Solid state physics
by Neil W. Ashcroft · first published 1976
8mentions
2recommended by
7HN commenters
2009–2025first – last mentioned
29% recommend71% neutral
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…tariffs?) maybe some worthwhile management books could be extended into a podcast series, I'd say Quality is Free by Phillip Crosby Then there are some books that really could change your life, say Solid State Physics by Ashcroft and Mermin The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth Principles of Compiler Design by Aho and Ullman Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnell The Mushroom…
on “Ask HN: What podcast episodes changed the way you think about startups?” ↗…book Gravitation.) Similarly Super System will change your life if you are serious about playing poker, otherwise it's just a fun read like the D&D Monster Manual I'd say that Ashcroft and Mermin's Solid State Physics was a great adventure even if I didn't end up doing physics in the end, but I was a grad student in condensed matter and I took Ashcroft's class. When I was wanting to explore the edges of applied philosophy…
on “Ask HN: What 3 Books Would You Recommend to Anyone?” ↗So this is why Mermin and Ashcroft's Solid State Physics has been one of the standard graduate texts for the field since it was published in '76. According to Wikipedia Lev Landau ranked physicists on a log scale - Newton was 0, Einstein 1 and Mermin placed…
on “Writing Physics” ↗…Classes come with books, and instructors are meant to help the student understand and integrate the knowledge and wisdom within those books. These words remind me of my introductory class in graduate solid state physics. The instructor was teaching the course for the first time, or at least the first time in a while. His lectures were very difficult to follow, the notes we took weren't of much use, and he hadn't calibrated…
on “Being a student isn't easy, it requires actual work” ↗…endlessly about whether that is 'the best' interpretation (which ethical assumptions does your 'the best' presuppose?) but fortunately it doesn't matter. As Mermin (from the famous Ashcroft and Mermin book on Solid State Physics) famously quipped: you can 'shut up and calculate'. The usefulness of the model does not depend on its interpretations (although the interpretations are certainly important with respect to scientific…
on “Nobody Understands Probability” ↗…such as Purcell, "Electricity and Magnetism", Reif, "Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics", Liboff, "Introductory Quantum Mechanics", Sakurai, "Modern Quantum Mechanics", Ashcroft and Mermin, "Solid State Physics", Brown and Churchill, "Complex Variables and Applications", and "Fourier Series and Boundary Value Problems".
on “Did you learn STEM with paper books or digital ones?” ↗…Prize winners in the department), the QFT course was presented in such an obscure way, I stopped attending lectures, and I doubt anyone passed. The next year under "QFT" they taught Ashcroft -- i.e. a Solid State Physics course. That way requirements were met.
on “I stopped working on black hole information loss” ↗…where you can precisely predict the effect of changing most of the parameters of the circuit. just my uneducated opinion... EDIT: just remembered one thing. relevant passage from Ashcroft & Mermin "Solid-State Physics": > Justifying the semiclassical model in detail is a formidable task, considerably more difficult than justifying the ordinary classical limit for free electrons. In this book we shall not offer a systematic…
on “Ask HN: The Theory-Practice Gap” ↗