Edition

To enjoy this book a basic foundation is required in partial differential equations, wave theory, tensors, and Maxwell's equations. This is obviously a small audience. If you have a background in these areas, this book is an enjoyable read. It ties together electromagnetism, special relativity, and tensor math. Susskind's presentation of basic tensor math is way too brief. He does have many excellent teaching points, but if you do not have the basics down he does skip steps. If you do not know some basics of tensor math and manipulation, you are not going to learn it here. If you are interested in this learning this material and do not have that background I would suggest Fleish's "A Student's Guide to Vectors and Tensors, Fleish's "A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations", Fleisch's and Kinnaman's "A Student's Guide to Waves".All three books have multiple solved problems on the publisher's website that should give you the background to make this book an easier read.. Bernacchi's "Tensors Made Easy", has had mixed reviews but I found the solved problems very useful. As mentioned by other reviewers, you will need to understand Lagrangians which are covered in the first book in this series. The solved problems for this text are not available on the web. This is a major problem with this publisher. In this day of rampant viruses, you should not have to surf the web to find solved problems. This series is not written as textbooks. Many of us do not have teaching assistants to check our work and help us. If you have the background this book may be useful. If you do not have the background it may be very frustrating.

This is the three book in the series I have read. The first book set up a lot of the mathematical machinery used here, namely the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian along with conservation laws and symmetries.I struggled a bit with the second book on quantum mechanics - have to go back and have another crack at that one.But this one was REALLY good. The setup of the book was so logical and the mathematical development was so well paced that I could feel much greater mathematical sophistication that helped me to anticipate many of the subsequent developments. Now, I will not say that I could erase all the equations and mathematical reasoning segments from the book, and as an exercise, recreate them from memory, calculation, and my own reasoning, but I will say that if you go over the material at a comfortable pace and are willing to look back a chapter or two or three to remind yourself of some key detail, you will be very well rewarded with a view into special relativity, electrodynamics, and classical field theory.Now back to Quantum.I cannot wait for General Relativity to come out. Chapter 11 seemed like almost like a cliffhanger to change gears into gravitational field theory.In your reference frame, take the time to read this book. As for general relativity, when it comes out, You Bet Your Life I will read that one.

Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman's Volume III of the Theoretical Minimum is a great geek read for those who want explore how to take basic Maxwellian E&M and Special Relativity to a Lagrangian-tensor packaging. Besides gaining some physical insights and learning about elegant mathematical approaches, this helps set the stage for particle physics and quantum field theory. For example, books such as M.Y. Han’s “From Photons to Light” use this formulation of E&M as a starting point. The tensor notation that is introduced and used to condense both Maxwell’s equations and those of Special Relativity helps provide a smoother connection to a future volume discussing General Relativity.The description of how to apply Lagrangian concepts to the domain of fields provides good insight into how a physicist of Susskind’s stature approaches a problem.Regarding magnetic monopoles in Appendix A, Groucho Marx once commented “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

Easy to follow logical narrative completely ruined by poor formatting of the equations where they form part of the text. E.g. one half 1/2 is rendered as 12, x squared as x2 so one half x squared is rendered as 12x2. Parentheses are not displayed either making the equations very difficult to decipher. Shame because the author's style is very readable.

The climax of this book is the derivation of the laws of electrodynamics from the action principle. It is assumed that your starting point is Theoretical Minimum Vol 1, where the action principle for non-relativistic particles was introduced. For electrodynamics, the action principle must be extended to incorporate the 4-dimensional space-time of special relativity. Crucially, the electrodynamic Lagrangian must now also satisfy Lorentz invariance, as well as gauge invariance. Furthermore, Noether symmetry and the Hamiltonian from Vol 1 are also used to derive their field equivalents: the electromagnetic energy and momentum densities. It’s quite a journey, and along the way this reader was very gently led through all the necessary background (special relativity, space-time, scalar invariants, tensors, extension of Euler-Lagrange to fields, and more) until the exhilarating moment of seeing Maxwell’s equations fall out from the the equations. It was all new to me, and it was a truly unforgettable experience, for which I thank the authors from the bottom of my heart.I don’t want to grouch – O! How I hate to, but if I may make a suggestion? Namely, that future editions include a kind of roadmap or summary to indicate where and how the various concepts link to each other. Maybe even just a glossary of the most important terms would help the reader not lose their way.

This book is nothing short of amazing; Susskind manages to explain a complicated topic in an accessible way, and I enjoyed every page. It's helped a lot with my Physics degree! I love how this book doesn't shy away from equations (whereas usually popular science books do).

It leads you in bite-size chunks through the proper maths of the subject that I've always been frustrated that is missing from other "pop-science" books. I can follow most of it though it is slightly beyond my grasp, but it has given me another layer of understanding about how this stuff fits together.I've been wishing for some time that someone would write this and now they have :)(This and the one on Quantum Mechanics)

excellent read arrived promptly