Reddit mentions of Physics for Scientists & Engineers with Modern Physics (4th Edition)

For Calculus:

Calculus Early Transcendentals by James Stewart

^ Link to Amazon

Khan Academy Calculus Youtube Playlist

For Physics:

Introductory Physics by Giancoli

^ Link to Amazon

Crash Course Physics Youtube Playlist

Here are additional reading materials when you're a bit farther along:

Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences by Mary Boas

Modern Physics by Randy Harris

Classical Mechanics by John Taylor

Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Griffiths

Introduction to Particle Physics by Griffiths

The Feynman Lectures

With most of these you will be able to find PDFs of the book and the solutions. Otherwise if you prefer hardcopies you can get them on Amazon. I used to be adigital guy but have switched to physical copies because they are easier to reference in my opinion. Let me know if this helps and if you need more.

For math you're going to need to know calculus, differential equations (partial and ordinary), and linear algebra.

For calculus, you're going to start with learning about differentiating and limits and whatnot. Then you're going to learn about integrating and series. Series is going to seem a little useless at first, but make sure you don't just skim it, because it becomes very important for physics. Once you learn integration, and integration techniques, you're going to want to go learn multi-variable calculus and vector calculus. Personally, this was the hardest thing for me to learn and I still have problems with it.

While you're learning calculus you can do some lower level physics. I personally liked Halliday, Resnik, and Walker, but I've also heard Giancoli is good. These will give you the basic, idealized world physics understandings, and not too much calculus is involved. You will go through mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and "modern physics". You're going to go through these subjects again, but don't skip this part of the process, as you will need the grounding for later.

So, now you have the first two years of a physics degree done, it's time for the big boy stuff (that is the thing that separates the physicists from the engineers). You could get a differential equations and linear algebra books, and I highly suggest you do, but you could skip that and learn it from a physics reference book. Boaz will teach you the linear and the diffe q's you will need to know, along with almost every other post-calculus class math concept you will need for physics. I've also heard that Arfken, Weber, and Harris is a good reference book, but I have personally never used it, and I dont' know if it teaches linear and diffe q's. These are pretty much must-haves though, as they go through things like fourier series and calculus of variations (and a lot of other techniques), which are extremely important to know for what is about to come to you in the next paragraph.

Now that you have a solid mathematical basis, you can get deeper into what you learned in Halliday, Resnik, and Walker, or Giancoli, or whatever you used to get you basis down. You're going to do mechanics, E&M, Thermodynamis/Statistical Analysis, and quantum mechanics again! (yippee). These books will go way deeper into theses subjects, and need a lot more rigorous math. They take that you already know the lower-division stuff for granted, so they don't really teach those all that much. They're tough, very tough. Obvioulsy there are other texts you can go to, but these are the one I am most familiar with.

A few notes. These are just the core classes, anybody going through a physics program will also do labs, research, programming, astro, chemistry, biology, engineering, advanced math, and/or a variety of different things to supplement their degree. There a very few physicists that I know who took the exact same route/class.

These books all have practice problems. Do them. You don't learn physics by reading, you learn by doing. You don't have to do every problem, but you should do a fair amount. This means the theory questions and the math heavy questions. Your theory means nothing without the math to back it up.

Lastly, physics is very demanding. In my experience, most physics students have to pretty much dedicate almost all their time to the craft. This is with instructors, ta's, and tutors helping us along the way. When I say all their time, I mean up until at least midnight (often later) studying/doing work. I commend you on wanting to self-teach yourself, but if you want to learn physics, get into a classroom at your local junior college and start there (I think you'll need a half year of calculus though before you can start doing physics). Some of the concepts are hard (very hard) to understand properly, and the internet stops being very useful very quickly. Having an expert to guide you helps a lot.

Good luck on your journey!

1. Refresh geometry/trig. and basic algebra!
   
   
2. When working on a physics problem, know which object the force is acting on. And know which direction the force is exerting from.
   
   
3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help; I minored in physics and I can tell you, it’s a challenging class. It’s comparable to organic chemistry for chemistry majors; kind of weeds out those who aren’t serious about that field.
   
   
4. Internships might be a little hard to get as a first semester freshman. Find out who the chair of the physics department is and meet him/her. Not all colleges are laid back, so you may need to make an appointment. Just introduce yourself and let them get to know you a bit. Also—if the chair doesn’t teach your physics course, get to know your professor! I was doing 3 internships at one time (math, chemistry, and physics), and all three were because I went and found the chairman for each subject and let them know I was serious about the course. It was my second year as a sophomore when I was accepted as an intern/researcher.
   
   
5. Attend class and pay attention. I know it can be boring sometimes. I’m not sure what textbook your course is using, but the one I used was this one. It’s kind of expensive (and now they have newer editions), but it has real world applications, it’s easy to read, and the math is step-by-step laid out for you to understand and follow along.
   
   
   I think that’s all I can suggest! I hope you enjoy physics!!

While I like the open courseware, I personally benefit from having a physical text to work through. If you're looking for a good, basic physics text book, that has a good overview of most topics, something like Giancoli works well. You can find used copies, or get the five separate sections in paperback. I still go back to that book when I've forgotten something basic.

The open courseware is really great to work through, but with any university level course, it's going to assume some basic physics knowledge. Giancoli explains things from first principles pretty well and is a good basic place to get an overview of topics.

Edit: I personally have the third edition, which you can pick up quite cheap, and you can also get the study guide and solutions manual, nice to have when working through problems.

General Physics book that my school used. And that's on Amazon. Here's the one they're using this year for calc based gen physics.... And that's on Amazon, at the bookstore here on campus, they sell a used copy for about $20 cheaper than new on Amazon.

Luckily it isn't too difficult to find international editions at some other online stores.

Thanks for clearing that up. I never really thought about the method these books use to educate students.

I've read some of Feynman's work before, and I like his writing style. So I think I could understand his lectures, even if they aren't the most modern method of teaching. That being said, I replied to InfanticideAquifer's wall of text with a little anecdote about what I've experienced with a more "group-friendly" approach to teaching physics. My junior-year physics teacher didn't believe in text books, so he taught us with labs. It didn't work very well because of the type of students in the class. I didn't like not having a textbook-based cirriculum, so my teacher let me borrow this book. It was pretty good. It's next year's AP book, so I'm happy about that. It includes Gauss' law, E&M, quantum, circular, etc. I have a man-crush on Gauss.

Sorry, it's late and I'm getting side-tracked.

I think I'll buy the Feynman lectures now and invest in the book InfanticideAquifer recommeded for when I start college. He and you gave some reasons why it may be a better way of learning.