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Ask HN: How to self-study physics?

• Areading314 7y ago
  Some tips: * Don't get discouraged. Physics is hard! * Work on problems, and don't let yourself look at the solutions too soon. Sometimes it takes a few days of thinking to solve a problem. * When reading through equations, go really slow. Make sure you fully understand each step and don't let yourself skim. Edit: +1 for the guide you linked, it looks excellent.
• ohiovr 7y ago
  Hyperphysics is nice if you haven't seen it: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html
• fyp 7y ago
  Your link is already a great resource, thanks for that! I didn't know Susan Fowler was a physics major at UPenn. The tl;dr; seems to be get "University Physics with Modern Physics" and go from there?
• greattsclerouse 7y ago
  I'd recommend starting here: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/#physics https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/#physics In my experience these are some of the best online courses you can watch to learn physics. Personally, I would look into the trying to watch the lectures from Walter Lewin--Walter is a fantastic orator and has a really great mad-scientist persona that is really captivating. Some additional archived lectures can be found here: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/34001 http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/34001 and here: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/archived-physics-courses/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/archived-physics-courses... I got my minor in physics from NYU many many moons ago (yes I'm getting old), but I found that the MIT lectures and OCW materials went way beyond the NYU coursework in both breadth and depth. I watched these lectures and worked through the lecture notes & assignments for Physics I, II, III, Quantum I, II, and several others in addition to digging into the Mathematics lectures / content. I found this material to be the most helpful out there. I'll also point out that I emailed the professors (Lewin, and others) and was pleased to receive a warm and helpful response on several occasions. I hope these are as helpful for your learning as they were for mine. Once, you are able to complete the video lectures here, OCW has a massive amount of content for some of the more advanced courses that aren't in video format. In my experience, going through these video lectures and some of the mathematics lectures should set you up well to be able to comprehend even the most advanced content across field theory and string theory. Cheers!
• lonelappde 7y ago
  http://www.goodtheorist.science/ http://www.goodtheorist.science/ http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html It take more than a few months to learn.
• 8bitsrule 7y ago
  For a 'strong foundation', you'll want to look at a first-year textbook and make sure your math skills are up to it. Use something with an eraser on it. Old joke from Anonymous: "Theoretical physicists aren't very expensive -- they only need a blackboard and an eraser. Compare that to a philosopher -- much the same but without the eraser."
• yummypaint 7y ago
  There are some general concepts that make frequent appearances, it's worth looking out for them because they can help form connections between different areas. Some examples: 1. the harmonic oscillator and associated quadratic potential. 2. Wave-like phenomena and the wave equation. This comes up in all kinds of mechanical and em systems, plus the schroedinger equation itself. 3. Decomposition of functions into orthogonal sets of other functions, its not just a mathematical trick, but a powerful way of reconceptualizing things. 4. Approximations and expansions are everywhere. Always keep in mind what it is youre solving for and look at its sensitivity to other properties of the system.
• FuckButtons 7y ago
  Start by brushing up on your math, there’s not much you can really get into without first getting into the calculus of variations, which you probably haven’t covered. From that you can get into Hamiltonian mechanics and from there you can start to really grapple with quantum mechanics. After dealing with the more technical side, you should read Paul Dirac’s book “the principles of quantum mechanics”
• gjstein 7y ago
  I was a physicist for a time and I learned physics via numerical simulation: I would find problems I could solve by hand and code them up---solving integrals, derivatives, systems of equations all numerically and comparing the results. Only a handful of physics problems have closed-form solutions, and being able to turn an interesting problem into code and "play around with it" was enormous fun for me and helped me build intuition as well. This advice strongly depends on your mathematics background, but with some basic calculus you can already start playing around.
  • kkaranth 7y ago
    This sounds interesting! Could you talk a bit more about what sources you used to find problems and learn from that translated well to this approach?
    • op03 7y ago
      Math for Game Programmers - Jorge Rodriguez. There is a playlist on youtube. Game programming is an underrated/underused tool to teach math, physics and programming.
      • jmiskovic 7y ago
        Game engine implements only a tiny slice of physics science, and even that in very distorted smoke-and-mirrors way in order to make it run in realtime. You learn more about computational optimizations, numerical methods and linear algebra, while physics is mostly elementary level. For example, all of optics is stuffed into highly optimized and simplified rendering pipeline and "physically based rendering" is anything but.
    • giu 7y ago
      The Applications chapter in the "Introduction to High Performance Scientific Computing" book [0] (it's freely available as a PDF) has some chapters dedicated to relevant computational physics problems, i.e., Molecular Dynamics, N-body problems, and Monte Carlo methods (e.g., for approximating integrals). The book has been posted on HN in the past [1] [0] http://pages.tacc.utexas.edu/~eijkhout/Articles/EijkhoutIntroToHPC.pdf http://pages.tacc.utexas.edu/~eijkhout/Articles/EijkhoutIntr... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19827993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19827993
• codebolt 7y ago
  I highly recommend Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. Takes you all the way from classical through modern physics, and introduces all the necessary math. Gives you a good overview of the territory, but you might want to supplement with some extra literature/lectures to go more in-depth certain places.
