Kittel is a brilliant physicist, but not the greatest at helping beginners. So far this book (as well as the Thermal Physics book) in many spots feels rushed, almost like a summary rather than thoroughly explained concepts. Solid State is difficult to visualize, and the pictures are clear, but I do not think enough is offered to fully picture principals.

Generations of solid state physics students, including myself, have been brought up using this text by Kittel. I have also taught from this text numerous times. Poor, poor students! The text "contains" all the requisite material, but its explanations are murky and it it slips major concepts by without making them clear. I have resolved never again to make my students suffer with this text. Ashcroft & Mermin is wonderful book, but too advance as an introductory text. Bube's little book, Electrons in Solids, is a delight but too expensive for students and a little bit too elementary. Despite their limitations, I'm going to use the combination of those from now on.

This is a pathetic textbook. The writing in it is awful, and sadly contributes to the stereotype that scientists do not know how to write. It is foolish to always give conclusions before derivations. It gives no motivation whatsoever for approaching certain questions nor the methods in which they are approached. It moves in a very inconsistent manner, developing topics very much at random, most annoyingly fading in and out of discussion of electronic models (Drude, Sommerfeld, Boch, weak periodic, etc). These models are at the core of the development of the field, and Kittel just kind of weaves in and out of random topics without bothering to explain why to describe things in such a manner (no discussion of why phonons are a good way to discuss system, no discussion of why we should obsess over k-space to describe every problem). Ashcroft and Mermin, by comparison, is a fantastic textbook which I highly recommend.

This book is in good condition! It also came in good time (a little less than a week). I am a satisfied customer.

Hey guys, so my friend and I are trying to work through a problem set in our solid state physics course at UC Berkeley and as you might imagine, because Kittel was one of our professors, the department likes to use his books. We love ourselves. Unfortunately for us undergrads (and all of you) we are forced to use his book. Now our problem sets reeeally shouldn't be too much of a problem. For instance, we were asked to solve something for x-ray diffraction and though we had a little bit of an understanding a la Kittel, we found that that little tidbit of knowledge could not in fact be used with confronted with data or a simple experimental setup. There are simply no examples. We have not read Ashcroft or the other books suggested, but after I write this review, we will certainly be out there to purchase another book.

I just wanted to say that I'm sorry we harbored the professor that wrote ths book. I'm sure he's not a bad guy. I know it's hard to write coherently, but seriously this is ridiculous.

This book has been compared so much with A&M that I have a suggestion - read both together! There are some parts in Kittel where a better treatment can be found in A&M, such as the treatment on Bravais lattice. And A&M goes into greater detail into some topics such as the Drude and Sommerfeld theory of metals. But I feel that there are many areas where Kittel is superior simply because the notation is simpler and the treatment more concise. See, for instance, the material on the empty lattice approximation and energy bands. Kittel is also more updated, and the 8th edition includes a chapter on nanostructures written by Paul McEuen.

Kittel is not a perfect book, but neither is A&M. The two, however, seem to complement each other. There are many instances when I come across something I do not understand, and I find it explained better in the other book. So if you have the time (and money!), read both!

A nightmare... The prose is both laconic and imprecise - a combination that spells very poor readability. The book assumes too much knowledge for an undergraduate text: in order not to get confused you'd have to be comfortable with QM including Dirac notation, Hamiltonian mechanics, results from e&m in matter, atomic physics, and a good deal of thermal and statistical physics. It's actually worse than that, because the book simply uses results or assumes familiarity with some technique without stating so much as "it is well-known from X..."

If this weren't bad enough, the main body of the text is cluttered with pedagogically useless references to charts and experimental data. This always disrupts the flow of logic and makes already inadequate explanations even harder to follow.

The problems are usually trivial once the light bulb is on and you've come to grips with the concepts involved. The problem here though is that, for above-mentioned reasons, it takes much, much longer to learn anything from this book than it should given the actual level of complexity of the material.

If this book is required for a course, then be sure you at least have a teacher whose lectures you can learn from. A bad teacher plus this book will ensure that you have one hell of a stressful semester.

Solid state physics is a difficult subject because it requires a knowledge of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics as applied to condensed matter systems. Of course, it's also necessary to understand classical mechanics for many of the argurments used in say, lattice vibrations and whatnot. Unfortunately, there is no easy way in. All the other introductory solid state books that don't use any mathematics, or minimize its use, do a very poor job of really describing sold state phenomena.

Kittel is an excellent author and the range and depth of topics described in this book are really very nice and at just the perfect level. If you think SSP is hard from this book, try looking at any of the "quantum theory of solids" type books, where the "real" physics is done. This stuff gets complicated, and that's just the way it is. The more you learn and understand about SSP, the more you'll appreciate Kittel's book.

