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These are graduate level textbooks. There is little point in attempting them without a solid undergraduate background in physics, which is necessary both to und

These are graduate level textbooks. There is little point in attempting them without a solid undergraduate background in physics, which is necessary both to understand and to appreciate Landau's presentation.

messe 9y ago
That depends on your university, I'm not in the US so all of my modules are focused on what would be called my "major" (which is Theoretical Physics, at least that's the name of the course). "Mechanics" is a second year undergraduate textbook here. We only used it during the first semester, and didn't have a set textbook for the second. Goldstein and Arnol'd were favourites. "The Classical Theory of Fields", "Quantum Mechanics" and "Statistical Physics" are all recommended reading in third year, but they're not the main textbooks for their modules.
- astrodev 9y ago
  That's quite impressive. Where are you from? I think even Cambridge, which is an outlier as far as the course level is concerned, only uses "Mechanics" as a recommended textbook in the third year.
  - keldaris 9y ago
    In most post-Soviet universities I've seen, Landau's idea of the theoretical minimum is well and alive. Depending on the professor, Landau isn't rare as required reading in undergrad courses, and the notion that you should be familiar with anything in Landau in graduate exams is also common.
    - messe 9y ago
      Yup. As it happens a not insignificant amount of my lecturers are from Post-Soviet states, including the course director.
  - messe 9y ago
    Apologies in advance for the long post, but it's been a lazy Friday and I've nothing better to do. I'm in Ireland, in Trinity College Dublin. The way the course (Theoretical Physics) as a whole is taught is rather odd compared to other universities. For various historical reasons, the theorists are staff of the mathematics department rather than the physics department. For other historical reasons, the Theoretical Physics (TP) course is separate to the Physics course and its teaching is split evenly between the Mathematics and Physics department. Due to the way the TP course is structured, we take a lot of rigorous and proof based maths in the first two years. Single- and Multi-variable Real Analysis, Calculus on Manifolds, Complex Analysis, Group Theory, and of course Linear Algebra are all covered rigorously. Fourier Analysis and ODEs are covered also, but less rigorously and more focused on applications. All of these modules are shared with the pure mathematics students. The Physics students on the other hand, are required to take another subject during their first two years. Most choose chemistry. Because of the additional subject they only take non-rigorous equivalents of some the above. Multivariable/Vector Calculus instead of Analysis, no Calculus on Manifolds at all, I'm not sure about complex analysis, no group theory, mostly computation based linear algebra. Their Fourier Analysis and ODE course are much the same as ours. So over the course of the first two years, the mathematical maturities of the TP students and physics students diverge significantly simply due to the topics that are studied. This, and the fact that theorists are in the maths department, has resulted in a lot of modules that would traditionally be the realm of the Physics department alone, being duplicated. The physics department teaches the physics students a certain topic, while the maths department teaches the TP (and pure maths) students the same topic, usually more in depth as there is less need to delve into the mathematical machinery behind it when the students are often already familiar with it. For example, next year the modules I'll be taking in the maths department are "Classical Field Theory", "Electrodynamics", "Quantum Mechanics" I & II, and "Statistical Physics" I & II. The Mechanics modules I mentioned earlier were also taken in the maths department. In 4th year, the gap widens further, as there is no way at all for physics students to take GR or QFT (as far as I can recall). These are only taught by the maths department, which also offers to TP students, depending on the year, modules on Algebraic Geometry, Group Representations, Lie Groups & Algebras, Differential Geometry (a prerequisite to GR here) and others.
    - 9y ago

messe 9y ago

That depends on your university, I'm not in the US so all of my modules are focused on what would be called my "major" (which is Theoretical Physics, at least that's the name of the course). "Mechanics" is a second year undergraduate textbook here. We only used it during the first semester, and didn't have a set textbook for the second. Goldstein and Arnol'd were favourites. "The Classical Theory of Fields", "Quantum Mechanics" and "Statistical Physics" are all recommended reading in third year, but they're not the main textbooks for their modules.

astrodev 9y ago
That's quite impressive. Where are you from? I think even Cambridge, which is an outlier as far as the course level is concerned, only uses "Mechanics" as a recommended textbook in the third year.
- keldaris 9y ago
  In most post-Soviet universities I've seen, Landau's idea of the theoretical minimum is well and alive. Depending on the professor, Landau isn't rare as required reading in undergrad courses, and the notion that you should be familiar with anything in Landau in graduate exams is also common.
  - messe 9y ago
    Yup. As it happens a not insignificant amount of my lecturers are from Post-Soviet states, including the course director.
- messe 9y ago
  Apologies in advance for the long post, but it's been a lazy Friday and I've nothing better to do. I'm in Ireland, in Trinity College Dublin. The way the course (Theoretical Physics) as a whole is taught is rather odd compared to other universities. For various historical reasons, the theorists are staff of the mathematics department rather than the physics department. For other historical reasons, the Theoretical Physics (TP) course is separate to the Physics course and its teaching is split evenly between the Mathematics and Physics department. Due to the way the TP course is structured, we take a lot of rigorous and proof based maths in the first two years. Single- and Multi-variable Real Analysis, Calculus on Manifolds, Complex Analysis, Group Theory, and of course Linear Algebra are all covered rigorously. Fourier Analysis and ODEs are covered also, but less rigorously and more focused on applications. All of these modules are shared with the pure mathematics students. The Physics students on the other hand, are required to take another subject during their first two years. Most choose chemistry. Because of the additional subject they only take non-rigorous equivalents of some the above. Multivariable/Vector Calculus instead of Analysis, no Calculus on Manifolds at all, I'm not sure about complex analysis, no group theory, mostly computation based linear algebra. Their Fourier Analysis and ODE course are much the same as ours. So over the course of the first two years, the mathematical maturities of the TP students and physics students diverge significantly simply due to the topics that are studied. This, and the fact that theorists are in the maths department, has resulted in a lot of modules that would traditionally be the realm of the Physics department alone, being duplicated. The physics department teaches the physics students a certain topic, while the maths department teaches the TP (and pure maths) students the same topic, usually more in depth as there is less need to delve into the mathematical machinery behind it when the students are often already familiar with it. For example, next year the modules I'll be taking in the maths department are "Classical Field Theory", "Electrodynamics", "Quantum Mechanics" I & II, and "Statistical Physics" I & II. The Mechanics modules I mentioned earlier were also taken in the maths department. In 4th year, the gap widens further, as there is no way at all for physics students to take GR or QFT (as far as I can recall). These are only taught by the maths department, which also offers to TP students, depending on the year, modules on Algebraic Geometry, Group Representations, Lie Groups & Algebras, Differential Geometry (a prerequisite to GR here) and others.
  - 9y ago