Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus, Fourth Edition |  | Author: H. M. Schey
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Buy New: $27.61
as of 11/24/2009 05:52 CST details
New (25) Used (11) from $27.61
Seller: will0000
Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 41611
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4th
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.8 x 0.6
ISBN: 0393925161
Dewey Decimal Number: 515.63
EAN: 9780393925166
ASIN: 0393925161
Publication Date: January 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Since the publication of the First Edition over thirty years ago, Div, Grad, Curl, and All That has been widely renowned for its clear and concise coverage of vector calculus, helping science and engineering students gain a thorough understanding of gradient, curl, and Laplacian operators without required knowledge of advanced mathematics. The Fourth Edition has been carefully revised and now includes updated notations and seven new example exercises.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 47
 Take Note: Spherical coordinate naming conventions switch from 3rd to 4th edition. November 19, 2009
Mable
The math world and the physics world are not consistent with one another in their naming conventions for the angles in spherical coordinates (which angle is theta and which is phi). (see the 3rd paragraph on this page [...])
The third edition of this book follows the physics convention, but the fourth edition switches to the math convention. This reduces the helpfulness and ability to use the book as a "quick reference" for a physics class, because one must remember to switch all of the variables any time spherical coordinates are used. This is so annoying that I am probably going to sell my copy of the fourth edition and buy the third edition.
If you are using this book for a reference for a physics class, I would highly recommend purchasing the third edition (or earlier) unless you enjoy being really confused and creating extra, unnecessary work for yourself.
 Div, Grad, Curl, and All That; An Informal Text on Vector Calculus, Fourth Edition June 22, 2009
Predrag Loncar (Croatia, Varazdin)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This lovely book is an excellent introductory text in vector calculus. It is suitable for students because it is written in informal but alluring and almost strict and severe manner, and because it covers all for them indispensable theory together with its applications. Each chapter is provided with a excellent examples and problems at the end of it. Solutions to almost all of problems are given at the end of the book. Greatest worth of the book is, in my opinion, that it gives a thorough physical background of the theory. I think that mathematicians, physicists and engineers can really benefit from this text by finding a lot of interesting for them inside it, like Maxwell's equations and much more.
Wonderful June 11, 2009
Lance C. Hibbeler (Urbana, IL, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful overview of vector calculus, presented in a very easy-to-read, sometimes humorous manner. I can't speak for other disciplines, but as a mechanical engineer I found this book to be amazingly easy to understand and a very helpful review of vector calculus. My multivariate calculus professor was an outer space theoretical mathematician who couldn't explain physically what "flux" is, let alone the higher concepts of divergence, gradient, and curl, so working my way through this book made a lot of fundamental concepts click for me.
Schey takes his time explaining all the concepts of vector calculus, in the context of Maxwell's equations, without the formality/rigorousness in "proper" math texts- even the definitions and proofs of the main theorems are explained from a physical standpoint. Indeed, Schey remarks that "rigorous" is just a synonym for "useless". The emphasis is on learning the concepts intuitively and physically, rather than just memorizing formulas. I think this would be a wonderful supplement (for engineers) to a traditional calculus course- but not really that great for learning the material for the first time. I very highly recommend this book as a refresher, especially if you are a graduate student and you are just expected to know everything about vector calculus like the back of your hand.
Lives up to the Hype May 7, 2009
Herbert L Calhoun (Falls Church, VA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book lives up to its hype as well as its well-earned reputation as the "definitive review text" on "all this stuff." It also lives fully up to Einstein's edict that: "An explanation should be simple, but no simpler than necessary." It is maximally intuitive and heuristic: both good things in learning difficult subjects.
Electrostatics, which has the concept of a "field" as a central structural element, as is the case with so much of both physics and higher mathematics, seems the perfect vehicle to make more concrete most of the key ideas of vector calculus. Although for mathematicians, it takes a while for applied thinking to take root, and electrostatics has its own subtleties (Coulumb's and Gauss' Laws rendered into functional form for instance), once one gets the basic logic of the ideas down, further elaboration of other key concepts becomes almost repetitive (but a careful) extensions of them.
Thus the progression from "div" to "grad" was gentle enough, basically little more than a review of Vector Analysis. However, with the introduction of the line integral and the curl, things began to get a bit trickier. The functional nature added an important new level of abstraction. The reader's understanding of functions must "kick in." The excellent examples and diagrams involving "basis vectors," both regular and normal, early on, saved the day in the end for me. It gave me a strong conceptual framework to fall back on, in a section where some of the concepts were more counterintuitive and abstract than usual, and more so than in the earlier sections.
On a first reading, I kind of "intuited" (rather than actually "worked through") the result of many of the examples (where partial derivatives, change of coordinate systems, and tangent vectors played a central role) checking the answers in the back of the book to confirm my understanding. The well selection of problems and their gradual increase in difficulty -- as well as having most of the examples based on "unit vectors" centered on the origin made it possible to "intuit" or work out in ones head, rather than actually work out with pencil and paper, many of the examples.
Most of the time I was right on the mark. However, in a second reading, I plan to carefully work through as many of the problems as I can now that I know the "lay of the land." In this regard, I am ashamed to admit that it helped greatly too, that I have a used version of the book in which the previous owner worked through many of the examples in pencil as annotations in the margins. Normally I abhor such mutilation of books, however, this time it proved to be very helpful and a valuable check on my own thinking.
Still, even with all this, for those unfamiliar with the basics concepts of vector calculus, the book is not going to be a "walk over."
Five Stars.
 not enough examples, not for self study March 5, 2009
Jose C. Amram (altamonte spgs, fl United States)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This might make a great review book if one is well versed in this topic or has studied said material and feels at home with cartesian, cylindrical and rectangular coordinates and multiple integrals.
I really tried to learn from this book and like it, but I have had to put in on the shelf for a later time. If you want self study, get Stroud's excellent Vector Analysis, or video dvd's from ebay [..]; these dvd's are great, almost like being in a classroom and one can use any text (or no text as long as one follows the instructor's examples).
Showing reviews 1-5 of 47
|
|
|
|