Don't shy away from Kittel's book if you want an excellent introduction to the topics in SSP. His text is concise, every sentence is carefully constructed. If you prefer this type of exposition over A&M, which is an excellent text also, but very very verbose, then you'll love Kittel.

If you are a beginner, this book does not help with setting the right background and relevancy.

Please pay attention to the negative reviews, they are accurate. If you are required to buy this book you will also need Ashcroft and Mermin as a minimum.

Note to professors: Please don't waste our time with books like this!

To the curious minds of today and tomorrow:

I cannot comprehend why someone as bright as Kittel, who made very substantial contributions to solid state theory, was not capable of writing an introductory (and hence elementary) text on SSP.

And such a lousy book has been so popular as a textbook despite it pedagogical problems, which is even worse. It's as if there was a shortage of textbooks of acceptable quality out there, and professors teaching SSP had to settle for Kittel's book!

In order to save some youngsters from the painful experience of reading Kittel's book, I recommend the books authored by Omar, Ashcroft & Mermin, Ibach & Lueth, and Dekker. I would consider Ibach & Lueth as an introductory text, while Ashcroft & Mermin is more graduate level albeit dated. Omar's book is elementary, yet well structured, and the exposition is crystal clear. And if your interests are in semiconductor physics, try Sze's books.

SSP is a beautiful subject to study, provided that it is properly taught and the student is furnished with well-written books. I hope that someone will come up with a new text and provide a modern treatment of the subject sometimes soon.

Cheers,


Dr. E
---------------------------------------------

I used this book in a Senior-level Solid State course, and believe it is OK, but not as great as Thermal Physics by Kittel. Though the homework problems at the end of the chapter are the same level of difficulty, i.e., easy.

His proofs are a bit lacking on clarity and there really arent many of them, so you might want Ashcroft & Mermin instead if you like to see them.

However, the course I took wasnt big on the math, and was more conceptual, and here Kittel does things simply enough for you to learn the material and make a good grade.

But if this is your research area, you probably wont like this book.

It covers more stuff than the other books I read. But there are too many conclusions without clear explanations. It's not a good book for the newcomers in this field. It's tough to read. It may help you get something new if you've already studied SS. I think Ashcroft&Mermin and Ibach&Luth's books are much much better.

This book is terrible. It is pedantic in parts handwaving in others. I recommend you drop the class you are buying it for.

I've taken solid state as an undergrad physics student, a grad at CSUF, a grad at University of Denver, and again as a grad at University of Washington. I have figured out why I just don't seem to grasp Solid State; I've always used this book! ;-) (Different editions) My prof agrees, there are better books out there.

IMHO, the presentation is choppy and not coherant. Concepts are just thrown out and the student is left wondering, "What was THAT all about?!" It makes a GREAT reference if you already know solid state. I think thatis why it is used so often.

This book is an awful introduction to solid state physics. I would recommend Ashcroft and Mermin's version. Kittel dives right into equations without deriving them at all and assumes prior knowledge of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and E&M. I am a senior engineering college student at the school Kittel taught (UC Berkeley) and we are forced to use his book because it's a "classic" in the field but it is just a terrible book to try to learn from.

Not worth your money. And if you have this book, you might as well donate it to some bum so he can burn it for heat

My introductuctory course in solid state physics was taught from Kittel's 2nd edition and I recently taught a first year grad course from his 7th edition. Sadly, the quality of the text has deteriorated with time. The 7th edition is poorly organized, much of the new material is too sketchy to be useful and some of it is flat wrong. References were made to works of various individuals but the actual publications were not cited so it was difficult to locate the original papers.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a really good beginning level solid state text available. Aschcroft & Mermin is a little too advanced and has not been revised since the 70's, although I did find myself referring to it frequently to clarify some of the muddle in Kittel's book. Christman is out of print. Ibach and Luth is a little too thin and leaves out many important details. Burns may be a good choice if I teach this course again, altough it is somewhat dated. I certainly won't use Kittel's 7th edition again - my students detested it and I might say, for good reason.

This the worst physics book that I've ever studied. The book made me so confused that I got lost even in the most basic concepts.
It's hard to see why this book is so popular in the introductory level solid state courses. I began to learn the basic concepts of the solid state physics after I'd begun studying from other introductory level solid state books, such as Ashcroft-Mermin.

Overall I wouldn't recommend buying this book at all.
However, you should especially dread buying it if this is
your first course in Solid State Physics.
The book is rather disorganized and
the author is not writing in a very pedagogical style,
I have no idea why this text is so popular
and how it got to its 7th edition.

