(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best physics books

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• How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? What are your curiosities about? What are your ideas about - is it environmental or conceptual, and can you please elaborate?
  
  • I think this is something I struggle with on a daily basis. I like many things, or so I like to believe. Like I feel that everything’s interesting and everything is connected somehow through symbols. I like thinking about these symbols and connections constantly. So my ideas are about concepts mostly. I can’t remember facts if I can’t attach them to concepts that make sense to me.
    
  • This has been my latest conflict I have to say. I started a career in EE, and then I shifted to computer science. I’ve wanted since I was an undergrad to start a research path, but I’ve been struggling to find something I really really love. I am not good at taking decisions, but an academic path looks now like my best bet for not working in a desk never again (I like having my own desk at home, though).
    
  • I’m confident everything will be good at the end, and I am confident I can do almost anything. Not trying to be cocky, is just that I know I’m physically and mentally capable of learning anything (in the realm of normal stuff, of course I won’t build a heavy falcon myself), so unless that does not change, I’m good. On the other hand, being so certain about that backfires at me, filling my head with “what ifs”
    
  • I have this bad habit of reading (and most of the time not finishing) books in parallel, now I’m reading about
    
    • Carl Jung (https://www.amazon.com/Jung-Short-Introduction-Anthony-Stevens/dp/0192854585 mostly motivated by understanding this mbti thingy)
      
    • About network science (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/complex-network-analysis/9781680505399/ and https://www.amazon.com/Networks-Introduction-Mark-Newman/dp/0199206651 because network analysis can be applied to almost anything)
      
    • Machine Learning (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920052289.do) because is what the cool kids do in IT now or so I’ve learned, I’m more into software architecture though, and
      
    • EGB (https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567) which is a beast and I wanted to get my feet wet about cognitive science and semiotic. I am at about 40% of all of them,
      
  • I pick a chapter until I finish it, and then I move on to the next book, when I have time. I’ve lost interest in reading fiction, I get that from reading graphic novels and manga, mostly. If it matters something, currently ongoing mangas I like are Hajime no Ippo, One Piece, Vinland Saga and The Promised Neverland.
    
• Would you enjoy taking on a leadership position? Do you think you would be good at it? What would your leadership style be?
  
  • I’m not very good at getting stuff done so I would probably suck as a leader of anything. But hey, I am good listening to people and helping them improve. I also don’t think I’m a good teamplayer. I’m bad at following instructions if I don’t trust them. During college I was the guy that ended redoing the work of others during group assignments, because I either I was not satisfied with their work or I was not good at giving instructions. I didn’t know at that moment I was being a dick and I know now, and it’s not something I’m proud of. I'm working on it.
    
• Are you coordinated? Why do you feel as if you are or are not? Do you enjoy working with your hands in some form? Describe your activity?
  
  • I used to draw more when I was younger, and did a bit of woodwork also. I had plants. I like to cook, and have strong opinions on food. I like creating stuff with my hands, I consider myself a creative person. In short, I am coordinated, but not so with team activities like team sports.
    
• Are you artistic? If yes, describe your art? If you are not particular artistic but can appreciate art please likewise describe what forums of art you enjoy. Please explain your answer.
  
  • It’s hard to pin down what kind of art I like, I just know I like something after I’ve seen it or told about, with no particular topic. I don’t understand sculpture, and I vaguely get poetry. Regarding drawing, I appreciate the flow and light in shapes. I was into human figure for some years, and I did a lot of drawings that were good.
    
  • I know a bit of guitar and ukulele, but I never played for others than girls I like. I am too shy of my voice, my singing and technique, I know it needs improving. I took singing classes once but with only the gist of it I got it’s something that requires more discipline and time than what I’m willing to spend.
    
• What's your opinion about the past, present, and future? How do you deal with them?
  
  • uhm, now I strive to live a life that maximises happiness and minimizes regret. At my age I think I know enough about the things I can control, and play along with that hand, always with the best intentions, and I am optimist about the future.
    
  • Sometimes I regret not being like this in the past, however, and I see myself revisiting things I would have done better, like studying more, eating better, loved more.
    
• How do you act when others request your help to do something (anything)? If you would decide to help them, why would you do so?
  
  • I always help, I believe in karma as a thing (I mean, not religiously) and that life has been really good to me. I don’t help when I know I can’t help, or when I’m being ordered to or asked in a bad way i.e. makes me feel bad. I have trouble noticing these situations though.

I'd like to give you my two cents as well on how to proceed here. If nothing else, this will be a second opinion. If I could redo my physics education, this is how I'd want it done.

If you are truly wanting to learn these fields in depth I cannot stress how important it is to actually work problems out of these books, not just read them. There is a certain understanding that comes from struggling with problems that you just can't get by reading the material. On that note, I would recommend getting the Schaum's outline to whatever subject you are studying if you can find one. They are great books with hundreds of solved problems and sample problems for you to try with the answers in the back. When you get to the point you can't find Schaums anymore, I would recommend getting as many solutions manuals as possible. The problems will get very tough, and it's nice to verify that you did the problem correctly or are on the right track, or even just look over solutions to problems you decide not to try.

Basics

I second Stewart's Calculus cover to cover (except the final chapter on differential equations) and Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics. Not all sections from HRW are necessary, but be sure you have the fundamentals of mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, and thermal physics down at the level of HRW.

Once you're done with this move on to studying differential equations. Many physics theorems are stated in terms of differential equations so really getting the hang of these is key to moving on. Differential equations are often taught as two separate classes, one covering ordinary differential equations and one covering partial differential equations. In my opinion, a good introductory textbook to ODEs is one by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. That said, there is another book by V. I. Arnold that I would recommend you get as well. The Arnold book may be a bit more mathematical than you are looking for, but it was written as an introductory text to ODEs and you will have a deeper understanding of ODEs after reading it than your typical introductory textbook. This deeper understanding will be useful if you delve into the nitty-gritty parts of classical mechanics. For partial differential equations I recommend the book by Haberman. It will give you a good understanding of different methods you can use to solve PDEs, and is very much geared towards problem-solving.

From there, I would get a decent book on Linear Algebra. I used the one by Leon. I can't guarantee that it's the best book out there, but I think it will get the job done.

This should cover most of the mathematical training you need to move onto the intermediate level physics textbooks. There will be some things that are missing, but those are usually covered explicitly in the intermediate texts that use them (i.e. the Delta function). Still, if you're looking for a good mathematical reference, my recommendation is Lua. It may be a good idea to go over some basic complex analysis from this book, though it is not necessary to move on.

Intermediate

At this stage you need to do intermediate level classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics at the very least. For electromagnetism, Griffiths hands down. In my opinion, the best pedagogical book for intermediate classical mechanics is Fowles and Cassidy. Once you've read these two books you will have a much deeper understanding of the stuff you learned in HRW. When you're going through the mechanics book pay particular attention to generalized coordinates and Lagrangians. Those become pretty central later on. There is also a very old book by Robert Becker that I think is great. It's problems are tough, and it goes into concepts that aren't typically covered much in depth in other intermediate mechanics books such as statics. I don't think you'll find a torrent for this, but it is 5 bucks on Amazon. That said, I don't think Becker is necessary. For quantum, I cannot recommend Zettili highly enough. Get this book. Tons of worked out examples. In my opinion, Zettili is the best quantum book out there at this level. Finally for thermal physics I would use Mandl. This book is merely sufficient, but I don't know of a book that I liked better.

This is the bare minimum. However, if you find a particular subject interesting, delve into it at this point. If you want to learn Solid State physics there's Kittel. Want to do more Optics? How about Hecht. General relativity? Even that should be accessible with Schutz. Play around here before moving on. A lot of very fascinating things should be accessible to you, at least to a degree, at this point.

Advanced

Before moving on to physics, it is once again time to take up the mathematics. Pick up Arfken and Weber. It covers a great many topics. However, at times it is not the best pedagogical book so you may need some supplemental material on whatever it is you are studying. I would at least read the sections on coordinate transformations, vector analysis, tensors, complex analysis, Green's functions, and the various special functions. Some of this may be a bit of a review, but there are some things Arfken and Weber go into that I didn't see during my undergraduate education even with the topics that I was reviewing. Hell, it may be a good idea to go through the differential equations material in there as well. Again, you may need some supplemental material while doing this. For special functions, a great little book to go along with this is Lebedev.

Beyond this, I think every physicist at the bare minimum needs to take graduate level quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. For quantum, I recommend Cohen-Tannoudji. This is a great book. It's easy to understand, has many supplemental sections to help further your understanding, is pretty comprehensive, and has more worked examples than a vast majority of graduate text-books. That said, the problems in this book are LONG. Not horrendously hard, mind you, but they do take a long time.

Unfortunately, Cohen-Tannoudji is the only great graduate-level text I can think of. The textbooks in other subjects just don't measure up in my opinion. When you take Classical mechanics I would get Goldstein as a reference but a better book in my opinion is Jose/Saletan as it takes a geometrical approach to the subject from the very beginning. At some point I also think it's worth going through Arnold's treatise on Classical. It's very mathematical and very difficult, but I think once you make it through you will have as deep an understanding as you could hope for in the subject.

It's great that you want to study particle physics and String Theory! It's a really interesting subject. Getting a degree in physics can often make you a useful person so long as you make sure you get some transferable skills (like programming and whatnot). I'll reiterate the standard advice for going further in physics, and in particular in theoretical physics, in the hope that you will take it to heart. Only go into theoretical physics if you really enjoy it. Do it for no other reason. If you want to become a professor, there are other areas of physics which are far easier to accomplish that in. If you want to be famous, become an actor or a writer or go into science communication and become the new Bill Nye. I'm not saying the only reason to do it is if you're obsessed with it, but you've got to really enjoy it and find it fulfilling for it's own sake as the likelihood of becoming a professor in it is so slim. Then, if your academic dreams don't work out, you won't regret the time you spent, and you'll always have the drive to keep learning and doing more, whatever happens to you academically.

With that out of the way, the biggest chunk of learning you'll do as a theorist is math. A decent book (which I used in my undergraduate degree) which covers the majority of the math you need to understand basic physics, e.g. Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics and Electromagnetism. Is this guy: Maths It's not a textbook you can read cover to cover, but it's a really good reference, and undoubtably, should you go and do a physics degree, you'll end up owning something like it. If you like maths now and want to learn more of it, then it's a good book to do it with.

