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This book is made up of chapters and their complements: |
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— The chapters
contain the fundamental concepts. Except for a few additions and
variations, they correspond to a course given in the last year of a
typical undergraduate physics program. |
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These fourteen chapters are complete in themselves and
can be studied independently of the complements. |
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— The complements follow the appropriate chapter.
They are listed at the end of each chapter in a "reader's guide" which
discusses the difficulty and importance of every one of them. Each is
labelled by a letter followed by a subscript which gives the number of
the corresponding chapter (for example, the complements of chapter V
are, in order, Av, Bv, Cv . . . ).
They can be recognized immediately by the symbol (BLACK DOT)
which appears at the top of each of their pages. |
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The
complements vary : some are intended to expand the treatment of the
corresponding chapter or to provide more detailed discussion of certain
points; others describe concrete examples or introduce various physical
concepts. One of the complements (usually the last one) is a collection
of exercises. |
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The difficulty of
the complements varies. Some are very simple examples or extensions of
the chapter, while others are more difficult (some are at graduate
level); in any case, the reader should have studied the material in the
chapter before using the complements. |
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The student should not try to study all the complements of
a chapter at once. In
accordance with his aims and interests, he should choose a small number
of them (two or three, for example), plus a few exercises. The other
complements can be left for later study. |
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Some passages within the book have been set in small type and
these can be omitted on a first reading. |
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