Let me begin this review by saying that I am a straight A student and am not in the habit of blaming a book for being difficult (my QM teacher used Cohen-tannoudji for the second half of a sophomore modern physics course.

Having said that I must say that this is the worst book, I have ever had the misfortune to use.

The author's ability to describe a topic in any useful intuitive manner is non-existent. Kittel begins topics by frequently referring to concepts and structures, which he fails to define for several pages. I think an author of a textbook should have the basic skills to define and motivate a concept/definition before using it.

His description of the processes by which problems are solved is so backwards that simple problems such as 1.2 become confusing.

He frequently places great importance on something and then goes on to give an awful, convoluted, and short definition of it then quickly moves on leaving one to wonder what was so important about it.

TWO THUMBS DOWN.

He needs a good glossary a revisit to English Composition Class and something to calm his ADD style of presentation.

The only good point is that if you reread each chapter a few times and have a good teacher and patience you can pick something of this interesting topic up.

The popularity of this text is mysterious and unfortunate, because it could be so much better. Kittel's prose is simply awful: disjointed, sometimes almost to the point of incoherence, and some of his affectations (writing acronyms as if they were words: "Ac" and "Dc") I find annoying. He often explains what could be simply stated, but simply states what must be explained: e.g., he loves to toss off rigorous-sounding mathematical one-liners, where he could explain more carefully why the result actually means what he says. Some topics are belabored, but other topics simply sketched, without any clear reason why.

I suspect that this is the most popular intro text because its problems are much easier than Ashcroft & Mermin's, and Ziman's text lacks problems entirely. For experimentalists who have to teach an intro course, this provides a level of protection.

To be fair, this text book does cover some topics in more depth and cover more steps in some derivations than the other two I mentioned. But that's true of the other books as well, and I actually enjoy reading those.

This is not a book for study by yourself. Contents are physically and mathematically exact and precise. But the auther is such a person who doesn't like to spend time for minute explanation. This book is useful only when you are taking lecture of solid state physics and you have a teacher who can answer your questions.
There are plenty of books better for study on your own.

Kittel has a habit of writing paragraphs in terse disjointed sentences that may have nothing to do with each other. This makes it very hard to locate specific information, since it may be buried in the middle of a paragraph that otherwise has nothing to do with that point. The math, at least in the 3rd edition, could stand some trimming and revising for readability. Aside from this, the book is cramped. Explanations are usually too short and always gloss over details. Attention to subtleties is totally absent. I found at least one spot where this actually leads to an error. All in all this certainly isn't the worst textbook I've read - I do on occasion have some success learning from it, though it almost always takes more time and stress than it should. But it's pretty poor. (I think the multiple editions amount mostly to just updated data tables.)
BTW, everybody else seems to be touting Ashcroft & Mermin... haven't read it but wouldn't mind...

If you are new to the subject of Solid State Physics, this is just the worst book you can imagine. Wanna learn SSP? Use Ashcroft & Mermin. Don't wanna learn SSP? Use Kittel.

No need to say much: a bad book. He wanted to talk about everything in the book while there is nothing valuable in the text. If you compare this book with the Solid State Physics of Ashcroft and Mermin, you will also agree with me that this Kittel book is useless. But the book of Ashcroft and Mermin has nevered been reprinted since 1970s, really a pity.

All I can say is this text is better than that by Myers: it is clearer, more concise, and more rigorous. I found it easy to read, even given that I skipped many sections (the required text for my Solid State course was Myers, so I used this book to fill in gaps left by that one). A classmate of mine used Ashcroft and Mermin instead, and was praising of that text.

I don't know why this book could possibly last to its 7th edition. It's a pain to understand its approach of some topics. In the 7th edition, the page number in the index doesn't match with the real page, which indicates the author and the publisher is so careless. Although the book is not short of tables and graphs, but the word part is just so bad. I know it's hard to find a good SSP book, but so far, Ashcroft and Mermin's is the best.

I cannot comprehend why Kittel's SSP book has gotten so popular all across the globe at first place. To the best of my knowledge, by no means there is a lack of books on solid state physics. In the past, I have studied from books such as Omar, Ashcroft & Mermin, Ibach & Lueth, Kittel and Dekker and, in my opinion, Kittel is the least effective one among those. For some reason, the organization of the book is quite unorthodox. The chapters are, in my opinion, very disconnected. The topics are not developed by following a sensible line of reasoning which is indeed the foremost requirement of a textbook. One needs to make quantum jumps, back and forth, between chapter to unit the comcepts in a meaningful and coherent manner. Regrettably, I would not recommend this book as an introductory text to SSP. Otherwise the uninitiated student may quite easily develop a ill-posed dislike for a "beautiful" area in physics. I'd say start with Omar and proceed onto Ashcroft and Mermin. Ibach and Luth is also a good primer. If you want to learn more about SSP as applied to Semiconductors then Sze's book is the right choice.

