A little update to the book club. It’s going well! We’ve decided to work our way through John M. Ziman’s Principles of the Theory of Solids (2nd Edition). I really like this text, as I find the style very agreeable. It’s very conversational, in it’s best bits it feels like standing at a black-board having something explained just to you, the reader.
§ 1 introduces periodicity as the central theme of solid state physics, showing how the translational symmetry leads to multiply periodic functions, which then leads to Bloch’s theorem (that the energy eigenstates in a crystal can be written as a phase-factor / plane wave).
Now that the Walsh group has a critical mass at Imperial College London, I am planning to restart the Bookclub.
Keith Butler kicked these off in Bath with the guiding words of everyone’s favourite German pessimist, Arthur Schopenhauer:
“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.