--- "automathman" <mchase133125MI@...> wrote:
> --- "herbmartin52" <herbmartin@> wrote:
> > I wonder if anyone has read and can comment on these:
> >
> > "A Unified Grand Tour of Theoretical Physics", 2nd edition
> I've had this book on my shelf for years.
> Tried again and again to make heads-or-tails of most of it.
> Felt pretty lost until RTR cam around.
> I'm now finding it pretty easy to "get",
> and think it is a pretty good "short summart reference",
> if you have enough basics to use it.
>
> ..which I did not until penrose kindly provided them.

Excellent info. It's on my wish list already.

> I recently read "The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard
> Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics"

> which I thought was going to be useless, it kind of dragged on in the
> beginning without getting into any real meat. (talked about what it
> was going to talk about, etc...), but about half way through it got
> pretty good. Particularly the info about Schwinger and his version of
> QFT. And of course the role symmetry groups play, SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1),
> the "recipe" for creating a QFT given a lagrangian, and the lagrangian
> for the standard model

I bought it and have it "in the queue" (along with about 20,000 other
pages but it is relatively near the top <grin>).


Thanks for the info.

I am still looking for better Group Theory stuff (I have a ton from
the Internet and some purchased books), something short and really
sweet on Langrangian and/or Hamiltonian methods, as well as more and
better Gauge/Fiber stuff.

It seems that I am pretty much on top of Relativity and Tensors
(doesn't mean I know it all but it isn't that hard to read and
understand*) and to some extent the basics of Quantum Mechanics (same
caveat*), but I need better conceptual hold on these other areas to
move to the more advanced areas, especially Field theory on both sides.

*Last year I learned Spanish (before taking on RTR) and one of the
important milestones was to reach what I call "critical mass" (it was
a better metaphor when not on a Physics list <grin>) in being able to
READ interesting books with the slight help of a dictionary.

Spanish is a relatively easy languages for English speakers
(especially those who have ever studied another foreign language) and
so this only took about two months for Spanish, but I didn't reach
this level in Arabic after some six months even though I could read
the characters well enough but slowly.

Spanish has an almost totally regular pronunciation so with just a bit
of training one can "read out loud" to someone to a native who will
understand even if the student does not. This helps a lot when trying
to reach that critical mass of being able to read INTERESTING books in
the language and thus being able to learn while actively enjoying the
effort expended -- thus my reason for the digression.

Penrose has given us the opportunity to reach or at least approach and
discern that critical point where "reading is fun" in the subjects
covered.

BTW, it isn't strictly about unusual characters, Russian is entirely
regular and easy too, but while Arabic is regular the combination of
NO SHORT VOWELS (you have to know the language and grammar to figure
them out) and cursive only scripts makes learning to read on one's own
a real chore. (Learning to read slowly and type the characters only
took a couple of weeks so it is NOT the mere difference you would expect.)

To 'pay the postage' for my digression here is a nice link from
one of those wikis I mentioned previously:

Introduction to Quantum Theory
http://www.quantiki.org/wiki/index.php/Introduction_to_Quantum_Theory

--
Herb