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Rating: 
Summary: Great content but could be written in a simpler manner
Review: I read this book as preparation for my Ph.D. comprehensive exams. Specifically, I wanted to improve my understanding of materials modelling and density functional theory. This book did accomplish this. It provides a very comprehensive study of how interatomic forces are calculated in solids. Density functional theory, tight binding, empirical potentials, linear response theory, phonon calculation, and elastic constants were all here. The focus was tight; with minimal straying into related topics such as electronic structure, Monte Carlo, or modelling of gases or liquids. As such, this book is great for materials engineers and scientists, but is useless for chemists and probably most physicists. The book leans towards the theoretical side; minimal discussion of how the different equations would be implemented into code. Hence don't use this book as a guide to writing a simulation software. But do use it as a guide to understanding how to use a simulation software to obtain results. Suprisingly, the text does not require a lot of prior knowledge in thermodynamics, crystallography, quantum, or solid state; thereby making it more readable for people from a wide range of technical backgrounds. I recommend this as a textbook for a course on atomistic scale modeling of solids, with one reservation. It is short, well organized, and since it is written by one author, the text flows much better than many other textbooks in materials modelling which are usually written by a team of authors. But it is not written in the simplest manner possible. Many of the concepts are explained in purely mathematical terms; i.e. derivations and proofs. This is great for the mathematically inclined but death to everyone else. Instead, many of the concepts should have been accompanied by figures and diagrams to help the reader visualize what is going on. This is especially true in the chapter on elastic constants. The text delved right into matrix math, when it should have used figures showing how crystal cells of different lattice types can be deformed along different crystallographic directions.
Rating:
Summary: Great content but could be written in a simpler manner
Review: I read this book as preparation for my Ph.D. comprehensive exams. Specifically, I wanted to improve my understanding of materials modelling and density functional theory. This book did accomplish this. It provides a very comprehensive study of how interatomic forces are calculated in solids. Density functional theory, tight binding, empirical potentials, linear response theory, phonon calculation, and elastic constants were all here. The focus was tight; with minimal straying into related topics such as electronic structure, Monte Carlo, or modelling of gases or liquids. As such, this book is great for materials engineers and scientists, but is useless for chemists and probably most physicists. The book leans towards the theoretical side; minimal discussion of how the different equations would be implemented into code. Hence don't use this book as a guide to writing a simulation software. But do use it as a guide to understanding how to use a simulation software to obtain results. Suprisingly, the text does not require a lot of prior knowledge in thermodynamics, crystallography, quantum, or solid state; thereby making it more readable for people from a wide range of technical backgrounds. I recommend this as a textbook for a course on atomistic scale modeling of solids, with one reservation. It is short, well organized, and since it is written by one author, the text flows much better than many other textbooks in materials modelling which are usually written by a team of authors. But it is not written in the simplest manner possible. Many of the concepts are explained in purely mathematical terms; i.e. derivations and proofs. This is great for the mathematically inclined but death to everyone else. Instead, many of the concepts should have been accompanied by figures and diagrams to help the reader visualize what is going on. This is especially true in the chapter on elastic constants. The text delved right into matrix math, when it should have used figures showing how crystal cells of different lattice types can be deformed along different crystallographic directions.
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