In my opinion this text(i have the seventh edition) is a very good introduction to solid state physics.The strong point is the attempt to build a "coeherent" theory of the solid state from the very basics.All the major areas of solid state physics are introduced.There is a good use of experimental tables which is very welcome and a careful and student-friendly approach to developing and motivating the needed analytical instruments.No other book(Ashcroft Mermin and many others) in my opinion comes even close to this at the undergraduate level.5 stars!

While at first glance the book can seem daunting, it is an absolute must read for anyone pursuing serious study in solid state physics or materials science. It literally has something on everything. From basic structure to superconductors to semiconductors to magnetics, it's all there. Of all the texts I've ever read, this is the one I return to the most when I'm confused about something, be it advanced or fundamental. It truly is the seminal work in the field.

As with another reviewer, I was "subjected" to Kittel while at Berkeley (though by another professor) many years ago. It killed my interest in Semiconductor physics completely, and I had to pick it up on the job. I found the book awful then, but hoped he had rewritten it, and decided that with all my many years of Semiconductor experience, I could re-approach it. Sadly, after all these years, he still doesn't get it. Sze is much better.

As a student, this book was used for our "introductory solid state physics" class. This book was one of the main reason that I didn't finish the class until three years later and almost gave up on solid state physics.

To be more concrete, some of the problems I have with this beast are:

1. Kittel has the annoying habit of saying somethings first, and motivating it afterwards. In the beginning, I found myself constantly agitated because I didn't understand a thing he said. Desperately, I read on and found that he was explaining it on the next page.

2. The constant mixture of qm and classical physics annoyed me.

3. I always had the feeling that Kittel doesn't understand what he is saying himself. This could be because I didn't, though...

Maybe, people find this work usefull as a reference work, I cannot comment on that, but it is a really lousy introductory text.

This is a classic in its field. I wonder why? It's by far one of the worst books I read in physics, math or electronics. It's disjointed, jumping around. Unfortunately when I was a student this book was our textbook. I tried other books--I enjoyed the first few chapters of Ashcroft's book a lot more, but even that book degenerated in later chapters. If this book is assigned to you as a textbook, don't give up on Solid State, just try some other books. Any other book has to be better.

Topics in the book are somewhat disjointed. This is probably a result of the author inserting new topics in each successive edition without really trying to integrate them into the text. Problems at the end of each chapter are not very illuminating. Can someone suggest a better "modern" text which covers recent developments such as scanning tunneling microscopy and semiconductor lasers?

I had the misfortune of having to decipher this book which is easily the worst physics text I have ever encountered. The book is better described as a collection of chapter skeletons rather than a full-fledged and authoritative text. Kittel spends very little time on qualitative explanations and includes very few examples. If you are thinking of teaching yourself from this text, forget about. He skips many steps in his derivations of basic equations,yet he wastes a lot of space trying to illuminate some obscure detail that only a specialist would be interested in. There are very few end of chapter problems and even fewer that are solvable based on his bare-bones chapters. Many seemingly difficult problems are in fact mathematically trivial (i.e. a few lines of high school math, or freshman calculus), but there is no way average students can figure them out no matter how many times they re-read the chapter. If you are unfortunate enough to be assigned this text you will almost certainly be wasting many precious hours reading other books to understand Kittel.

Kittel's Introduction to Solid State Physics is not a standard text by accident. It presents a wide range of topics in solid state physics at the level of sophistication typical of college seniors or new graduate students in physics. Whenever I am faced with any problem in condensed matter physics, I can confidently turn to Kittel, knowing that there is almost certainly an elementary explanation of the phenomenon in the book and references to further sources for more detailed or advanced treatments.

The ordering of topics in the book does not appear to display much continuity. However, the chapters are presented in a rough order of increasing difficulty, which is also the order in which those topics are introduced in a typical solid state physics class. The first twelve chapters, in particular, provide a good outline of a one-semester course in the basics of the subject. The ordering of the later chapters in not as logical, but the selection of topics used by instructors beyond the basics is very diverse. Introduction to Solid State Physics covers most of the interesting further topics that could reasonably be covered by a student familiar with the first half of the text.