The rest of the books I'll recommend to you have a minimal number of equations, but explain a lot of concepts and other interesting goodies. To really understand the subjects you need textbooks, but you need the math to understand them first and it's unlikely you're there yet. If you want textbook suggestions let me know, but if you haven't read the books below they're good anyway.

First, particle physics. This book Deep Down Things is a really great book about the history and ideas behind modern particles physics and the standard model. I can't recommend it enough.

Next, General Relativity. If you're interested in String Theory you're going to need to become an expert in General Relativity. This book: General Relativity from A to B explains the ideas behind GR without a lot of math, but it does so in a precise way. It's a really good book.

Next, Quantum Mechanics. This book: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a great introduction to the people and ideas of Quantum Mechanics. I like it a lot.

For general physics knowledge. Lots of people really like the
Feynman Lectures They cover everything and so have quite a bit of math in them. As a taster you can get a couple of books: Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces, though the not so easy pieces are a bit more mathematically minded.

Now I'll take the opportunity to recommend my own pet favourite book. The Road to Reality. Roger Penrose wrote this to prove that anyone could understand all of theoretical physics, as such it's one of the hardest books you can read, but it is fascinating and tells you about concepts all the way up to String Theory. If you've got time to think and work on the exercises I found it well worth the time. All the math that's needed is explained in the book, which is good, but it's certainly not easy!

Lastly, for understanding more of the ideas which underlie theoretical physics, this is a good book: Philsophy of Physics: Space and Time It's not the best, but the ideas behind theoretical physics thought are important and this is an interesting and subtle book. I'd put it last on the reading list though.

Anyway, I hope that helps, keep learning about physics and asking questions! If there's anything else you want to know, feel free to ask.

I'm no physicist. My degree is in computer science, but I'm in a somewhat similar boat. I read all these pop-science books that got me pumped (same ones you've read), so I decided to actually dive into the math.

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Luckily I already had training in electromagnetics and calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra so I was not going in totally blind, though tbh i had forgotten most of it by the time I had this itch.

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I've been at it for about a year now and I'm still nowhere close to where I want to be, but I'll share the books I've read and recommend them:

• First and foremost, read Feynman's Lectures on Physics and do not skip a lecture. You can find them free on the link there, but they also sell the 3 volumes on amazon. I love annotating so I got myself physical copies. These are the most comprehensible lectures on anything I've ever read. Feynman does an excellent job on teaching you pretty much all of physics + math (especially electromagnetics) up until basics of Quantum Mechanics and some Quantum Field Theory assuming little mathematics background.
  
• Feyman lectures on Quantum Electrodynamics (The first Quantum Field Theory). This is pop-sciency and not math heavy at all, but it provides a good intuition in preparation for the bullet points below
  
• You're going to need Calculus. So if you're not familiar comfortable with integral concepts like integration by parts, Quantum Mechanics will be very difficult.
  
• I watched MIT's opencourseware online lectures on Quantum Mechanics and I did all the assignments. This gave me what I believe is a solid mathematical understanding on Quantum Mechanics
  
• I'm currently reading and performing exercises from this Introduction to Classical Field Theory. . This is just Lagrangian Field Theory, which is the classical analog of QFT. I'm doing this in preparation for the next bullet-point:
  
• Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell. Very math heavy - but thats what we're after isnt it? I havent started on this yet since it relies on the previous PDF, but it was recommended in Feynmans QED book.
  
• I've had training on Linear Algebra during my CS education. You're going to need it as well. I recommend watching this linear algebra playlist by 3Blue1Brown. It's almost substitute for the rigorous math. My life would've been a lot easier if that playlist existed before i took my linear algebra course, which was taught through this book.
  
• Linear Algebra Part 2 - Tensor analysis! You need this for General Relativity. This is the pdf im currently reading and doing all the exercises. This pdf is preparing me for...
  
• Gravity. This 1000+ page behemoth comes highly recommended by pretty much all physicist I talk to and I can't wait for it.
  
• Concurrently I'm also reading this book which introduces you to the Standard Model.
  
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  I'm available if you want to PM me directly. I love talking to others about this stuff.

Alright I think I can help you. I'll give my answer in two parts as it sort of depends on what you mean by science.

If you're talking about the scientific method, infrastructure, and general processes. Then I'd recommend looking into the skeptical community. Which primarily focuses on evaluating claims and avoiding logical fallacies. An essential skill for that being a firm understanding of the scientific process. For this I'd just recommend listening to "The sketpics guide to the universe" podcast. They'll eventually cover things, and then cover them again. So you'll just pick it all up by listening weekly.

If on the other hand you're more interested in just learning about the world there's more options out there. I'd recommend starting with a conceptual physics bookd like this which should give you an overview of the scientific method as well as our general understanding of how the world works. From there you can look for fields you might be interested in such as biology, geology, psychology, chemistry, and so forth. Reading introductory textbooks, or watching online courses such as coursera.

Some other thoughts.

• Initially I'd avoid most science based youtube channels. Their information is interesting but also fragmentary and not very useful without a solid foundational understanding of the topics.
  
  
• The best way to increase your recall is to re-learn or study the material over longer periods of time. Like once or twice a month. As well as testing yourself on the material. Also try and connect what you've learned to your everyday life. This is especially relevant when learning physics.
  
  
• I'd also recommend the Cosmos series, both new and old. They sometimes get their history wrong, but good sources of "science inspiration"
  
  
• Feel free to PM anytime as you're learning if you'd like more resources or something's not working for you. I'd love to be able to help.

It seems to me that introductory electromagnetism is, physically, very simple.

If the subject is difficult, I suspect it has more to do with the math than the physics. Unlike introductory mechanics, most problems in E/M rely heavily on vectors and vector calculus (and for many students E/M is also a first introduction to other more sophisticated mathematical ideas, like Laplace's equation and coordinate transformations).

As far as introductory level books go, though, I think Griffiths handles the added mathematical rigour of E/M quite well. Griffiths explains his math in great detail throughout the text, and chapter 1 is a thorough and complete, but straightforward and simple, treatment of vector calculus; I recommend that you study it in great detail (and work many problems) before continuing to the physics. Preparation in linear algebra is probably also helpful as well.

Also, keep in mind that there are several approaches to electromagnetism. As I recall, Griffiths develops the theory more or less historically, and only makes the connection with special relativity in the final chapters. If you want to look at the ideas from another angle, you could try a book like Purcell or Schwartz, which use special relativity to derive magnetism as a theoretical, rather than experimental, result. Personally, I find this approach more elegant, interesting, and even a little easier; nonetheless, understanding both approaches is important in the long run.

Edit: By the way, another book to consider is Shadowitz (I have only read the first 5 chapters, and I still recommend it on that basis alone). Shadowitz develops the basic theory very logically and consistently: chapters 2 through 5 cover the divergence and curl of E and B (one chapter each). At times the explanations are lengthy, but this might be useful for a struggling student.

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!

The books others have suggested here are all great, but if you've never seen physics with calculus before, you may want to begin with something more accessible. Taylor and Goldstein are aimed at advanced undergraduates and spend almost no time on the elementary formulation of Newtonian mechanics. They're designed to teach you about more advanced methods of mechanics, primarily the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations.

Therefore, I suggest you start with a book that's designed to be introductory. I don't have a particular favorite, but you may enjoy Serway & Jewett or Halliday & Resnick.

Many of us learned out of K&K, as it's been something of a standard in honors intro courses since the seventies. (Oh my god, a new edition? Why?!) However, most of its readers these days have already seen physics with calculus once before, and many of them still find it a difficult read. You may want to see if your school's library has a copy so you can try before you buy.

If you do enjoy the level of K&K, then I strongly encourage you to find a copy of Purcell when you get to studying electricity and magnetism. If you are confident with the math, it is far and away the best book for introductory E&M—there's no substitute! (And personally, I'd strongly suggest you get the original or the second edition used. The third edition made the switch to SI units, which are not well-suited to electromagnetic theory.)

By the way: if you don't care what edition you're getting, and you're okay with international editions, you can get these books really cheaply. For instance: Goldstein, S&J, K&K, Purcell.

Finally, if you go looking for other books or asking other people, you should be aware that "analytical mechanics" often means those more advanced methods you learn in a second course on mechanics. If you just say "mechanics with calculus", people will get the idea of what you're looking for.

That's perfect then, don't let me stop you :). When you're ready for the real stuff, the standard books on quantum mechanics are (in roughly increasing order of sophistication)

• Griffiths (the standard first course, and maybe the best one)
  
• Cohen-Tannoudji (another good one, similar to Griffiths and a bit more thorough)
  
• Shankar (sometimes used as a first course, sometimes used as graduate text; unless you are really good at linear algebra, you'd get more out of starting with the first two books instead of Shankar)
  
  By the time you get to Shankar, you'll also need some classical mechanics. The best text, especially for self-learning, is [Taylor's Classical Mechanics.] (http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372650839&sr=1-1&keywords=classical+mechanics)
  
  
  Those books will technically have all the math you need to solve the end-of-chapter problems, but a proper source will make your life easier and your understanding better. It's enough to use any one of
  
  
• Paul's Free Online Notes (the stuff after calculus, but without some of the specialized ways physicists use the material)
  
• Boas (the standard, focuses on problem-solving recipes)
  
• Nearing (very similar to Boas, but free and online!)
  
• Little Hassani (Boas done right, with all the recipes plus real explanations of the math behind them; after my math methods class taught from Boas, I immediately sold Boas and bought this with no regrets)
  
  When you have a good handle on that, and you really want to learn the language used by researchers like Dr. Greene, check out
  
  
• Sakurai (the standard graduate QM book; any of the other three QM texts will prepare you for this one, and this one will prepare you for your PhD qualifying exams)
  
• Big Hassani(this isn't just the tools used in theoretical physics, it's the content of mathematical physics. This is one of two math-for-physics books that I keep at my desk when I do my research, and the other is Little Hassani)
  
• Peskin and Schroeder (the standard book on quantum field theory, the relativistic quantum theory of particles and fields; either Sakurai or Shankar will prepare you for this)
  
  Aside from the above, the most relevant free online sources at this level are
  
  
• Khan Academy
  
• Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics lectures
  
• MIT's Open CourseWare

What you've said is mostly close enough that the difference doesn't matter much to a layperson. However this bit:

> Light does not pass through time (which doesn't make sense to me, but I read that somewhere) which is why it is always moving through space at the speed of light.

Is a bit off while also being a very interesting topic. I imagine the source of this statement is related to the fact that photons will always travel at the speed of light, relative to all observers. In other words, if I were to travel towards you at 0.5c, then shine a light towards you, the light would travel away from me at c while simultaneously (from your point of view) approach you at c, not 1.5c.

