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The Physics AS/A Levels are a funny lot of modules; I believe they're designed to be doable without any A Level-equivalent Maths knowledge, so they're riddled with weird explanations that really try to avoid maths - which often just makes everything harder in the long run. (I did AQA Physics A, but all were pretty similar as far as I gathered.)

With that in mind, if you're looking to study Physics further on, I'd recommend supplementing your mathematics. If you're doing Further Maths, you probably needn't bother, as the first year of any university course will bore you to death repeating everything you learnt about calculus etc.; if you're doing single Maths, I'd recommend getting confident with C1-4, and maybe purchasing the Edexcel (Keith Pledger) FP1/FP2 books to get slightly ahead before uni. They're great books, so might be useful to have for Y1 of uni and reference thereafter regardless. I was quite put off by the attitude towards Y1 maths of the Further Maths people (about half the cohort), who kept moaning about having done it all already, so found focusing in lectures a tad harder; I wish I'd bothered to read just a little ahead.

The second thing I'd recommend would be reading fairly broadly in physics to understand what aspect in particular you enjoy the most. In my experience, the students who have even a rough idea of what they want to do in the future perform better, as they have motivation behind certain modules and know how to prioritise for a particular goal, e.g. summer placement at a company which will look for good laboratory work, or even as far as field of research.

To that end (and beginning to answer the post!), books that aren't overly pop-science, like Feynman's Six Easy Pieces/Six Not-so-Easy Pieces are good (being a selection of lectures from The Feynman Lectures). Marcus Chown does a similarly good job of not dumbing things down too much in Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and We Need to Talk About Kelvin, and he talks about a good variety of physical phenomena, which you can look up online if they interest you. I could recommend more, but it really depends how you want to expand your physics knowledge!

E - darn, just read you're not in the UK. Oops. Mostly still applies.

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.

Doesn't sound like you have too much to worry about so long as the bad grades are older and you can get a decent pGRE score. Where you can get into will depend on how well your interests align with the faculty at a school and how well you can sell yourself to them. Plus luck, which will play a bigger factor than you might think. This book has a lot of good advice tailored to physics. Part of the book is about ranking programs into tiers then finding where your application fits. Tier 1 schools are places like MIT and Stanford, basically you need to really stand out since so many people apply and they have low acceptance rates. Tier 2 schools are all great schools (ranked 10-30 schools) and can be very hard to get into. For these expect to need a 3.75 GPA and pGRE of 750+ to be competitive grade wise. Tier 3 schools are going to be good schools ranked 31-50, generally these are larger schools like large state universities. You should be competitive at these schools with your application. Tier 4 schools are generally much smaller, but still good schools ranked 50-100. A 3.0 should be competitive. Tier 5 is a mixed bag of good and bad but 2.5 should be fine for most of them.

Sounds like you are competitive at tier 3 schools, pick some tier 2 schools you are interested in then some tier 3, and some tier 4. maybe 20 schools in total. Then start researching to boil down that list to a couple reach schools (tier 2), a couple safety schools (tier 4), and 6 or so tier 3 schools. Base your decisions off of compatibility with those schools and their professors. Do not limit yourself to just the west, trust me I did that and now I'm shut out of grad school for a year because I was too restrictive in my first round of applications. This process will be expensive, plan for ~$150 per school in transcript and application fees and have your list prepared before you take the pGRE in October so you can take advantage of the few free score reports you get.

Ya! It was a hard road that took me 5 years to finish my degree but here I am working on a bunch of engineering research. That's not all though, after a year at this company, I decided to apply to PhD programs in electrical engineering and physics. I'm finishing up my applications as we speak. So we'll see how it goes.

My family is great also. My mom is still having trouble finding a steady job but now that I'm working it's a lot less stressful. My brother will be graduating from his very own Physics major in 2 years, and just like you and me, he's the only minority in his physics program. Luckily he's had my support throughout the experience and we've talked a lot about the very same lonesome feeling we had.

