(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best nuclear physics books

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

I just finished reading Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, which I highly recommend. It's truly fascinating.

I'm reading "Shapes and Shells in Nuclear Structure" by Nillson and Ragnarsson. I've had to stop and learn some quantum mechanics because I haven't taken any classes on modern physics yet (only physics 1 and 2) but I figure if a physics sophomore like me can read it and comprehend most of it, then anybody with a basic understanding of quantum mechanics should do well with it. It's meant as a "first course in theoretical nuclear physics", if that is what you are interested in.

You'll love the subject, though. I know I did. After you learn yourself some normal optics and take upper division quantum mechanics, you should pick up Quantum Optics. It's a really interesting subject and you can start seeing light in a fashion more consistent with quantum field theory.

I think from my rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics that the probabilistic model is currently more favoured by physicists since the work of Heisenberg. I'm reading a really cool book called The Particle Hunters which is about the history of particle physics. It mentions this paradigm shift from a deterministic to a probabilistic universe and explains it quite well.

I can recommend couple that I have read myself:

• The Particle Garden
  
• The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider
  
  Edit: These are popular science books, though. But very well written.

My University has one of the best nuclear physics programs in the country, and This is what we use (I'm a first year undergrad in physics, so I don't have any personal experience with this text, but I figured maybe I could still offer an option. :) ).

Great article, the work that Knorr Cetina is doing at CERN is sometimes called embedded humanism.

An older book (but good!) is Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists

I recommend this for more Radiotherapy.

As for what to read before placement, that really depends on what department you will be placed in nuclear, ultrasound, mri, RT, protection. To cover all of that is a big ask. Find out what department you will be placed in 1st! Also feel free to PM for any notes you may require!

Subatomic Physics by Henley and Garcia is a very accessible book. We're using it for our upper div nuclear physics series and it's been very good so far. It's not very rigorous but will teach you nuclear physics very well. I see used copies for about $15 on amazon currently.

http://www.amazon.com/Subatomic-Physics-Ernest-M-Henley/dp/9812700560/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301974962&sr=8-1

I've been reading Gauge Theories in Particle Physics: A Practical Introduction, Fourth Edition. You can find previous editions pretty cheap. I've found it to be pretty enjoyable and easy to understand. There is a lot of complicated math, but that's inevitable when covering this topic.

Ed Storms (as far as I know his organization is "LENRGY, LLC, Santa Fe, NM, USA) On the site dedicated to his latest book "LENR Explained" about his theory, Edmund Storms published this announce with a PROGRESS REPORT #1 and PROGRESS REPORT #2

Hydroton theory validation calorimeter




Edmund Storms will publish soon a 3rd progress report on LENRexplained.com. He observed and corrected a calorimeter drift, caused by "curing". It was observed during a routine recalibration. He also worked on PdAg alloy preparation which is not easy (needs H2-O2 flame), the activation of the surface (needs avoid Cl contamination) and measurement of composition by EDX... To appreciate what he has done, some may want to read this Student guide to cold fusion or his big book

You remind me a lot of those guys at the party who want to sound smart in areas they have superficial knowledge of.

ok! so, this is a good intro to the 5 dimensional theory http://www.weylmann.com/kaluza.pdf

Once you've read that this is a nice one http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9805018v1.pdf

other than that I can recommend you papers but they might not be easy to find. Many of the best ones are in http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Kaluza-Klein-Theories-Frontiers-Physics/dp/0201098296 as you may see the book is ridiculously expensive. Nonetheless my uni had it so you might be lucky...

This book takes a great deal about this. https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Adventures-Islands-Forgotten-Isotopic/dp/153842617X

cheng&li
I loved this book

I've thought about learning some of it off of wikipedia, but I feel like the first article I read with spring up about 30 more articles I need to read to understand the first. I purchased this book which has a chapter or two on quantum mechanics, dealing with the wave nature of matter.

Do you have any recommendations on a decent introductory book? My class is using Quantum Chemistry by McQuarrie if you're familiar.

Depends on the method and your level of knowledge. I personally enjoyed the two books from Martin: Electronic Structure and Interacting Electrons. He does go into detail about the numerical methods, not only the physics.

Well, I don't mind reading a few equations. My former institute would be ashamed of me if I couldn't even do that.

Let me clarify. By "non-mathematical", I don't want to read pages and pages of derivations, justifications, and proofs. I want to get a book with excellent qualitative descriptions of the particles, their functions, the stories behind their discoveries, experimental descriptions of the verification of each one, and how they interact with each other.

I've been looking at these few titles:

http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Model-Primer-Cliff-Burgess/dp/0521860369

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Standard-Model-Particle-Physics/dp/0521852498/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342797161&sr=1-2&keywords=standard+model

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Elementary-Particles-David-Griffiths/dp/3527406018/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b


Do you any experience with these few?

Physics of the Atom by Wehr, Richards, and Adair has a chapter on blackbody radiation and the photoelectron effect, if you are just looking for the basics. You probably need to consult something more practical like a semiconductor physics book to see how it is used in devices.

It was also a book cover before the Strokes album:

The Particle Garden by Gordon Kane:
http://www.amazon.com/Particle-Garden-Universe-Understood-Physicists/dp/0201408260

Expect the ebst as usual.
His previous book,
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Energy-Nuclear-Reaction-Comprehensive/dp/9812706208
is a reference, and by the way readable.

Thats it for purely skeptic books, but some other science ones are

EDIT: Found this page http://www.csicop.org/si/show/skeptical_books_for_children_and_young_adults/

Uncle Albert

http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Quantumland-Allegory-Quantum-Physics/dp/0387914951/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381345002&sr=8-1&keywords=alice+in+quantum+land

http://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Universe-Not-so-Grimm-cosmology/dp/0387955666/ref=la_B001ILHHJM_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381345017&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Quarks-Fantasy-Particle-Physics/dp/0387950710/ref=la_B001ILHHJM_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381345017&sr=1-2