Hacker News Reader

Comment by g4omingron | Hacker News Reader

No mention of the most famous Russian book among Indian high Schoolers: [Problems in General Physics by I E Irodov](https://www.amazon.com/Problems-General-Physics-I-Irodov/dp/...)?

View on HN

Heh! Irodov problems were dope... Spend multiple days putting over the same problem and the exhilaration when you finally crack it!

Still brings back memories

I have spent so much time with this book growing up. It was THE Book to solve to get the bragging rights that you know your physics.

Ah I still ‘see’ the tiny fonts when I think about the book..

For REAL bragging rights, you had to solve Krotov :)

Bukhantsov was the real deal. Higher than Krotov

Never heard of it. Will check it out. Thank you!

PS: One of the highest points during my college prep days was when I managed to solve this kinematics problem from Krotov where the condition for a ball bouncing in a well to get out depends on the ratio of some parameters to be co prime. Good times.

There was a Mir Publishers bookshop close to my college in Patna and I would make regular visits in hope of landing gems like IE Irodov. Alas, most other Science books were so so and nowhere near their American counterparts (Halliday Resnick for Physics, Morrison Boyd for Chemistry comes to mind).

The Soviets did have the Landau book for physics, though I do not know if it was made available in India.

I should put a word for an Indian publishing house named Narosa which put out cheap editions of text books(mostly western) like the Feynman Lectures, Fermi's Thermodynamics, etc.

Landsberg's series on Elementary Physics[0] would be a more appropriate counterpart to Resnick & Halliday etc, targeted towards those preparing for university exams. Narosa has a great collection indeed.

0 - https://archive.org/details/LandsbergElementaryTextbookOnPhy...

Yes, I've bought computer books from Narosa and they were good. I think they had tie-ups with western publishing houses like Springer-Verlag, etc.

Haha, this brings back memories! Spent so much time slouching over this book and taking a crack at the problems. Thanks for comment and triggering a trip down the memory lane :)

don't forget i.a. maron for calculus :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com