Astronomy Bookalike
It has been pointed out to me that I haven’t contributed anything to my collection of Astronomy Lookalikes recently. My only excuse is that I haven’t really thought of any. I’ll try to get it going again. Suggestions are always welcome.
In the meantime take a look at this book look-alike:
If you click on the picture you can make it bigger.
These two pages are taken from two different books on Astrophysics written about a decade apart by two different authors. This is by no means the only point of similarity between these particular volumes. I wonder if by any chance they might be related?
I couldn’t possibly comment.
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June 13, 2019 at 10:50 am
I have noticed many such similarities. I was told that books
are not meant to be an original research papers or even
review articles. Also, I do not know how to write and why
to write Euler/Poisson/Continuity Equations in many different
form, if the context is same. The reason that many books
look very similar is because there are too many books in
the market. Wonder how much royalty authors get. Many
of these books don’t ever make it to second edition and don’t
get sold even at reduced price. One actually don’t need
to learn astrophysics if she goes through Landau-Lifshitz
carefully (though I agree it is bit out-of-date). The rest is simply
well-known spherical-bull approximation. For real research projects
most calculations are numerical in nature and requires
knowledge of numerical analysis and statistical methods.
There are not many astrophysics books that teaches
these aspects and most students learn these by
reading research articles while doing their own calculations.
June 13, 2019 at 10:53 am
Authors of textbooks usually earn very little (a few hundred pounds a year at most) unless the book gets adopted by big courses (e.g. introductory mechanics at US colleges).
June 13, 2019 at 11:10 am
I was told that citations of research articles of an author gets
tremendous boost if someone authors a text book. I don’t
know probably correct but then it may not be a very efficient
way to boost. Probably students at least the undergrads
get impressed and that improves the feedback – again, not
sure.
My favourite book is Scott Dodelson’s cosmology book.
If some one publishes a python version of that book
which will contain the solutions to all the exercises
in .py/C++ with animations etc. embedded in .html
it would be very helpful to students trying to learn
cosmology.
June 13, 2019 at 3:55 pm
Writing a book increases one’s fame, and hence one’s other papers will be more often cited. But that’s not the reason to write a book; it’s just a side effect.
This is a common theme, as the quote of the day demonstrates:
You are in big trouble when you start writing software to impress girls.
—Bruce Ellis, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO VMS
(Yes, it’s a real book, and I own a copy.)
June 13, 2019 at 3:53 pm
Unless really famous, authors get about 10 per cent of the wholesale cover price, so say 3 pounds per book. Typical textbooks probably sell a few thousand copies.
June 13, 2019 at 2:29 pm
Maybe they both had the same professor.
June 13, 2019 at 4:03 pm
This is both good and bad. Good, because if there is a best way to present something, then it is best if everyone presents it this way, rather than trying to be different just for the sake of being different. On the other hand, seeing things presented differently can sometimes add enlightenment. Also, common formula are not always the best form for numerical implementation (the Mattig formula is a good example).
June 13, 2019 at 4:13 pm
I guess you are saying if I were a fish I’ll discover Bernoulli’s equation first and then derive Newton’s laws from it.
June 13, 2019 at 4:41 pm
Experts who study theories of education believe that
Newton’s theory should be taught before GR i.e. ideas in physics
should be taught in a natural historical progression.
Something related to us retracing our evolutionary
track in our embryonic development. So experimenting
with the way things are explained in most books
which follows a natural historical development
may has some logical reasoning. However, books are outdated.
I buy books because I get a nostalgic feeling from their
smell.
June 13, 2019 at 4:06 pm
If it is not really about money, instead of writing books,
authors should publish mathematica/python notebooks
which can be downloaded and the explanations should
be on their youtube channel.
June 13, 2019 at 4:09 pm
Most probably, both followed Frank Shu’s ApJ article rather closely.
June 13, 2019 at 5:40 pm
That’s probably the case, especially given the identity of the author of one of the books….
June 13, 2019 at 6:03 pm
Is he the one who gave credit?
June 13, 2019 at 6:04 pm
While textbooks shouldn’t have references like papers, it is nice if they include lists of sources and suggestions for further reading (not necessarily the same; Harrison distinguishes the two in his cosmology textbook).
June 14, 2019 at 7:48 am
If you’re actually following someone else’s treatment of the subject, I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a footnote to let the reader know where to look for the original, and I think it’s not unknown to do that. You don’t want the same density of references as a paper has, of course.
June 15, 2019 at 4:14 pm
In this case, the book on the right has a separate references section at the back, which includes “(10.3.4) A discussion of time-dependent isothermal spheres can be found in Ref. 1.”, where Ref. 1 is the book on the left.
June 13, 2019 at 8:50 pm
If Universities are really serious about opening access to
everyone they should record all lectures and make them freely
available like MIT courseware.
June 14, 2019 at 12:09 pm
Don’t be coy, folks, which books are these?
June 14, 2019 at 3:23 pm
I don’t own either one. One is by Shu, obviously.
June 14, 2019 at 10:33 pm
I couldn’t resist deriving the nonlinear differential equation for v(x), equating to zero a sum of terms in v”, v’^2, v’ and v^0 with coefficients being 3rd order polynomials in v and x.
June 14, 2019 at 10:57 pm
Ha! I have the numerical solution of the system down as a potential exercise for next year’s Computational Physics class..