Purpose and motivation

This textbook was designed to accompany a one-semester, undergraduate course that itself is a hybridization of conventional solid state physics and “softer” condensed matter physics.

Why the hybridization? Conventional (crystalline) solid state physics has been pretty much understood since the 1960s at a time when non-crystalline physics was still a fledgling endeavour. Some 50 years later, many of the foundational themes in condensed matter (scaling, random walks, percolation) have now matured and I believe the time is ripe for both subjects to be taught as one. Moreover, for those of us teaching at smaller liberal arts institutions like my own, the merging of these two subjects into one, better accommodates a tight curriculum that is already heavily laden with required coursework outside the physics discipline.

Why the textbook? For some years now I have taught a one-semester course, originally listed as “solid state physics”, which evolved through each biannual reincarnation into a course that now incorporates many significant condensed matter themes, as well as the conventional solid state content. In past offerings of the course, a conventional solid state textbook was adopted (Kittel’s Introduction to Solid State Physics) and students were provided with handouts for the remaining material. This worked poorly. Invariably, the notation and style of the handouts clashed with that of the textbook and the disjointed presentation of the subject matter was not only annoying to students, but a source of unnecessary confusion. Students were left with the impression that solid state and condensed matter were two largely unrelated topics being crammed into a single course. Frustrated, I opted to spend a portion of a recent sabbatical assembling all of the material into a single document that would better convey the continuity of these two fields by threading both together into a seamless narrative.