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Ask HN: I want to study physics. Where should I start?
I have an interest in the works of Stephen Hawking and other theoretical physicists. I would like to study these topics to better understand their work and also to one day contribute myself. Where can I begin? Any book recommendations? A physics degree?
Thank you.
- gus_massa 8y agoA physics Major and then a physics Ph.D. is the obvious path. (Math is also a good option :) ) But to get a proper advice it's necessary to have more data ... What is your current level? Do you have a university degree? Secondary school? Age? Country? Where do you work?
- throwaway413 8y agoThanks for your reply! I’m in SoCal, US. I’m 24/M. No degrees. I’m a software engineer by day. I spend a lot of time thinking about these topics but with no real fundamentals or knowledge to be able to put words to the ideas I’m envisioning. School has never been my first choice method to learning something new, but I realize that that may be the best bet for this type of study.
- gus_massa 8y agoI hope you like math, because an official or unofficial Ph.D. in Physics has enough math to make a Math Ph.D. cry. Here in Argentina many universities have the recommended books and the class problem for each course in the web page, so you can "take" the course for free if you read all the theoretical material and do all the homework. It's not official but it's a good guideline for which books to read and in which order. Don't skip the elementary courses. I guess that in the US some universities have a similar free content. The problem is to get feedback about the questions and the homework. I don't know if there is a newbie physics stackoverflow. You can try to work with some research group. Sometimes they need a programmer. Some can pay you, some expect you to work for free, some don't want to explain anything to an stranger. Also, most groups don't work in fancy topics, most topics are more boring. And don't expect a very modern software practices, many people use Fortran with a code style created before Fortran 77 and no version control (each paper is a folder with custom single use code).(Note: Modern Fortran is very fast, sometime faster then C.) Anyway, if you want to work as a programmer for a physics group, I think that taking (formally or informally) some course will be good so you can talk to them and understand what they are saying and how they think.
- abdullahkhalids 8y agoAs gus_massa has suggested, the standard path is to get a bachelors degree in physics/maths/engineering and then get a physics phd. Its extremely hard to contribute to modern science with less than this because it takes years of training to just know what people have already done, so you can start doing something new.
- inp 8y agoYou must read the courses of Richard Feynman, the best books on physics ever :-)
- Someone 8y agoYou should take a look at Feynmann’s lecture notes on physics, yes, but they aren’t guaranteed to be good for you. At the very least, you will need some math background that you may not have yet to be able to follow them.