Reddit mentions of Fundamentals of Physics

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.

Well a good intro. textbook is Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. This is a full freshman physics book, so it has a little bit of everything, but I used it a lot through my entire undergraduate degree.


Had a class that technically required Theory of Relativity by Pauli but the teacher used their own notes so I never read the book.


My favorite book that deals with relativity is Exploring Black Holes by Taylor and Wheeler. Took an undergrad class where this was the main textbook and loved it.

Woot, I might be kinda late for this. I need anything that covers Simple Harmonic Motion or Waves ( or both ) in depth. I tried Fundamentals of Physics but it wasn't on par with what we're doing on class. If it's possible it should contain many exercises as well.

I like this calculus book: https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-7th-James-Stewart/dp/0538497815

And this is Halliday and Resnick https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Physics-David-Halliday/dp/111823071X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=9SK20IQF11Z5&keywords=halliday+and+resnick+fundamentals+of+physics&qid=1567697861&s=books&sprefix=hallida%2Cstripbooks%2C124&sr=1-3

Lots of people like the Feynman Lectures on Physics but personally I find them pretty dry. I quite like Halliday and Resnick. Most of your learning is simply from sitting down and doing problems so don't worry too much about teachers, worry about understanding the work.

In terms of careers, it's going to depend on your occupation. But there's rarely spreadsheets, and less maths than you might think. Physics uses the language of maths to describe problems, but often the math is the easier part and figuring out if it makes sense/what it means is the tricky part. There is a lot of reading, programming, writing, thinking and teaching.