I'll end with this: I reassure you that if my failures and successes were put in lists right next to each other, the successes would be about 3 lines while the failures would be hundreds of pages. I had a 2.3 GPA finishing up my sophomore year; hell, I even failed my English 101 class. Luckily, I applied randomly and got accepted to a middle of nowhere REU on nanoscience research where I met an Indian grad student that really helped me cope and listen to every one of my problems no matter how petty they sounded. By the time I graduated, I had brought my GPA up to a 3.1 with an internship under my belt.

Anyways, I'm not here to brag, but I just want to let you know that even a person like you that seems so hopeless has the potential to succeed. Just keep at it until something works.

Additionally, reading really helped me cope with what I was feeling by showing me the stories of people just like us. There's authors out there that have gone through the same experience and have written it all out. I strongly suggest reading: The Invisible Man
and Crime and Punishment

These stories are literally about college students that have been dealt a hand that makes it hard for them. They're long stories but even just reading the first 100 pages of either will really let you see your own experience written into words.

Wish you well mate!
Good luck

This is a good book; I think you can find it for free somewhere.

Also, you might enjoy something about the physics of synthesizers, but I don't know any book on that subject...

You know, almost all the physicists I know play some kind of instrument and are passionate about music... I think the subjects go very well together. It's nice to see a musician go the other way around, since most artists believe our world is completely devoid of fantasy and creativity. :)

You can try just googling python for physics pdf files to help get you started. I found these two places which look like a good start. Python is a fairly simple language I would say and most of the research I did with python I learned pretty much on the spot since the application of python to physics is so varied. There are also a lot of really good textbooks out there not just for python, but I feel once you know C or something you can easily figure out python.

Also the bible when it comes to physics computations is this book. It's written in C, I believe there is one for Java, but like I said if you learn C picking up Python should be pretty simple. You might find it online somewhere. I should also add that this is a bible in helping you write pseudo-code algorithms for solving multiple types of mathematical expressions - translating the pseudo-code into actual code is where the learning process coding comes into play.

I am a PhD student now, so I'll share my thoughts that may be relevant for you. I am going to suggest a somewhat aggressive timeline that I personally think optimizes your time while still preparing you to be a good PhD applicant, which basically comes down to: research experience and your physics GRE, more on those below.

If your not redoing a whole degree (which you should not) then you really just need 2 things for a good PhD application: the more or less standard "core" undergrad courses- Modern Physics, Thermodynamics, E&M, and Quantum, and secondly- RESEARCH EXPERIENCE (research spiel in next paragraph). You could really do the core requirements in a year, but that leaves you with a screwy PhD application timeline. So spreading your undergrad courses and research over 2 years is reasonable. Additionally the core course mentioned are primarily what is covered on the physics GRE. I would start familiarizing yourself with the content of the pGRE immediately after modern physics since you are on a compressed timeline. Ok now on to the research spiel.

The purpose of doing a PhD and being a physicist is primarily to do physics research. If you don't like research, then you won't like being a physicist. Luckily you have a programming background, so you could get involved with research pretty quickly (virtually all research involves some sort of programming these days).

There is so much more to say with regards to grad school, but I will refer you to the following book

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Grad-School-Physics-physical/dp/1499732244

Which will fill in the rest of the details and elaborate on what I've said. I really don't think I could say much more that won't be repeating what is already said in the book.

I will say that physics research involving quantum mechanics directly will be theoretical, and the main areas where researchers eat quantum mechanics for breakfast are: cosmology, particle and nuclear, condensed matter. For experiment you may or may not need to know quantum mechanics very well.

Astronomy is basically experimental astrophysics, and is all about data collection and analysis, with tons and tons of algorithms implemented along the way.

I myself am in theoretical nuclear and particle physics mainly focused on simulation. Hope I have helped you in some way!

To be completely honest, neither Brian Greene books nor high school math are going to give you a genuine feel of what it's like to study physics at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level. That said, if you're interested, then I absolutely recommend diving in and seeing how far you get. Even if you eventually decide that you don't want to be a physicist, the quantitative and critical thinking skills you'll pick up are desirable in many other lucrative careers (e.g. finance, computing, etc).