In essence, if you assume it to be true that the light moves away from me at c, and towards you at c, the only way to reconcile the two statements is that we experience time differently.

This incidentally is a really good starting point for learning about General Relativity (I heartily recommend the book Why Does E = mc² (and Why Should We Care?) if you find this interesting as it does a way better job of explaining it than I could).

One good example from that book is a thought experiment where you have two observers. One observer is on a train. He has with him an extremely precise clock that simply bounces photons from one plate (bottom) to another (top). For this observer, the photons are going completely vertically as long as the train is NOT accelerating. It critically does not matter whether the train is moving relative to the ground or not, only whether it's accelerating or not. However, to the observer on a platform as the train goes by, the position of the photon as it bounces off the bottom plate, is not directly below the point at which it hits the top plate. It's very close, as the train is not traveling at relativistic speeds, but it's definitely not directly above (picture it as a right angled triangle where the light just traveled the hypotenuse).

This means that even in something traveling relatively slowly, the light has traveled further for the observer on the platform, than for the observer on the train, despite being exactly the same photon traveling at exactly the same speed (c). How much further the light traveled depends on the relative speed. One of the interesting things about this though is that the time dilation effect is actually real and measurable even at relatively slow—certainly achievable—speeds. In fact, it actually effects things we use every day. Flights for example are fast enough that it's measurable, but more interestingly, GPS would not work for more than a few days at a time if the satellites we put in orbit for it to function did not take this effect in to consideration!

You're English is great.

I'd like to reemphasize /u/Plaetean's great suggestion of learning the math. That's so important and will make your later career much easier. Khan Academy seems to go all through differential equations. All of the more advanced topics they have differential and integral calculus of the single variable, multivariable calculus, ordinary differential equations, and linear algebra are very useful in physics.

As to textbooks that cover that material I've heard Div, Grad, Curl for multivariable/vector calculus is good, as is Strang for linear algebra. Purcell an introductory E&M text also has an excellent discussion of the curl.

As for introductory physics I love Purcell's E&M. I'd recommend the third edition to you as although it uses SI units, which personally I dislike, it has far more problems than the second, and crucially has many solutions to them included, which makes it much better for self study. As for Mechanics there are a million possible textbooks, and online sources. I'll let someone else recommend that.

>but as a photon travels through a substance, it is absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms of that substance

no! no! no! a thousand times no! This is a common misconception and shame on you for propagating it!

The index of refraction of a material is not due to simple atomic absorption and re-emission. Absorption features are typically very spectrally narrow. The index of refraction is very broad and nearly constant over long regions of the spectrum. The index of refraction does not depend only on the type of material but its bulk properties. Take the case of carbon: Diamond (n=2.4) and soot (n=1.1) are both made of carbon, but have very different indices of refraction. Index of refraction depends heavily on the organization (crystal or noncrystal) of the material and other bulk material properties.

If you do insist on using the photon model, this is the best explanation I have found - its a bit of a mess:

>A solid has a network of ions and electrons fixed in a "lattice". Think of this as a network of balls connected to each other by springs. Because of this, they have what is known as "collective vibrational modes", often called phonons. These are quanta of lattice vibrations, similar to photons being the quanta of EM radiation. It is these vibrational modes that can absorb a photon. So when a photon encounters a solid, and it can interact with an available phonon mode (i.e. something similar to a resonance condition), this photon can be absorbed by the solid and then converted to heat (it is the energy of these vibrations or phonons that we commonly refer to as heat). The solid is then opaque to this particular photon (i.e. at that frequency). Now, unlike the atomic orbitals, the phonon spectrum can be broad and continuous over a large frequency range. That is why all materials have a "bandwidth" of transmission or absorption. The width here depends on how wide the phonon spectrum is. Fowels

A more brief explanation comes from wikipedia

>The slowing can instead be described as a blending of the photon with quantum excitations of the matter (quasi-particles such as phonons and excitons) to form a polariton; this polariton has a nonzero effective mass, which means that it cannot travel at c.

To use the wave model:

To use the wave model, let's go back to the derivation of the wave equation from Maxwell's equations. When you derive the most general form of the speed of an EM wave, the speed is v=1/sqrt(mu epsilon). In the special case where the light travels in vacuum the permittivity and permeability take on their vacuum values (mu0 and epsilon0) and the speed of the wave is c. In materials with the permittivity and permeability not equal to the vacuum values, the wave travels slower. Most often we use the relative permittivity (muR, close to 1 in optical frequencies) and relative permeability (epsilon_R) so we can write the speed of the wave as c/n, where n=1/sqrt(epsilonR muR).

The first thing that popped in my mind while reading your post was: 'woah dude, slow down a bit!'. No, honestly, take things slowly, that's the best advice someone could have given me a few years ago. Physics is a field of study where you need a lot of time to really understand the subjects. Often times, when revisiting my graduate and even my undergraduate quantum mechanics courses, I catch myself realizing that I just began understanding yet another part of the subject. Physics is a field, where you have many things that simply need time to wrap your head around. I am kind of troubled that a lot of students simply learn their stuff for the exam at the end of the semester and then think they can put that subject aside completely. That's not how understanding in physics works - you need to revisit your stuff from time to time in order to really wrap your head around the fundamental concepts. Being able to solve some problems in a textbook is good, but not sufficient IMHO.

That being said, I will try to answer your question. Quantum mechanics is extremely fascinating. It is also extremely weird at first, but you'll get used to it. Don't confuse getting used to it with really understanding and grasping the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. Those are two very different animals. Also, quantum mechanics needs a lot of math, simply have a look at the references of the quantum mechanics wikipedia page and open one of those references to convince yourself that this is the case.

Now, I don't know what your knowledge is in mathematics, hence all I can give you is some general advice. In most physics programs, you will have introductory courses in linear algebra, analysis and calculus. My first three semesters looked like this in terms of the math courses:

1. Sets and functions; mathematical induction; groups, fields and vector spaces; real and complex numbers, series and sequences, power series; matrices, linear systems of equations; determinants and eigenvalue problems
   
   
2. More on linear systems of equations, eigenvectors, eigenvalues and determinants; canonical forms; self-adjoint matrices and unitary matrices; some analysis (topological basics, continuity)
   
   
3. More on topology; hilbert spaces; differentiation and integration
   
   These were, very roughly, the subjects we covered. I think that should give you some basic idea where to start. Usually quantum mechanics isn't discussed until the second year of undergrad, such that the students have the necessary mathematic tools to grasp it.
   
   A book I haven't worked with but know that some students really like is Mathematics for Physics by Paul Goldbart. This essentially gives you a full introduction to most of the subjects you'll need. Maybe that's a good point to start?
   
   Concerning introductory texts for quantum mechanics, I can recommend the Feynman lectures and the book by David Griffiths. I know a ton of students who have used the book by Griffiths for their introductory course. It isn't nearly as rigorous as the traditional works (e.g. Dirac), but it's great for an introduction to the concepts and mathematics of quantum mechanics. The Feynman lectures are just classic - it's absolutely worth reading all three volumes, even more than once!
   
   EDIT: added some literature, words.

This was the one that we used for Cosmology. It starts pretty gentle but moves into the metric tensor fairly quickly. If you don't have the maths I don't know that it'll help you to understand them but it'll definitely have all the terms and equations. As with Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, the funny haired man himself actually had a pretty approachable work from what I remember when I tried reading it.

​

This one has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. Given the authors reputation for popularizing astrophysics and the title I think it might be a good place to start before you hit the other ones.

No; I haven't read it or anything else by Linus Pauling. Have a read and see if it's right for you - that edition is probably going to be more or less the same as (if not identical to) the Dover print.

It looks like a good general introduction to quantum mechanics, and would likely be a good extracurricular read if not for a course. If you're a student in need of a more comprehensive text, I'd probably recommend something slightly more recent and thorough - Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei and Particles by Eisberg and Resnick is a great book for that. You could get both, read Pauling's text and then turn to Eisberg and Resnick when you feel Pauling hasn't gone into enough detail or explained something very well.

Ah - I've just seen your earlier post. In which case, the Pauling book would be fine. Again, though, have a scan through the pdf above (in particular, the contents) and make sure it's what you expect/want to read. It might be a little dry. A good in-between might be The Principles of Quantum Mechanics by Paul Dirac, a very recommended text that is comprehensive without being laboriously dull (as far as I've heard). Again, a pdf to peruse can be found here - judge for yourself!

http://deborahdrapper.com/contact-me/

I know that by now you probably dread re-runs of the BBC documentary, since it brings a spike in your email you feel obliged to reply to. I make no such demand upon your time, only that you read what I have to say and trust that I have nothing to gain from lying to you.

"Big Bang" was coined as a derogatory term by 'steady state' advocates like Fred Hoyle—who, as a man of science, finally gave his support to Big Bang theory once it could be proven, in the principal of maximum entropy, that, in fact, all matter in the universe was created in the first picosecond of space-time. What happened before the Big Bang has nothing to do with what happened after it.

What exactly prevents the above statement of fact, or something like it, from being printed in every science book dedicated to objective understanding, regardless of the reader's religious orientation, seems rather obviously to be a matter for those who, without any reasonable basis upon which to build a counter claim, deny the basic axioms of all physical processes. To learn more on these descriptions of nature which we call "laws", you might enjoy reading an accessible and entertaining book by Nobel Prize physicist Richard Feynmen called 'Six Easy Pieces'

http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Brilliant/dp/0201408252

I noticed that in your bedtime listening you enjoy the lectures of Kent Hovind. I wondered if you are also aware that he is currently serving time in jail for refusing to render unto Caesar what is due to Caesar?

Hovind's reasons for asserting that you are being lied to about Big Bang and Natural Selection are soundly debunked in a number of videos by a YouTube user known as AronRa, who you can find at the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=126AFB53A6F002CC

Thanks for your time—and don't worry, I don't care who Victoria Beckham thinks she is either :)

I did NOT mean at ALL that it is impossible to compress matter. And hopefully that is not why I was downvoted, because that would be dumb : ).

It is INCREASINGLY difficult to compress matter past a certain point, for the reasons I stated above. Certainly neutron stars approach that threshold due to intense gravity from a relatively large mass (>1.5 solar masses usually), in a relatively small volume. As such, their environment is quite exotic. However, the maximum density in observed neutron stars is ~8×10^17 kg/m^3 . In the core, there is likely a quark-gluon plasma rather than hydrogen plasma and so what I said earlier applies here, about extreme compression changing nuclear chemistry because of the massive increase in kinetic/potential energy in the system.