In covering these further topics, the latest edition of the book offers a great deal of information about current topics in physics. The treatment of magnetic resonance, while hardly exhaustive, treats the major methods of the field in enough detail that an interested student could easilty learn more. Many of the topics, such as interface physics, are relatively new, but Kittel's treatment is excellent, stressing new experimental results whenever possible.

Kittel provides a great deal of experimental data as examples and to help the reader form a physical intuition about the effects being discussed. Moreover, the level of the physics and math required are not terrible advanced. For example, rather than delving into the details of BCS theory in the lengthy chapter on superconductivity, Kittel instead spends time on the experimentally observed facts of the phenomenon, treating Type I and Type II superconductors, the details of the Meissner effect, and other empirical topics.

The greatest weakness of the book is its somewhat awkward prose. However, an interested student should have little trouble with Kittel's style if he starts with the relatively easy early chapters, to get used to the style of writing.

I don't like this book very much. As my first contact with Solid State Physics it proved, above all, disorganized. Sometimes you have to reread a paragraph (or a whole section) because the explanation to the beginning is in the end of it. I also felt a serious lack of physical intuition over the phenomena at stake. Sometimes two (would be) comparable graphics were side by side with totally different scales and looks, rendering the comparison difficult. Maybe as a reference it could be used, mostly because of the many tables encountered throughout it. But they are present in other (better) books too... As a comparison, I liked Ashcroft & Mermin's "Solid State Physics" a lot more. I am a student of Physics.

As somebody mentionned the best part of this book are the tables of physical properties. That said, I don't like this book either. There is a solution manual to this book, if you can get your advisor or whoever to sign a letter for it. I don't like this book for a few reasons. First, the explanations aren't that clear. I can't really say why but I've seen better. Second the topic choices in the dielectric and magnetism sections are a little strange (you'll have to compare different books to see what I mean). The section on Fourier transforms and diffraction is confusing. In short I wouldn't get this book. For an undergrad I'd recommend Omar, for a grad student Ashcroft and Mermin is the classic text, though it assumes you know math and Q.M. For the life of me I can't figure out why this book is so popular. In one way, all SS physics books are doomed to fail: because there is so much to cover you're either going to miss some of the detail easy stuff that helps (like A+M) or not be really complete (like most of the undergrad books). Kittel doesn't really do either very well.

I am using this book for my senior solid state course (7th edition) and it is not that helpful!. Many times,I feel that I already need to know what I am trying to learn. This is especially true for the introductory chapters on crystal structures.I would not recommend this book.

Wanting to brush up on magnetism recently, I consulted my 6th edition of Kittel, and quickly remembered why I hated this book so much. It was used in a senior undergraduate physics course that I took as a graduate student in solid state chemistry. As an instructor myself now, I simply cannot tolerate textbook authors who are incapable of writing pedagogically.

What is wrong with Kittel?

1. The prose does not flow and is so terse that the need to read between the lines translates to reading another book altogether.

2. Topics are not properly introduced or motivated, and equations are often produced without defining symbols and without careful physical interpretation.

3. And yet some incredibly banal statements are made. In the section on magnetism of rare-earth ions, Kittel mentions that radii decrease on going across the f-elements, and then says, "This is the 'famous' lanthanide contraction." There is nothing particularly famous about this trend; in general, on going from left to right across any row of the periodic table, the radii decrease. I also doubt that a typical physics major would have taken an inorganic chemistry course to have been aware of this 'famous' observation. He then concludes (I'm paraphrasing), "thus,... (the lanthanides) are the most interesting elements in the periodic table." What a laughably ignorant comment. Our own research focuses on rare-earth elements, and they are interesting in their own right, but I would hardly make such a foolhardy claim in front of other chemists.

Kittel has some good reference tables which I consult from time to time, but if you want to learn solid state physics, there are other superior texts in the market. Just a couple of alternatives: Rosenberg's little paperback is a delight to read because it focuses on physical interpretation rather than getting bogged down on the mathematics. The standard graduate solid state physics text should be Ashcroft and Mermin, which is also a pleasure to read, but assumes a strong mathematical grounding.

Textbooks tend to diminish in readability with further editions, and I would extrapolate that the 7th edition would not be any better than the preceding one. But to give Kittel some credit, his solid state book is at one notch better (hence the rating of 2) than his statistical thermodynamics book, "Thermal Physics". That last one is even worse.

If you can read through every page of Kittel's ISSP, then you are really tough and understand solid state physics. It is a great book, but it is awful for beginner. You'd better have some sense of solid state physics before you touch it. Jane Y. Howe Ph.D. candidate NYS college of ceramics at alfred university