Good books and other sources

Nuclear related topics

Good books and other sources

Postby Doug Coulter » Thu Jul 15, 2010 7:43 pm

My favorite books on basic nuclear physics tend to be older ones from before the era of sub-nuclear physics got going. They seem to be more clear, and down to earth with data and equations mortals can work with to get designs working, and the basics well understood. Outstanding in this area is

David Halliday
Introductory Nuclear Physics

John Wiley and sons
3042-000052-4615
Printed in Japan, the Asia series.

One gripe I have about newer books is the non-mention of mixed unit systems so the physicist can avoid writing Pi or C into an equation, as some of the conversions have them in them -- if you know which units were used for each variable. To a guy who wants a numeric answer, this is a real pain to sort through, especially if the use of mixed units to make an equation appear "more elegant" isn't mentioned. There's very little of that in this book, and where there is, there are practical examples to check sanity with if you guess the units wrong.

John Strong
Procedures in Experimental Physics

Lost technology series, Lindsay Publications
ISBN 0-917914-56-2

Is simply a classic, quite old. I spent some time duping the experiments here myself, there's a lot of good technique in this one that is still useful today. Remember, what was "rocket science" then is now accessible to the normal experimenter....this doesn't have much new, but the old stuff is still correct and this tends to give details on real techniques that other references leave out (perhaps because they don't know themselves). For the last too-many years, all the technique stuff seems to have gone into expensive copyrighted journals instead...sad, since in most cases we paid for the work with our tax dollars.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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