The Feynman lectures are really NOT written for introductory students. I use them occasionally to remind myself of certain things, but to be completely honest, there are far better textbooks out there that do a lot better job of TEACHING material rather than displaying it in a grandiose fashion : ). An example is this, (vol 1 & 2).

I find Griffiths textbooks, both the elctrodynamics and quantum, did an excellent job of presenting material and building upon previous knowledge.

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.

I'd recommend practicing a bit at learning the "mathematical perspective" on what you're studying. Not necessarily a lot, but just a bit. Michael Spivak's Physics for Mathematicians, Mechanics I is excellent — you'll cover familiar terrain with a guide who will help you look at it in a new way.

I have a degree in mathematics and took several physics courses. I had this funny experience where the "harder" or "more advanced" the physics course the easier it was for me, and starting with relativity and QM it became much more comfortable. But mechanics and classical E&M? Forget it! That textbook really helped me grok Newtonian mechanics.

You might be interested in the book Why Does E=mc2? (And Why Should We Care?) by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. It does a good job of explaining, without getting too technical (you can actually skip the few math parts if you want, but they keep it simple), what that speed limit is and where it comes from.

I highly recommend it if you are really curious about this. It is very enlightening and easy to read.

The website provides materials, but I often find the best way to learn is to do problems. You can try finding some on the internet, but the "safe" way is to start with textbooks.


My high school used Conceptual Physics and [University Physics] (http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-MasteringPhysics-Package/dp/0321675460/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371325629). Texts are REALLY expensive though, so the best option is to look up which university you're hoping to go to, and just buy whatever textbook they use for first year. At least that way you have a chance of not having to buy double.


University Physics requires at minimum precalculus, and would probably be much more understandable with some grasp of calculus, so if that is a problem, you should pick up calculus first. Or at least, understand calculus on a conceptual level.


A more economical way is to just use MIT OpenCourseWare. I don't have experience with this since I learn everything from my own university now but I heard it is really good. For example:

• Mechanics
  
• Electromagnetism
  
  If you manage to understand everything in those, you should be able to apply for AP on your own, drive there, and confidently ace it. Also, I tried really hard to find links with less textbook references, so you won't need to buy the textbook if you don't want to! But in the end, a good textbook is probably only second to paying attention in class, and sometimes better if you have a terrible lecturer. Also, the courseware links are rather difficult from a High School perspective, especially the one on Electromagnetism. In fact, for that one, you need a rather strong background in calculus.

Brian Cox writes some good books like this. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Why does E=MC2

But following the links of related titles will probably help you a lot.

The elegant universe is also a really good book... somebody else mentioned it, just want to say that I support that thought. :)

Best: https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=pd_sim_14_3/136-3126641-7578327?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1457309327&pd_rd_r=1410dd1f-7ca8-11e9-a045-19daa5a404f5&pd_rd_w=CYbaY&pd_rd_wg=gM4vA&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=NVTAD8TW5HX8ZC6JQ8M9&psc=1&refRID=NVTAD8TW5HX8ZC6JQ8M9 College Board has four real tests in their book, and they are the real thing.

​

Second best: https://www.amazon.com/Barrons-SAT-Subject-Test-Online/dp/1438011148/ref=dp_ob_title_bk Barron's is (I think 5 tests; I don't have mine with me), and they are decent.

​

Third best: None of the remaining options has impressed me. I hope someone will have a suggestion for third place.

For the type of graph (network) theory that is currently hot in neuroscience contexts, [Newman's book](http://www.amazon.com/Networks-An-Introduction-Mark-Newman/dp/0199206651
) is a great compendium (quite readable, but fairly comprehensive).

For bedside reading about mammalian cortical networks in particular, Networks of the Brain and Discovering the Human Connectome, both by Olaf Sporns, are well worth a look.

From there... it's already becoming a pretty big literature. If you have some specific areas of interest, I can do my best to point you to resources. Take my suggestions with a grain of salt, though... I'm a pure mathematician who kinda got seduced into applied maths... which means I probably don't know as much about either discipline as I should.

Richard Feynman's popular works are a great way to 'click' on a lot of physics. Books like 6 Easy Steps. I'm not sure what level they expect you to be at already, but Feynman was an outstanding teacher, one of the world's best in my opinion.

If you want to start with mechanics, Spivak of all people [wrote a mechanics text.] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0914098322) I've personally never read it, but I've suffered more than enough at his hands read enough of his other works to expect good things.

In more advanced physics, there's general relativity, which is built on manifold theory, and gauge theory, which has lots of interesting math happening behind the scenes (and sometimes very prevalently, as with the gauge groups, usually taken to be SU(n)). Most physics texts will treat the mathier topics as of secondary interest and importance, and focus on the actual physics, so you might have some trouble finding an appropriately rigorous text, but there certainly exist such entities.

Personally, I love learning about quantum mechanics and relativity.

Stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g if you want to watch cool animated explanations of advanced science.

* Almost forgot Fermilab: https://www.youtube.com/user/fermilab

Stuff like this if you want to read laymen textbooks to wrap your head around QM and relativity: (Altho get the paper versions, because they have diagrams and illustrations and stuff illegible on the ebooks):

https://www.amazon.com/Six-Not-So-Easy-Pieces-Einstein-s-Relativity/dp/0465025269/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691164096/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Universe-Anything-That-Happen/dp/0306821443/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-mc2-Should-Care/dp/0306818760/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2

All of those are mind-bogglingly cool, as well as being actual real science!

I recommend Hewitt's classic Conceptual Physics or Giancoli's algebra-based text Physics: Principles with Applications (if you want to get into the swing of things, mathematically speaking).

If you really enjoy the material, calculus-based physics can come later. You run the very real risk of getting bogged down in one subject instead of making it through the major lessons of the other.

That being said, taking a course in calculus invariably introduces you to physics anyway since that's why it was created in the first place. You may be better off learning some calculus and leaving the physics for later. Even just a book on precalc could be helpful for you. There are tons of options out there — they're mostly the same in all honesty — but this one is very popular among universities in the states.

Go to a library and find some of these books and see what excites you. That will guide your decision.

The social branch of network science studies this kind of thing and would have some good uses for the data set, I'm sure.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=social+contact+network&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=

http://barabasilab.com/pubs-socialnets.php

http://barabasilab.com/pubs-humandynamics.php

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/pubs.html

With respect to looking for happiness, you might look for studies on sentiment analysis and the spreading of emotion in social networks. I know people have looked at how positive and negative emotion traverses the graph of twitter followers and retweets.

There's a small lifetime's worth of reading in those links. If you want a fairly comprehensive introduction that balances well between theory and examples, check out Mark Newman's book.

Wow, thanks for the Reddit gold, that's awesome! It's been my pleasure to have the discussion with you. As for a good textbook, I have a few suggestions. For a pretty good broad look at optics from both classical and quantum points of view, give Saleh and Teich a look. For purely quantum stuff, my undergrad textbook was by Griffiths, which I enjoyed quite a bit, though I recall the math being a bit daunting when I took the course. Another book I've read that I liked quite a bit was by Shankar. I felt it was a bit more accessible. Finally, if you want quantum mechanics from the source, Dirac is a bit of a standard. It's elegant, but can be a bit tough.

Now that the 3rd edition has been published, used copies of the 2nd edition of The Art of Electronics is super cheap. I think this is the best intro circuits book for self study. Alternatively, I've really enjoyed Practical Electronics for Inventors too, and it covers more modern stuff (like it has a chapter on arduino). Both of these start with the basics, though Practical Electronics written for a more general audience so it is easier on the math.

For electromagnetics, I've heard Electricity and Magnetism is pretty good. It does cover some circuits stuff, but so much of circuits is about electronic components that you really need a dedicated circuits book to understand them.

Well, as an IR scholar that applies inferential network methods to substantive IR questions, I think the previous findings show promise for a thriving research agenda. Send me a PM if you'd like to talk about anything in particular. If you're looking for IR-substantive references, here are some favorites:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1287857
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fwzlmae58fx1fax/Cranmer-CV.pdf?dl=0
http://ps.ucdavis.edu/people/maoz/MaozCV.pdf

For networks specific texts, it depends on what level you're at. I'd recommend Wasserman and Faust as a foundation:
https://www.amazon.com/Social-Network-Analysis-Applications-Structural/dp/0521387078

But this is also a favorite:
https://www.amazon.com/Networks-Introduction-Mark-Newman/dp/0199206651/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475112947&sr=1-1&keywords=newman+networks

From that, I'd recommend reading this:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12263/abstract

The analogy holds up well enough for things like gravitational lensing. But yea, just gotta be careful. It's meant to help you understand the highest-level qualitative concept, not to be predictive.

And, for the record /u/benisbrother, there are GR resources available for the layman which are as accurate as they can possibly be. General Relativity: From A to B by Robert Geroch is one of them that uses almost no math, but details the entire theory geometrically in 2d and 3d spacetime (where you sacrifice spatial dimensions rather then the temporal one, and work in projections). It relies very heavily on the geometry of projected lightcones to build intuition, which works remarkably well. I literally mean visual geometry; drawing lines and curves. The writing is fantastic, the figures are fantastic... anyone interested in this thread should give it a go.

LOL, if 3TB is measly, my 10GB of maths, physics and computer science books must be microscopic! I think I have Bibliophilia for the subjects. It took me 10 years to collect all of them, so it's a very filtered collection. It's pretty much books like this one:
http://www.quantum-field-theory.net/
and this one
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Field-Theory-Nutshell-nutshell/dp/0691140340/.
Djvu is an AMAZING format for books.

i have done a lot of research into this area. people in this thread are a bit shortsighted in my opinion. here are some references that do exactly what you ask and what they state can't be done:

• the einstein theory of relativity: a trip to the fourth dimension by lillian lieber - by a mathematics professor
  
  
• general relativity from a to b by robert geroch - a well known mathematical physicist
  
  
• a journey into gravity and spacetime by john wheeler - that's the advisor of richard feynman and kip thorne and co-author of gravitation by misner, wheeler, thorne
  
  
• discovering relativity for yourself by sam lilley - the author taught relativity to adult students for many decades
  
  
• flat and curved space-times by george f.r. ellis and ruth m. williams - note this book references the books by lilley and geroch in the preface or introduction (can't remember which)
  
  also, the popular science book black hole by marcia bartusiak is a great account of some of the history of general relativity with respect to the acceptance of black holes. none of the books above are popular science though. they describe real physics in real ways.
  
  there are more, but i think this is a good start. have fun!

