Introduction to Optics (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Not a good textbook
Review: I don't see how anyone could approve of this book. I'm taking an udergraduate class in optics and the professor chose this book. It is the worst textbook I have ever had. And everyone else in my class agrees with me. If I don't understand or miss a lecture, there is no way I'm going to get up to speed by reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not a good textbook
Review: I don't see how anyone could approve of this book. I'm taking an udergraduate class in optics and the professor chose this book. It is the worst textbook I have ever had. And everyone else in my class agrees with me. If I don't understand or miss a lecture, there is no way I'm going to get up to speed by reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Solid, clear intro to optics
Review: I used this book for an undergraduate optics class and felt that it was very clear and readable. It is good for a survey optics course, but it lacks some more technical information useful in the laboratory. For classwork and theory, it laid a good foundation. For lab work, I often found myself having to look to other books such as Hecht or Jenkins & White. It has since served as a good reference book for many basic concepts. The concepts and mathematical procedures can be found easily and quickly without wading through the technical parts.

Rating:
Summary: Serves it¿s purposes, but not meant for physics students
Review: We used this book for a one-semester undergraduate optics course. Readers should be aware of the fact that this textbook focuses more on the applications, not so much with theory. You only need the first-year introductory physics to keep up with the most stuff in the book, and the problem sets are very manageable with the answers to most problems provided at the end of the book. As a physics student, this made the entire course awfully boring and meaningless. I think many colleges teach optics after undergrad E&M, and if you are in one of those colleges, I strongly recommend NOT using this book as the textbook. Ideally, you would want take Maxwell equations as a starting point and going into diffraction theory, boundary value problems, etc., especially if you have already finished sophomore/junior level E&M. This book treats these only toward the end of the book. Who wants to bother with a bunch of geometrical optics, only to solve different kinds of problems without being exposed to new principles? I think an optics course in physics should be taught in a fashion that the phenomena in relation to Maxwell equations are illuminated. On a good side, I do think the book does a pretty good job of teaching the materials that it covers.