As for intro physics texts, I highly recommend An Introduction to Mechanics by Kleppner and Kolenkow. This is about as close as an intro physics book gets to real physics (in terms of style, not content). It's not an easy read, even for students who already have a background in physics...but if you want to study physics, you'll have to get used to that. I'm not sure how much math you've seen, but you'll need to be comfortable with single variable calculus before reading a book like K&K.

If you haven't seen calculus yet, then I recommend focusing on math for now...physics without calculus is rarely more than memorizing equations and crunching numbers. This will definitely give you the wrong idea about what physics is like.

The analogous book for me was Townsend's Quantum Physics: A Fundamental Approach to Modern Physics. It spends a good deal of time on introducing you to quantum mechanics, as it should, but there are also discussions of solid state, nuclear, and particle physics, in addition to relativity.

Honestly, if you are looking for an in-depth treatment of special relativity it might be worth finding a book on that specifically, because it's generally not treated in a lot of depth in classes, since such depth isn't needed (it's relatively simple, if potentially unintuitive at first). Chapter 15 of Taylor, for example, has a good treatment of special relativity, and it's regarded as one of the canonical texts for classical mechanics (edit: at the introductory/intermediate level, that is).

Ok, looked at this thing (PDF warning) and it looks like a modern physics course + intro mechanics.

If you're interested in more pop-sci stuff I would look into Dance Of The Photons by Zeilinger. It covers some more popular elements of quantum in a very accessible but not crank-y way. Zeilinger is a legit dude. Unfortunately I don't know much about pop-sci physics books because I tend to avoid them.

If you're more interested in textbook stuff, I would look into some of the classic undergraduate books depending on what you're interested in. So stuff like Taylor for mechanics, Griffiths for E&M, and so on.

Of course there's always the Feynman lectures as well which are online. I think all of these should be approachable to you. I'm not sure what your math background is, assuming you're comfortable with calculus and some differential equations. Probably linear algebra as well. If not, I would look into these as well, unfortunately I don't have any book recommendations for these subjects though.

Also did some googling and I found this list which might be handy to look at.

You might like Hassani 1 better (or more readable) compared to Boas (Boas has more problems though). Though I'm not suggesting it as a preparation for your test next week (although you never know; you might pick it up from the library tomorrow and find out it answered many of your questions). It's one of the books that you shouldn't rush through (a whole summer working through it, solving 70-80% of the problems, would be a good idea).

Bra Ket notation shouldn't be too difficult if you've taken 'linear algebra' already (again Hassani has a few chapters on LA, but I used Leon when I took LA class). Schmidt ortho is covered in an LA class (again also is in Hassani).

Other stuff you mentioned seem like special topics in Diff. Eq, save for Complex Fourier which should be under 'complex analysis' I guess.

I hope this helps FWIW.

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

As others have mentioned, there are a lot of good books on Math Methods of Physics out there (I used Hassani's Mathematical Methods: For Students of Physics and Related Fields).

That said, if you're having trouble with calculus, I'd recommend going back and really understanding that well. It underlies more or less all the mathematics found in physics, and trying to learn vector calculus (essential for E&M) without having a solid understanding of single-variable calculus is just asking for trouble.

There are a number of good books out there. Additionally, Khan Academy covers calculus very well. The videos on this page cover everything you'd encounter in your first year, and maybe a smidge more.

Once you move on to vector calculus, Div, Grad, Curl and All That is without equal.

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.

Get this book-

Conquering the Physics GRE https://www.amazon.com/dp/1479274631/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_PyADDbZYF289R

Practice all the exercises and skim through the text. I started with my Physics GRE prep two weeks before the test and scored full. This book helped a lot I think. All the best!

Buy this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Grad-School-Physics-physical/dp/1499732244/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=getting+into+grad+school+for+physics&qid=1562922761&s=gateway&sprefix=getting+into+grad+&sr=8-1

I helped me answer a lot of questions about the application process.