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!!

Good luck tmrw! You've got this!

Just to clarify bc you listed 3 CB scores I thought you had the CB Math 2 book with 4 exams. It's PT 1 and 2 in the 4 exam Math 2 book that are the most recently released exams. If you have the older 2 exam CB Math 1 and 2 book, PT 1 is still pretty accurate but PT 2 is not (it's from 1995 despite being republished in a book with a more recent copyright). Hope that's clear.

What are you trying to be? Have one book just slightly deeper than Greene's book, or actually learn theoretical physics to say become a theoretical physicist or at least understand it?

If the former, it will be difficult as there's a lot of things that might be tacitly assumed that you know about more basic physics. However, a very good intro to Quantum Mechanics is Shankar. I'd also look into Foster and Nightingale's relativity book for a brief introduction to special (read Appendix A first) and general relativity. Maybe after both try A. Zee intro to QFT if you want to learn more about QFT. If you want to learn about phenomenological particle physics, say look at Perkins. Also it may help to have a book on mathematical physics, such as Boas or Arfken. (Arfken is the more advanced book, but has less examples). Also it may help to get a basic modern physics book that has very little math, though I can't think of any good ones.

If the latter than you will have to learn a lot. Here's advice from Nobel Laureate theoretical physicist Gerardus t'Hooft.

Any mechanics text targeted for the standard junior level mechanics course for majors will cover it. I used Fowles and Cassiday when I took it. I'm not really sure what else is standard. The standard text in grad courses is Goldstein, which should be approachable by an undergrad at least. If you're crazy and a classical mechanics junkie like I was as an undergrad, Landau and Lifshitz vol1 is a beautiful treatment (that you unfortunately probably already need to have seen the material once to appreciate. Oh well. Like I said: if you're crazy). The issue here is that sometimes undergrad courses will skip these (as I learned, amazed, when I was encountering other grad students that hadn't done Lagrangian mechanics before) so make sure you read those chapters and do the problems: quantum mechanics is done in a hamiltonian formulation, and quantum field theory in a Lagrangian formulation (the latter is because the Lagriangian treatment is automatically relativistici)

I never had a course specifically on waves. It's something you'll likely hit pretty well in whatever non-freshman E&M course you take. Beware though that some courses targeted at engineers will do AC circuits at the expense of waves. But the text is still useable to look into it yourself.

For a non-mathematical but no-nonsense book about quantum field theory, I'd recommend

• Feynman: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
  
  For a surprisingly good summary of the development of quantum mechanics, and also an account of a very interesting man's life:
  
  
• Graham Farmelo: The Strangest Man: The Life of Paul Dirac
  
  And the now-standard textbook for my field (the start of which is suitable someone at a mid to high level of their undergraduate studies)
  
  
• Peskin and Schroeder: Introduction to Quantum Field Theory

I know the university I'm headed to is using University Physics. I have a PDF of it, if you want it. It basically covers all the fundamental physics using calculus, so I would definitely regard it as a post-IB book.

I've heard many say that Resnick and Halliday's books are the best out there. They are perhaps a bit old, but seem to be the favorite among undergraduates.

If you want a more intuitive understanding of physics, then The Feynman Lectures are a must. He covers some material that requires knowledge of undergraduate level physics, but a lot of it I've found to still be enlightening. The intuition you'll get is invaluable.

I can't speak to your question, but for sure try reading "QED" by Richard Feynman. It doesn't cover the nuclear forces at all, and sadly omits polarization of light, but it is definitely accessible to the HS physics level, and has no scary math.

In fact, his explanation of why he doesn't need scary math to explain QED is as brilliant as anything else he has ever explained!

----

Also, I can recommend "Why does E=mc^2 ?" -- will look up author in a bit. The history of science is short, clear, and engaging (to me).


Edit:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-mc2-Should-Care/dp/0306818760

You are welcome to think of it as a vector analogy, it will make "sense" if you understand vectors. Every particle is of length of c, that is a constant. c is a vector (direction) and is fundamental to all particles. Your c is always projected along your time axis. When you move in space, your c is tilted compared to the other c's around you. That means that temporal projection of your c vector onto their time axis is shorter. Or if you wish, their projection of their c vectors onto your axis is shorter. The particles on the front of your body and the rear of your body are at different times, relative to other times. Just draw your a one meter length on their x axis and rotate it so that it is moving in their frame, it is easy to see that the ends are at different times. Your spacial projection of your particles onto other spatial axis is also shorter.

This conceptual model correctly summarizes special relativity. It is not the normal way it is taught but it is a well known alternative. See Special Relativity Visualized.

Enjoy your journey through space - time.

Take a charge just sitting there, and suddenly whack it. A moving charge has a different electric field than a stationary one, it's strongest in the plane perpendicular to the motion. The field lines for this moving charge will be straight, but squished towards that plane.

But if you're a light year away, you can't know that instantly. You'll still see the same field that the stationary charge made. The information that the charge is now moving propagates out at the speed of light, so you get a shell moving outward in which the field suddenly shifts, from the stationary charge field to the moving charge field. That is a light wave.

You can also see from this description how the intensity depends on what angle you're at, and why it depends on acceleration (the faster you accelerate, the thinner the shell/wave and the bigger the change in E, so the big E in the shell is even bigger).

Why do you need acceleration? If the charge has been uniformly moving forever, the field will be "correct" everywhere. Of course, if you suddenly stop it, you'll launch another wave. If you move the charge sinusoidally, you'd get pretty much what you'd expect.

I can't draw a nice picture, but this is basically what's on the cover of the latest edition of Morin/Purcell E&M. That book is where I heard about this nice intuitive picture, which is great for people like me who can't do advanced math. :D

http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Edward-M-Purcell/dp/1107014026

If you're starting out with the basics (Newtonian mechanics, basic electromagnetism), I would recommend Halliday and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics. Of course, there are many other basic physics textbooks that are good, but I've found this one to be the best. If you'd like a PDF, poke around on the interwebs or PM me.

The Feynman Lectures are great, and they have a nice conversational style, but I find that the lack of exercises is a weakness. You absolutely must work problems to learn physics.

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.

pardon, I meant this book https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Scientists-Engineers-Raymond-Serway/dp/1133947271

As far as I've seen, and can infer, it does not delve into Lagrangian mechanics. [I am still reading the book]. It more or less aims for a good basis in physics.

I have heard DJ Griffith's book requires a bit of advanced calculus. so I fear I may need to delve more into calculus before that.
I will check those two in due time :)

many thanks for the recommendations!

All of the books I can see from top to bottom on Amazon:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Chemical-Reaction-Engineering-Edition/dp/0130473944 -- used price: $90.98.
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Thermodynamics-Donald-McQuarrie/dp/189138905X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407531821&sr=1-1&keywords=molecular+thermodynamics -- used price: $70.00 (paperback is $29.99)
   
3. http://www.amazon.com/Physical-Chemistry-Molecular-Donald-McQuarrie/dp/0935702997/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407531925&sr=1-1&keywords=physical+chemistry+a+molecular+approach -- used price: $72.44 (paperback is $42.65)
   
4. http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Molecules-Solids-Particles/dp/047187373X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407532022&sr=1-1&keywords=quantum+physics+of+atoms+molecules+solids+nuclei+and+particles -- used price: $52.66
   
5. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Chemical-Engineering-Thermodynamics-Mcgraw-Hill/dp/0073104450/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407532094&sr=1-1&keywords=introduction+to+chemical+engineering+thermodynamics -- used price: $129.96 (paperback is $84.38)
   
6. http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-8th-Eighth-BYMcMurry/dp/B004TSKJVE/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407532227&sr=1-5&keywords=organic+chemistry+mcmurry+8th+edition -- used price: $169.33 (paperback is $79.86)
   
7. http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Differential-Equations-William-Boyce/dp/047003940X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1407532549&sr=8-7&keywords=Elementary+Differential+Equations+and+Boundary+Value+Problems%2C+9th+Edition+solutions -- used price: $8.00
   
8. http://www.amazon.com/Numerical-Methods-Engineers-Sixth-Edition/dp/0073401064/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407532859&sr=8-1&keywords=numerical+methods+for+engineers+6th+edition -- used price: $47.99 (paperback is $22.48)
   
9. http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Partial-Differential-Equations-Mathematics/dp/0486419762/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407532927&sr=1-5&keywords=applied+partial+differential+equations -- used price: $8.32 (paperback is $1.96)
   
10. http://www.amazon.com/Transport-Phenomena-2nd-Byron-Bird/dp/0471410772/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533036&sr=1-1&keywords=transport+phenomena+bird+stewart+lightfoot+2nd+edition -- used price: $28.00
    
11. http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Engineering-Data-Collection-Analysis/dp/053436957X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533106&sr=1-2&keywords=data+collection+and+analysis -- used price: $80.00
    
12. http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-9th-Dale-Varberg/dp/0131429248/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533219&sr=1-1&keywords=calculus+varberg+purcell+rigdon+9th+edition+pearson -- used price: $11.97 (paperback is $2.94)
    
13. http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Principles-Chemical-Processes-Integrated/dp/0471720631/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533286&sr=1-1&keywords=elementary+principles+of+chemical+processes -- used price: $161.72
    
14. http://www.amazon.com/Inorganic-Chemistry-4th-Gary-Miessler/dp/0136128661/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533412&sr=1-1&keywords=inorganic+chemistry+messler -- used price: $75.00
    
15. http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Heat-Transfer-Theodore-Bergman/dp/0470501979/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533484&sr=1-1&keywords=fundamental+of+heat+and+mass+transfer -- used price: $154.99 (loose leaf is $118.23)
    
16. http://www.amazon.com/Biochemistry-Course-John-L-Tymoczko/dp/1429283602/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407533588&sr=1-1&keywords=biochemistry+a+short+course -- used price: $139.00 (loose leaf is $115)
    
17. http://www.amazon.com/Separation-Process-Principles-Biochemical-Operations/dp/0470481838 -- used price: $93.50 (international edition is $49.80)
    
18. http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-13th/dp/0321696867/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407545099&sr=1-1&keywords=university+physics+young+and+freedman -- used price: $83.00
    
    Books & Speakers | Price (New)
    ---|---
    Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering (4th Edition) | $122.84
    Molecular Thermodynamics | $80.17
    Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach | $89.59
    Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles | $128.32
    Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics (The Mcgraw-Hill Chemical Engineering Series) | $226.58
    Organic Chemistry 8th Edition | $186.00
    Elementary Differential Equations | $217.67
    Numerical Methods for Engineers, Sixth Edition | $200.67
    Applied Partial Differential Equations | $20.46
    Transport Phenomena, 2nd Edition | $85.00
    Basic Engineering Data Collection and Analysis | $239.49
    Calculus (9th Edition) | $146.36
    Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes, 3rd Edition | $206.11
    Inorganic Chemistry (4th Edition) | $100.00
    Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer | $197.11
    Biochemistry: A Short Course, 2nd Edition | $161.45
    Separation Process Principles: Chemical and Biochemical Operations | $156.71
    University Physics with Modern Physics (13th Edition) | $217.58
    Speakers | $50.00
    
    Most you can get is $1476.86 (selling all of the books (used and hard cover) in person), and if you sell it on Amazon, they take around 15% in fees, so you'll still get $1255.33. But wait...if you sell it to your university's book store, best they can do is $.01.
    
