Contemporary Physics - Quang,Kumar,Lam

  • Ho-Kim Quang, Narendra Kumar, Chi-Sing Lam - Invitation to Contemporary Physics, 2nd ed revised Singapore (2004), 3rd reprint World Scientific (2012).

A major limitation of many popular and introductory books on modern physics is that they are too focused on “fundamental” physics (forces and particles, relativity and cosmology), with too narrow a view of a much broader and more fascinating subject, and they take reductionist dogma too seriously. A much more balanced reading among the different areas of physics is the revised second edition of Ho-Kim,Kumar and Lam’s text (the first one lacks more than a third of the topics). It is a semidivulgent introduction to modern physics, that is, with as little mathematics as possible, simpler than a college course, but more authoritative and rigorous than a popular book for “layman” (the man in the street, the general reader according to Americans). a very useful guide for the student of any science subject, but also for the general reader who is not too frightened by a few formulas or tables, for refresher teachers who also want to talk about recent discoveries, and even for the researcher in other branches of science who wants to keep abreast of advances in physics in areas in which he or she is not a specialist.


The authors provide a fascinating and up-to-date account of the exciting advances in rapidly evolving fields. Their emphasis is on describing natural phenomena, and attempting to explain them in terms of basic principles, replacing equations where possible with physical intuition. The level is the right one for popularization, which “makes things simpler, but not too simple,” which privileges concepts over mathematical formalism, but does not descend to the low level of “fairy tale physics” tales (black or colored holes, time stories, god particles, hidden dimensions,…), of vulgarizations without best-selling formulas, which twist the meaning of theories.


The exhibition of about 500 total pages is organized into 10 sections:

  • Symmetry of nature and nature of symmetry
  • Lasers and physics
  • Superconductivity
  • Bose-Einstein condensates (where many become one and how to get there)
  • Exploring nanostructures
  • Quantum computation and information
  • Chaos: possibility by necessity
  • Bright stars and black holes
  • Elementary particles and fundamental forces
  • Cosmology

In the appendix are three reviews, a dozen pages each, of the basics of modern physics:

  • General concepts of classical physics (the physical universe, matter and motion, waves and fields)
  • General concepts of quantum physics (uncertainty principle, wave functions and probability, superposition of states, identical particles, naive realism)
  • Concepts of statistical physics (thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, dimensional analysis)

Compared with the first edition, three new chapters (over one-third of the book), on the most active areas of modern physics, have been added and the others updated:

  • bose statistics: counting indistinguishables; Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC): the overpopulation crisis; Cooling and trapping of atoms: toward BEC; Doppler limit and its abatement; Entrapment of cold atoms: magnetic and magneto-optical trapping; Evaporative cooling; BEC: What is it for?
  • Exploring nanostructures: downward; The rise of nanoscience; Confined systems; Quantum devices; The genius of carbon; Spintronics; Nanotech in the wild.
  • Quantum computing and information: classical computer; quantum computer; Quantum gates; Deutsch’s algorithm; period of a function; Shor’s factorization algorithm; Grover’s search algorithm; Hardware and error correction; Cryptography; Quantum teleportation.

Also very good is the treatment of: theories for superconductivity, applications of lasers, chaotic dynamical systems, physics of elementary particles and fundamental forces, cosmology, (the latter two perhaps the best expositions of all the popular texts around.) At the end of each chapter there are problems to solve, and suggestions of further reading and online resources.

The list price suggested by World Scientific is obscene and unaffordable, so this is a text to check out at the library, photocopy, buy discounted among the remnants at the bookstore, or in an online offer for the ebook, and if you can’t find the ebook there is always libgen (library genesis).