Description
This new fourth edition of the acclaimed and bestselling Div, Grad, Curl, and All That has been carefully revised and now includes updated notations and seven new example exercises.
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 book is good , looks like new
It’s a good book but no book on Vectors should cost that much to learn. Are you hearing W. W. Norton and Co? I wish the author would move to Dover and price this so students can afford it. Since when did learning mathematics become a capitalist ideal of profit? That said, I wish that all that could have also included Tensors. It’s a natural extension of Vectors and does belong in the set containing ‘And all that!’ It could have made some attempt to add an additional chapter on the equations that use differential operators such as Schrodinger, Maxwell, Continuity equation and Fluid flow. What about generalized spaces? At least if it’s the 4th edition, it could have added a chapter or two for all the price gouging.
This is an introduction to Vector Calculus motivated by an easy way to calculate electric field. The author leads you through the math in an uncomplicated manner and clearly explains the motivation and physical interpretations behind the various vector calculus tools. Highly recommend.
This book is all about intuition rather than rigor.
Pros:
1) Intuition: Non-rigorous derivations that are so intuitive that it will be easy for everyone to reproduce them and actually really understand the basic ideas behind them.
2) Applications to Electromagnetism.
3) Figures: A lot of figures mean that you better understand what the author says.
4) Quick read due to its small size.
Cons:
1) Not enough examples: Although the author has justified the existence of the 4th edition largely due to the insertion of more examples, I still think that they are not enough. And the reason is that most of them are trivial. At many occasions I have found that non-trivial exercises give small details that can largely enforce one’s intuition and understanding. These kind of examples are simply not here. Maybe they are left as exercises, but it wouldn’t hurt if some where examples.
2) Author’s stubbornness to preserve the small size of the book: While the small size makes for a quick and easy read, it certainly would not hurt if the next edition was bumped up to 200 pages. A lot of meaningful things could be added as there are a lot of topics that beg for this kind of basic yet highly intuitive and pictorial exposition.
3) Applications ONLY to electromagnetism: Many students build their basic intuition about field lines on fluids, so it would be very reasonable to have some examples/applications to fluid dynamics. As a second point, I will say that applications to other subjects would have been a pleasant and welcome change from the many applications to electromagnetism.
Conclusion:
I give it a 4-star rating because while it has many very good points that differentiate it from other books on Vector Calculus, it also has some restrictions. These restrictions are just enough to justify a 4-star rating, although I would gladly give it an easy 5-star rating if it had just a bit more examples.
This book is all about intuition rather than rigor.
Pros:
1) Intuition: Non-rigorous derivations that are so intuitive that it will be easy for everyone to reproduce them and actually really understand the basic ideas behind them.
2) Applications to Electromagnetism.
3) Figures: A lot of figures mean that you better understand what the author says.
4) Quick read due to its small size.
Cons:
1) Not enough examples: Although the author has justified the existence of the 4th edition largely due to the insertion of more examples, I still think that they are not enough. And the reason is that most of them are trivial. At many occasions I have found that non-trivial exercises give small details that can largely enforce one’s intuition and understanding. These kind of examples are simply not here. Maybe they are left as exercises, but it wouldn’t hurt if some where examples.
2) Author’s stubbornness to preserve the small size of the book: While the small size makes for a quick and easy read, it certainly would not hurt if the next edition was bumped up to 200 pages. A lot of meaningful things could be added as there are a lot of topics that beg for this kind of basic yet highly intuitive and pictorial exposition.
3) Applications ONLY to electromagnetism: Many students build their basic intuition about field lines on fluids, so it would be very reasonable to have some examples/applications to fluid dynamics. As a second point, I will say that applications to other subjects would have been a pleasant and welcome change from the many applications to electromagnetism.
Conclusion:
I give it a 4-star rating because while it has many very good points that differentiate it from other books on Vector Calculus, it also has some restrictions. These restrictions are just enough to justify a 4-star rating, although I would gladly give it an easy 5-star rating if it had just a bit more examples.