    Total cost: $2832.11 (including speakers)
    
    Net loss: -$1355.25 (books only). If sold on Amazon, net loss: -$1576.78 (books only). Speakers look nice; I wouldn't sell them.
    
    Edit: Added the two books and the table. /u/The_King_of_Pants gave the price of speakers. ¡Muchas gracias para el oro! Reminder: Never buy your books at the bookstore.
    
    Edit 2: Here are most of the books on Library Genesis
    Thanks to /u/WhereToGoTomorrow

First of all, I'm delighted that you used to find science boring, and now you enjoy it. I also agree that Feynman lectures will cover almost everything you list. Since I'm an optical engineer, let me steer you to the Field Guide series for handy books on optics. If you just want one book in optics, I like Introduction to Modern Optics by Grant Fowles.
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Optics-Dover-Physics/dp/0486659577/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Also, if you are willing to pay a bit, i can only but recommend this book (covers a lot of subjects in both classical and modern physics). It is filled with examples, exercises and solutions, all illustrated. It also makes a great deal of pointing out misconceptions and misunderstandings that people often make when learning about physics.

hyperphysics Is pretty good, also, your book has a whole bunch of problems in the back that you can work on.

What book are you using? Halliday, Resnick, and Walker is great, I used it to study for the GRE.

If you have any questions, post them here, or PM me and maybe we can help clarify them.

As with most things you gotta know the basics. Start with classical mechanics. The best book is Landau's Mechanics, but it's quite advanced. The undergraduate text I used at university was Thornton and Marion. If that's still too much I've heard Taylor's book is even gentler.

Also, make sure you know your calculus.

For freshman/ sophmore honors EM in the US, I think that's A-level in Britain or something? Anyways, Purcell and Morin's Electricity and Magnetism is absolutely great.

Basically it was written by Purcell, Nobel Prize winner in 1952, and uses special relativity and a few other assumptions to derive all of electricity and magnetism, rather than the other way around. Morin came along in the third edition, added a bunch of problems and changed the units from Gaussian to MKS. If your mechanics course covers some special relativity, I strongly recommend this book.

Warning, vector calculus is necessary, Purcell gives an overview, but it's not a full treatment.

Third edition with Morin's extra problems

This book by Nouredine Zettili is the reference I used most extensively through two semesters of my masters course. While there are many books that make great reading, this is the best aid to learning quantum mechanics on your own, in my opinion. The exercises and examples in particular are a treasure trove.

Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces are both great introductory books that explore the fascinating essentials of Physics. Feynman is a lucid and captivating science teacher.

If this is what the BBC is putting out for science journalism these days, they've lost a lot of respect and credibility. The article starts out with being misleading:

>The theorists say: "This is theoretically possible." The engineers then figure out how to make it work, confident the maths is correct and the theory stands up.

>

>These camps are not mutually exclusive of course. Theorists understand engineering. Engineers draw on their deep understanding of the theory. It's normally a pretty harmonious, if competitive, relationship.

They completely omit experimental physicists. Experimental physicists are the ones who design and build physics experiments. They are the ones with the understanding of theory, not the engineers. Don't get me wrong, I work with (mostly electrical) engineers, daily, and am continually impressed with their technical ability, but their knowledge of any advanced theory is almost non-existent. Their theoretical knowledge rarely goes beyond their undergraduate general education requirements (a couple of semesters of intro physics, and maybe an a little electromagnetic theory for the EEs). It's the experimental physicists who both have a theoretical understanding, through graduate-level course work in physics and keeping up with the latest updates in journals, and (usually) some engineering or technical ability that allows them to build experiments and interface with both theorists and engineers. Of course many engineers are employed to help develop the finer points of systems in physics experiments, but those systems themselves are usually first developed by physicists, e.g. fast electronics for data acquisition systems.

Going back to the article:

>Yet occasionally these two worlds collide. The theorists say something is just not possible and the engineers say: "We're going to try it anyway - it's worth a shot."

>

>There is one field of science where just such a contest has been raging for years, perhaps the most contentious field in all science/engineering - gravity control.

There is no contest, just like there is no contest about the existence of global warming. The contests exist only in the minds of people who doesn't really have a grasp of the subject. No reputable physicist - theorist or experimentalist - believes gravity control is possible with out current level of understanding. Why? Because we only understand gravity classically, i.e. General Relativity. There is no good theory of quantum gravity, what you'd likely have to understand to have any sort of "gravity control". I have never met an engineer who even understands GR, it's usually just not relevant to them, and Ron Evans seems no different, except he seems to embrace his ignorance and runs with it.

If you read Evans' book on Project Greenglow, it is the definition of crank science. It is filled with crackpot gems such as:

>Nowadays we might think of the ether in terms of the quantum vacuum of space.

No. That's not what the vacuum is or anyone who any understanding of quantum field theory will say it is. You can thumb through the text yourself and find - if you have some understanding of advanced theoretical concepts in physics - even more egregious violations of the laws of physics and our current understanding. Don't believe anything Evans says.

Again, returning the to BBC article:

>In the US, Nasa aerospace engineer Marc Millis began a parallel project - the Breakthrough Physics Propulsion Program

NASA needs to stop hiring crackpots like Millis and White, they give it a bad name. Millis has been posted here before and has developed ideas which include, but are not limited to:

>The differential sail was a speculation that it might be possible to induce differences in the pressure of vacuum fluctuations on either side of sail-like structure

Again, this shows a poor or non-existent understanding of some fundamental concepts in physics. It boggles the mind as to why NASA keeps hiring guys who have little to no understanding of them, to basically act as theorists. It's making NASA look like it doesn't know what it's doing in this area.

>Out of the blue, a Russian chemist called Dr Eugene Podkletnov claimed he'd stumbled on the answer by accident. By using rapidly spinning superconductors Podkletnov claimed he'd managed to create a "gravity shield".

> [...]

>Yet to theorists like Dr John Ellis, at Cern, it was no surprise when nothing came of it: "So this guy had the idea that by messing around with superconductors he could change the strength of the earth's gravitational field? Crap!"

Ellis' mocking reaction is in line with probably all reputable physicists. No one thinks superconductors can manipulate or block gravity in anyway, unless they've come up with a unified theory of gravity and electromagnetism, which of course, they haven't. Podkletnov, and by extension Tajmar, are engaged in fringe physics (fringe does not mean pushing the bounds, it means it's out of bounds and nonsensical), at best. Both display a clear lack of understanding of physics, and Tajmar's frequent publications in dis-reputable journals on topics that no real physicist would touch, demonstrate this.

The article then throws in a reference to the accelerating expansion of the universe and dark energy:

>Yet just when it seemed the engineers were running out of ideas, it was theoretical physics which threw them a lifeline.

>

>Recently it was discovered that the universe was not just expanding, but accelerating in its expansion, and suddenly the theorists had some explaining to do.

Yes, theorists have some explaining to do, but it most certainly doesn't throw these wrong ideas about gravity and propulsion "a line". No one knows what's causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, but that doesn't give anyone license to go "Well, we don't understand it, but it has to do with gravity, therefore, free propulsion system!". No. That would have been like late 19th century biologists saying they don't understand the mechanism for evolution (genetics) but they know it has to within biology, therefore "...the fountain of youth!". It displays a lack of understanding of the topic and the mechanism through which science progresses.

The article rounds off with the emdrive for which there is no evidence. None has been published in any reputable physics journal and the experiments so far would not be accepted by any reputable physicist, yet that doesn't stop the article from proclaiming:

>One device survived, almost unnoticed, from the Greenglow days - a propellant-less electromagnetic or EmDrive, created by British aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer.

Survived? No. It's been more than a decade and the thing 1.) still claims to violate Newton's Laws 2.) still not flying 3.) still has no evidence for its claims 4.) still not taken seriously by physicists.

As Ellis puts it in the article:

>"With the EmDrive, unlike a rocket, nothing comes out of it. So I don't see how you can generate momentum out of nothing."

Yes.

If this is a taste of what Horizon will show then the BBC has seriously taken a step down in credibility and the network heads should reconsider airing this, and consult actual physicists for more than just a couple of lines. If the program's point isn't to point out these are crackpot ideas and teaches how to spot them, then they will be doing a huge disservice and harm to science education for the general public.

Then I would recommend physics for game developers. What may be more beneficial than a book dedicated to physics for games is an introductory physics text book.

I know that the following one is good but there are literally hundreds of them. http://www.amazon.com/Physics-1-David-Halliday/dp/0471320579. Check either used bookstores or ebay and you can pick one up cheap.

Once you have a basic understanding of Newtonian mechanics it will be a lot easier to move onto physics for games where you have to worry about things like collision response and making sure your simulation is stable.

Enjoy the course! I'm an amateur with an interest in relativity. Most tests of GR are tests of the Schwarzschild metric. Check out Orbits in Strongly Curved Spacetime. The BASIC code for plotting orbits in Schwarzschild geometry is the 2nd link in the 1st reference. Also I highly recommend the books Exploring Black Holes and Relativity Visualized.

So when you say "up the ante" do you want to

(1) Read about more exotic topics in general (ie. like popular books, videos, etc.)
(2) Read a rigorous textbook about physics.

If you enjoying teaching yourself, here are some undergraduate classical mechanics textbooks:

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-1-David-Halliday/dp/0471320579

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Mechanics-Daniel-Kleppner/dp/0521198216

You'll need to know calculus and vectors, which might be difficult to learn simultaneously with the physics.

