Optics,5/Ed

Still going through this - a lot to read! :) Overall, superbly done covering a wide range of physics and optical math for practical uses, and good reviews also! Highly recommended for an optical physics or engineering student, or someone like me reviewing the topic for various applications.

It is the best Optics textbook in the market in my opinion. It covers almost all subjects in optics, with also excellent references for further inquiry. The used book was in excellent condition. However it was damaged during the shipment. They just drop the hardcover book in the box without any packing, image how the book bouncing around inside the box during its long journey!

I'm a physical chemical student who works closely with optics, recently found myself lacking some knowledge in optics, so I purchased this book followed by a post-doc's advice. The content is clear and precise, easy to understand, a nice and worthy book for a junior non-physical majored scholar.

I haven't spent too much time with this book, but it seems solid and is definitely worth what I paid for it.

This book is an excellent introduction for undergraduates new to optics. It builds most topics from the very basics, and reaches a sufficiently deep level throughout. The problem sets are not too difficult, and provide significant reinforcement for the concepts covered in the text.

I was surprised at first, since this version has an official publisher's stamp on it, but it had some Chinese characters on the cover. But it's in English and was in fine shape. A good deal for the quality.

Hecht does a great job in this book. He separated the geometrical and physical optics well and does a great job working from theory to applications. He has a great section on Fourier Analysis!

The book is alright. Most of the info that you want to know for intro optics is in this book (4/5 for that part), but the presentation is pretty poorly executed (2/5, in my opinion). This book is just way too verbose, and not in a good way. The extra paragraphs don't really contribute much to the understanding of the underlying physics. The book can probably be cut in size by a large amount. There are so many paragraphs that can be removed without loss of continuity of the actual physics going on. What I mean is, Hecht gets side tracked too much. It's like this: I start talking about the double-slit experiment. Then I remember guy A did something on it, so start talking about the brief history about that. Then I remember that guy A wrote a letter on the material. So I talk about that letter and insert an excerpt from it. Then I also insert a letter from guy A to guy B in the field. So let's talk about that, too. (I'm over exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels when you read read this book.) All the people that I talked to in my optics class thought the same thing. For a reader who just wants the physics and not the trivia and numerous paragraphs on really, really minor details, this book is a displeasure to read. I think the book is a course textbook + encyclopedia hybrid. It is not as concise as a well-written course textbook, but also not as detailed as as full-blown encyclopedia. It is neither here nor there. I feel like the book is written for the stereotypical whiny student who, when sitting in the class goes, "But teacher, why do I need to learn this? This is so pointless. When will I ever even use this in real life?" So Hecht inserts many examples to convince you that "See, this physics is actually used in real life!" Examples are good, but when you throw in too many examples you increase the length of the chapters without adding much foundational understanding of the physics. Use the book to get the essential physics that is sprinkled in the chapters, but learn how to skip the parts that are random facts and the book will work fine.