I'm not trying to bash option (1) either; learning about topics in general is exciting and will motivate you to learn more.

Would the best approach to learning physics be, first reading conceptual physics by Hewitt, then reading fundamentals of physics by Halliday?

Would conceptual physics give me a good grounding and base in physics, which would help once I start reading fundamentals of physics?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conceptual-Physics-Paul-G-Hewitt/dp/0321568095

Assuming the first:

For an introduction, Shankar's Fundamentals of Physics is good, but it doesn't have workable examples and it covers a large range of literature in a short period. I'd recommend it if you just want an understanding of the maths, and not a fluency in doing it. University Physics is commonly used for classical mechanics. Moving on:

Light and Optics

Griffith's Quantum Mechanics

Schroeder's Thermal Physics

Electromagnetism

Those are just a few introductory books; not mentioned were statistical mechanics, solid state physics, nuclear, plasma, special and general relativity, quantum field theory, etc. These aren't all needed for an introductory study, though. This is what one would need if one hoped to understand the contemporary problems in the philosophy of physics. As I mentioned below, you need at least single and multivariable calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra; these can be developed as one goes.

There's Griffiths and Halzen and Martin which are suitable for undergraduates. They'll teach you how to calculate scattering amplitudes and some phenomenology and stuff like that. Anything more complicated than that would probably require a QFT book, in which case I would recommend Peskin and Schroeder. Ironically, I feel like you would learn QED way better with P&S than any other typical standard model book.

You're entitled to your opinion. I'm trying to explain a classical picture of space time. You're right that a relativistic picture adds complexity and there is no privileged reference frame. I don't claim to be a master explainer of undergrad physics concepts, and if you're going to pick holes in my explanations then it might be best to go to another source. Hailliday and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics is a good book.

I looked at the free pages on Amazon and it does seem a bit wordier than the physics books I remember. It could just be the chapter. Maybe it reads like a book; maybe it's incredibly boring :/

If money isn't an issue (or if you're resourceful and internet savvy ;) you can try the book by Serway & Jewett. It's fairly common.

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Scientists-Engineers-Raymond-Serway/dp/1133947271

As for DE, this book really resonated with me for whatever reason. Your results may vary.

http://www.amazon.com/Course-Differential-Equations-Modeling-Applications/dp/1111827052/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372632638&sr=1-2&keywords=differential+equations+gill

If your issue is with the technical nature of textbooks in general, then you'll either have to deal with it or look for some books that simplify/summarize the material in some way. The only example I can come up with is:

http://www.amazon.com/Div-Grad-Curl-All-That/dp/0393925161/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372632816&sr=1-1&keywords=div+grad+curl

Although Div, Grad, Curl, and all That is intended for students in an Electromagnetics course (not Physics 2), it might be helpful. It's an informal overview of Calculus 3 integrals and techniques. The book uses electromagnetism in its examples. I don't think it covers electric circuits, which are a mess of their own. However, there are tons of resources on the internet for circuits. I hope all this was helpful :)

I've never used Zetilli so maybe it's the best option and I don't know, but Dirac's book is reasonably inexpensive new and quite cheap used on Amazon. I've got a 3rd edition I found in a thrift shop ages ago and it's actually a very pleasant read too, imo.

Quantum

Easy: Zettili, Comprehensive reference: Cohen-Tannoudji

or if you want more foundational books

Easy: Schumacher and Westmoreland, Comprehensive: Ballentine

1. Yeah, you can take two subject tests on the same day (at least in the U.S.).
   
   
2. 1490 is in "the range" for like every school (at least 25th percentile). But if you think you can do significantly better, I guess you can take it again in October. Just look at the score ranges for the schools you're interested in. It's available on their websites.
   
   
3. There is official material for the subject tests. They make books for it.

Epstein also has a great book called Relativity Visualized that goes great with Thinking Physics.

Yeah, that's easily the best calculus-based entry-level Physics textbook out there, although there's a third author now, Walker. Plus, it's been around forever, so it shouldn't be hard to find a used copy.

If you had gone over the site, you would have noticed that I address your objection, which is a silly one. If you think you can use proper time tau to parametrize time t as a way of showing that t is a variable, I've got a bridge to sell you. Time is time. What's good for the gander is good for the goose. If you think that you can use tau to show that t is a variable, you must first show that tau can change. You would need a meta-tau for your tau, and a meta-meta-tau and so on, ad infinitum.

Not all relativists are as dumb as you though. Here is a quote from "Relativity from A to B" by Prof Geroch at the U. of Chicago.

>"There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as "moving through" space-time, or as "following along" their world-lines. Rather, particles are just "in" space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle.

From Relativity from A to B by Dr. Robert Geroch, U. of Chicago

If that does not shut you people up, nothing else will. I tried. Besides, your intelligence compared to someone like Karl Popper is obviously miniscule. He was smart enough to understand that time cannot change by definition. You're just a pompous ass. Those who are voting you up are ass kissers. Now vote this down, AKs. LOL.

I really like Spivak's Classical Mechanics. It's a very well-written book, as you would expect from Spivak's other texts. For general relativity, I really like Barrett O'Neill. He tries to present as much of the theory as possible in a coordinate-free manner, which makes the underlying principles much more clear.

You can learn the math from Khan Academy (and a bit of the physics). Alongside that two good introductory textbooks are University Physics and Physics For Scientists And Engineers. Those two books will each cover everything you would learn in a first year university program. You can find them for a few bucks on abebooks but it's worth getting the newer editions because the modern physics section in the older ones is pretty thin.

For Variational Calculus, the best references are Landau and Lifchitz and Gelfand and Fomin. The former is really a mechanics book that incorporates variational calculus in a very rigorous manner that one would expect from a theoretical physicist. The latter is a straight-up variational calculus book. Both are relatively cheap (you can find landau for cheaper than the amazon price).

For non-commutative geometry, there is this classic paper. /u/hopffiber gave the classic references for the rest of the topics, although you should think about learning quantum field theory since all the applications of Lie algebras come from QFT and String Theory. There are some excellent notes by David Tong that you can find with google-fu.

I loved the book by Zettili! It’s easy to follow without much prior knowledge of the subject.

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials Of Physics Explained By Its Most Brilliant Teacher

by Richard Feynman

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.

Yes. I remember reading one of michael spivak's books where he says something like what you said, he then said he was attempting to make books titled "* for mathematicians" (mathematician here). This is the only one i know he actually made: physics for mathematicians

I did hope he did the series, but have lost it since. It would be amazing if there was a similar thing for ML

If I were you, I would study from Purcell (Berkeley physics course volume number 2). https://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Edward-M-Purcell/dp/1107014026 This is the best to begin with. And DO all the problems! After that if you still want better understanding, Griffiths - Introduction to electrodynamics is very good. Do not touch Feynman or Landau until you complete those 2, they are very bad for beginers but after you are familiar with the subject they are true gems.

It's not particularly small, but Relativity Visualized by Lewis Carroll Epstein is mostly pictures and is an awesome book.

Edit: by the description of the cover, maybe it's Thinking Physics, also by Epstein?

Absolute beginners? The local high school textbook.

If you know calculus then I'd sugguest Young & Freedman's, because mechanics knowledge is paramount. Futhermore the book covers electromagnetism, waves, some special relativity, and dabbles in advanced topics. It was used almost the entirety of my first year at uni.

You can easily choose an older version if you don't want to pay so much.

The single best undergrad quantum book I've found (and I've gone through a lot of them) is Zettili's Quantum Mechanics. Very thorough and doesn't skimp out on the requisite math, but also does a good job explaining things with tons of worked out problems/examples.

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.

(OOC: Learning quantum mechanics is rather difficult if you actually want to understand it. You need to know vector calculus to even begin on anything but the simplest problems. If you are serious about learning and you don't know much about math, start with Physics by Giancoli. That should take you from basic algebra to introductory quantum mechanics. From there (Or if you are math savvy) go with Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and applications. Once you finish those you'll have a good basic knowledge on quantum mechanics.

If that sounds like a lot of work and you're just looking for a 'laymans explanation' I can recommend the old Feynman lectures on QED. He explains this stuff pretty understandably without going heavy on the math.)

For math II, I bought this book for four practice tests: https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1564771506&refinements=p_27%3AThe+College+Board&s=books&sr=1-3&text=The+College+Board. Then I used http://www.cracksat.net/sat2/math/

Hope that helps!

Those notes eventually became this beautiful book.

I have spent many hours with it since it came out a couple of years ago. I can highly recommend it to anyone who, like myself, picked a lot of modern physics here and there, but never bothered to go back to thinking about classical mechanics.

A solid intro book to QM is Zetilli, but as others have mentioned you might want to learn some Classical Mechanics first and for that I recommend Landau or Goldstein. Landau is usually more of a grad book and Goldstein is an undergrad one.

I just read Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?) by Brian Cox. Can't say I fully understood it all (only an amateur physics buff) but found it very interesting.

Start with the official book, which has 4 official tests including answer explanations: https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327

Then move onto the Dubai tests. If you need more help with strategy, then I can recommend the Princeton Review book and/or the Barron's book.

Yes. this was my freshman physics text book and I highly recommend it. It was also my brothers at a different university.

Don't read Feynman. While it's extremely dense and good, it's also very unconventional and hard to understand if you don't know where it's going already.
I'd suggest Griffiths or Zee's Nutshell. While both are technically textbooks, i think you can read them very well without necessarily understanding all calculations.
Of course, those are damn expensive so you should better look for them in a library.

For Physics, I'd recommend starting with the textbook "Conceptual Physics." I've found the 11th edition for ~$27 (used) here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0321568095/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=&sr=

You might be able to get it cheaper if you look for an older edition.

The textbook doesn't use calculus. It focuses on building the conceptual ideas behind Newtonian physics. It uses only algebra and a bit of trig.

When I studied physics, I started with this textbook. I've found that it made a calculus based physics class much easier for me, as instead of having to learn both concepts and how to use calculus in a practical setting, I just had to learn how to use calculus.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

The Hole In The Universe

Universe on a T-Shirt

Light Years

Before The Big Bang

Why Does e=mc^2? (and why should we care?)

Your Inner Fish (about evolution)

And just because it was one of my first pop science books, I'll add The Telescope. Which is of course, about telescopes. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds!

High School Physics Teacher here:

Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt.

I own an old copy and leave it in my classroom. This book will get you perfectly prepared for your class, as it has wonderful cartoons to explain a wide variety of topics and also includes all of the necessary formulas.

Pro Tip: Look for an old, used version. I wouldn't pay full price for the latest edition. The physics hasn't changed over the years.

EDIT: You can totally find a used version for $15-$20. At first search, I found them for $17.99 here. I'm sure you can do better, but there's no need to buy the latest, newest edition.

Introduction to Modern Optics by Fowler

Frankly it's like to be too focused on the physics of optics. You'll have much different knowledge requirements packaging laser diodes than you will building telecom transceivers or camera lenses. Not that there aren't people who have worked in all those fields.

i can vouch for Serway & Jewett. It can be used for either of the four AP Physics very efficiently and explains things fairly well

Thanks. The HJE is usually included in a course on advanced classical mechanics. Landau and Lifshitz do a great job with it, but I actually prefer a more direct derivation.

Griffiths > Eisberg > Sakurai > Zee > Peskin

Peres and Ballentine offer a more quantum information oriented approach, read em after Griffiths.

Shankar before Sakurai, after Griffiths.



In that order. Your best bet though, is to find the appropriate section in the nearest university library, spend a day or two looking at books and choose whatever looks most interesting/accessible. Be warned, it seems that everyone and their cat has a book published on quantum mechanics with funky diagrams on the cover these days. A lot of them are legitimate, but make little to no effort to ensure your understanding or pose creative problems.

Brush up on mathematical methods for physics. Learn Linear Algebra, Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, Multivariable Calculus, Complex Analysis, and Tensor Analysis. A good book would be this: http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physical-Sciences-Mary/dp/0471198269/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

Classical Mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Third-Course-Theoretical-Physics/dp/0750628960/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291625026&sr=1-7

E&M: http://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Fields-Roald-K-Wangsness/dp/0471811866/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1
or http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Electrodynamics-3rd-David-Griffiths/dp/013805326X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291625100&sr=1-1

Statistical Mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Statistical-Thermal-Physics-Frederick/dp/1577666127/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291625184&sr=1-1

Quantum Mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Quantum-Mechanics-R-Shankar/dp/0306447908/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291625261&sr=1-4

Books! Quantum mechanics in a nutshell or Quantum field theory in a nutshell

<3 Merry Christmas.

My recommendations:

• The Feynman Lectures on Physics - a grand, insightful introductory (i.e. first year college) course from the master. I wish I had read this in high school.
  
• Mechanics by Landau and Lifshitz - volume I of the famous course on theoretical physics
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics - if you are also a programming nerd
  
  See also:
  
  
• http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html
  
• http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/books
  

Hello! I have the 6th edition of this textbook, it's a uni introductory course textbook. Typically uni physics will go into more math than H2 i.e. involve more calculus. PM me if you're interested!

I've been thinking about buying QFT in a Nutshell. Better than Peskin & Schroeder ?

Try reading Relativity Visualized by Epstein. It does not use any complex math and explains this in a very clear way.

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Visualized-Lewis-Carroll-Epstein/dp/093521805X

If you are looking for a E & M textbook, I would absolutely recommend Electricity and Magnetism by Purcell (https://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Edward-M-Purcell/dp/1107014026/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517530006&sr=8-1&keywords=electricity+and+magnetism).

Maybe this will help

I used Modern Optics by Grant Fowels. It's decent.

He was trying to learn.

I too like to learn with my belly. Sometimes I learn about food by eating it. Other times I try to learn about QFT by laying on my copy of Pesking and Schroeder.

I'm flabbergasted by your counselor's response. I mean, that's their job. Counselor's in my building set those up every year... complain?

As for books, it's you call, but I like Serway and Jewett. For review I've heard good things about Barron's.

Your one really difficult part is going to be lab experiments. That's going to be hard.

Physics for Scientists and Engineers explains things quite well and has a lot of problems to work on. Nice examples too.

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Scientists-Engineers-Raymond-Serway/dp/1133947271

Try looking on the course webpages such as for CS 31 and CS 32. Attempt to do the problems before learning the material for CS 33. This will test your understanding and solidify what you already know. Some of their homework problems are extremely challenging, but in most cases, the homework problems will not change from year to year that much. This means that if you start now, you will be done with the homework by the time you get here. This is awesome because your grade for these classes are all from your homework. The textbooks used for these courses are RHK, K&K, and Feynman.

While you're at it, you might want to start learning linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, vector calculus, and partial differential equations.

Source: I graded homework for CCS Physics.

Maybe, but I'm no doctor. I think if you're determined you can do it. My physics professor suggested a conceptual book about physics that might really help, you need to understand the fundamentals before you can apply math

This one, I bought a hard cover old ass version for like $3; Conceptual Physics (11th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321568095/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_17ybzbH9V4ATN

I've heard very good things about [General Relativity from A to B]
(https://www.amazon.com/General-Relativity-B-Robert-Geroch/dp/0226288641/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499632748&sr=8-1&keywords=general+relativity+from+A+to+B) by Robert Geroch, but haven't read it myself.

I was using CrackSAT, but I thought the tests didn't seem official. The SAT Math 2 book by College Board with 4 official tests is only $15 on Amazon, so I just bought it.

Here's the link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327&ved=2ahUKEwizi9qhh6jiAhWQVN8KHTw7C68QFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw17S0hDfrL0k9uRzSVI2jvf

Hecht is the landmark. If you want a bargain Grant Fowles modern optics is hard to beat.

I know I am late to the party but I took this info on how time is measured from my University Physics book.

The book by Zettilli is very good and contains lots of work problems.

Also, let's not forget about Michael Spivak's^1 Physics for Mathematicians: Mechanics 1.


^1 you may have heard about his books on Calculus and Differential Geometry

The two books:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Separation-Process-Principles-Biochemical-Operations/dp/0470481838
   
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-13th/dp/0321696867/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407545099&sr=1-1&keywords=university+physics+young+and+freedman
   

Haven't looked at it so can't speak to it's quality but:

MacKay: Information theory, inference and learning algorithms and Newman: Networks for the latter.

Purcell: http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Edward-M-Purcell/dp/1107014026

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-1-David-Halliday/dp/0471320579


Srsly this book contains all the Physics you will need until grad school.

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=collegeboard+math&qid=1562120062&s=gateway&sr=8-3

​

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Chemistry-Study-College/dp/145730919X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=college+board+chemistry&qid=1562120075&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I need any of these

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1523381531/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Study-Guide-Subject-Tests/dp/0874479754/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0874479754&pd_rd_r=TV55SY40GF9T9KGMMKKP&pd_rd_w=eHmSr&pd_rd_wg=GQ78g&psc=1&refRID=TV55SY40GF9T9KGMMKKP

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Chemistry-Study-College/dp/145730919X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523927942&sr=1-4&keywords=sat+chemistry+subject+test+2018

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1457309327&pd_rd_r=Y2NY1QZJK7RGSWQYHDSS&pd_rd_w=zut0F&pd_rd_wg=xvkKB&psc=1&refRID=Y2NY1QZJK7RGSWQYHDSS&dpID=51BcC6Y2-XL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail

If I recall correctly, Feynman expanded on an idea that Dirac wrote in the appendices of his quantum mechanics text book. I imagine it was this text: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Principles-Quantum-Mechanics-Dirac/dp/0198520115

And I cannot comment on the propagator definition.

Purcell's book on E&M starts with relativity and derives magnetism as a relativistic effect.

this was the official guide that you have to buy from collegeboard. it includes 4 practice tests

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537422420&sr=1-1&keywords=sat+math+2+college+board

official Math 2

https://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Edward-M-Purcell/dp/1107014026

maybe? or griffiths

Depends on your level, but any book with a title not far away from "Introduction to quantum field theory" will do the job if you already know a lot of physics. For instance, this is the text book of the introductory course at my university. But it is for people with a bachelor in theoretical physics.

https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Mathematicians-Mechanics-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098322

What is probably the most-used textbook for quantum field theory:

Peskin & Schroeder

The Higgs is covered in chapter 20, I believe. I think you only really need to study chapters 1-7, whichever chapter has Goldstone's theorem (11?), 15-16, and 20 to get to the Higgs material and cover the basics of quantum field theory and the Standard Model, although this skips the deeper aspects of renormalization.

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=sat+math+ii&qid=1556467863&s=gateway&sr=8-5

https://www.amazon.com/Official-Subject-Mathematics-Level-Study/dp/1457309327/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Z6CTF72NMJJ8VPGPS5ZG

Landau and lifshitz mechanics is short enough.
http://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Third-Edition-Theoretical-Physics/dp/0750628960

Why Does E=mc2? (And Why Should We Care?)

Here is the mobile version of your link

You could try Spivak’s book, Physics for Mathematicians, https://amzn.com/0914098322

University Physics looks at you. Though, it's probably not a good bet for JEE (book is way too fat and may be discouraging for study). But the exercises were good.

CS - CodeAcademy http://www.codecademy.com/ not bad intro stuff
Math - KhanAcademy https://www.khanacademy.org very well guided math, after you're done with that try a couple textbooks to round yourself off with the workbooks (they have odd problems solved) http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Ron-Larson/dp/0547167024/ http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-13th/dp/0321696867/ (obliviously not free unless you know where to look, wink wink)

If you want to take the CS skills to the next level, you're gonna need a lot of practice and multiple books. More advanced/niche online classes are usually pay only.

Physics for Mathematicians provides an axiomatic introduction to classical mechanics: https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Mathematicians-Mechanics-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098322

Axiomatizing physics is one of Hilbert's problems.

The subject tests are never released and so there are no past papers to be had. The College Board has 1 large book that contains 1 example of each type of SAT subject test.

SAT Subject Tests Book

Last year the College Board started publishing individual guides. The guides have 2-4 practice tests. There is not a guide for every type of test, but these are the most common ones.

SAT Chemistry

SAT Biology

SAT Math II

SAT Physics

SAT US History

SAT World History

Last I checked this was the book they were using: http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Scientists-Engineers-Raymond-Serway/dp/1133947271/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419726345&sr=8-1&keywords=physics+for+scientists+and+engineers+serway

Problem with "Smart Physics" the book is a joke, it doesn't explain jack. They force you to watch pre lectures that don't teach you anything, they force you to be in class for clicker questions. Smart Physics barely has any problems or any examples so as the other person said you can't practice. Look online and you will not find a single positive thing about "Smart Physics". First time I saw that book I thought it was the one they were using for non scientists and engineer because it has no rigor or substance to it.

That time I wasted watching those useless videos and time I wasted in class I could have spent reading a real book but because of the system I had to sit in class.