  • madaxe_again 7y ago
    Roger Penrose Kip Thorne Michio Kaku Douglas Hofstadter Isaac Asimov (non-fiction/essays) All have written numerous excellent books on various physics topics, and each explains the concepts they wish to convey clearly, with as much or as little mathematics as you like. Before I went to university to read physics, I devoured their (and others) popular science books, and had a pretty good understanding of the majority of the material on my degree course before I started it - the degree filled in the blanks, annealed the maths in my mind - but there’s little as good as a book written by an expert on a topic to imbue knowledge.
    • pdonis 7y ago
      In general I think actual textbooks or course materials (the OP mentioned MIT Open Courseware, which I think is a good set of course materials--full disclosure: I'm an MIT alum) are better for learning physics, or any scientific field, than pop science books, however high quality. That said, if you are going to read pop science books, I don't think Michio Kaku is a good choice. He is much too prone to treat way-out speculations as though they were established physics.
  • Koshkin 7y ago
    Penrose's is a terrible book for a beginner to try to learn from. It's a weird mix of relatively simple stuff and one you can't possibly appreciate if you do not have a degree in math or physics. It has a tendency to dwell on simple and familiar things and then rush through rather involved topics that are no doubt something a beginner would not have a chance to be prepared for.
  • knzhou 7y ago
    I don't know of anybody who's ever learned new stuff from that book. It literally zooms from addition and subtraction to fiber bundles in a few hundred pages. That's simply not enough to pick up anything but the bare intuition, and certainly not enough to do any nontrivial calculations. The only people I know who enjoyed the book at all were those who already knew the stuff in it, but in that case the book was pointless!
• deleted 7y ago
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• physicsAI 7y ago
  I thought I would also add my two cents, though there have been many excellent responses already. I recently defended my PhD in Physics (MIT '18). First of all - great idea! It is never too late to learn math and physics! In fact, with hard work and commitment, anybody can muster them to a high level. (1) Reading =/= understanding in math and physics. You understand a topic only if you can solve the problems. (2) Work through the solved problems you encounter in textbooks carefully. (3) Most people around me have never read any physics textbook cover to cover. E.g. reading Halliday, Resnick & Walker completely might take you years! Not all topics are equally important. Focus on the important parts. (4) You need guidance on what is important and what is not. Online courses, college material (especially problem sets!), teaching webpages could be a helpful guide. MIT OCW is an excellent resource, once you are ready for it. (5) Finding someone to talk to is really useful. You will likely have questions. Cultivating some relationship that allows you to ask questions is invaluable. (4) College courses in math and physics have a very definitive order. It is really difficult to skip any step along the way. E.g. to understand special relativity, you must first understand classical physics and electrodynamics. (5) Be prepared that the timescales in physics are long. Often, what turns people off is that they do not get things quickly (e.g. in 15-30 minutes). If you find yourself thinking hours about seemingly simple problems, do not despair! That is normal in physics. (6) You have to 'soak in' physics. It takes time. Initially, you might feel like you do not make a lot of progress, but the more you know, the quicker it will get. Give yourself time and be patient and persistent. (7) Often, just writing things down helps a lot with making things stick. It is a way of developing 'muscle memory'. So try and take notes while reading. Copying out solved problems from textbooks is also a good technique. (8) Counterintuitive: If you get completely stuck, move on! Learning often happens in non-linear ways. If you hit an insurmountable roadblock, just keep going. When you return in a few days/weeks, things will almost certainly be clearer.
  • indutny 7y ago
    In addition to said here: * https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-learn-physics https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-l... There are plenty of textbooks and lecture notes available online and that article links to most of the popular choices. Make sure to choose correct order of topics to avoid getting stuck!
• mdturnerphys 7y ago
  You might try Feynman's Lectures on Physics. They're available free online [0] or you can get a nicely bound boxed set. [0] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
• longtermd 7y ago
  Read the Feynman Lectures https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
  • indutny 7y ago
    Fantastic material! That being said I'd recommend to have several alternative textbooks for every subject at hand. Whenever stuck - one should switch to another and try a different take.
  • funklute 7y ago
    It's perhaps worth being aware that when Feynman initially gave his course at Caltech, most of the students either did extremely well or completely bombed the exam. The middle ground kinda disappeared. So if you read the Feynman lectures and struggle to understand his perspective from the first few chapters, it may be best to give up sooner than later (and move onto other sources).
• deleted 7y ago
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• kobiguru 7y ago
  Here is a guide by G. 't Hooft to learn physics. http://www.goodtheorist.science/ http://www.goodtheorist.science/
  • phtrivier 7y ago
    Looks incredibly comprehensive. Has anyone done similar work for other topics ? (biology springs to mind as something I would have no idea where to start from.)
    • adenadel 7y ago
      Something somewhat similar is How to Become a Pure Mathematician (or Statistician) http://hbpms.blogspot.com/ http://hbpms.blogspot.com/
• occamschainsaw 7y ago
  I second Feynman lectures! It is a delightful introduction to physics. Susskind's theoretical minimum series is also a good starting point: http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses
  • rex_lupi 7y ago
    The Feynman lextures are must if someone wants to develop intuitions in physics. Volume 3 (quantum mechanics) is a bit difficult for new learners or undergraduates, but I absolutely recommend reading vol.1 & 2.
• lidHanteyk 7y ago
  Everybody recommending Feynman would do well to remember his attitude towards women. Instead, here's a few hours of Susskind on general relativity [0], string theory [1], and quantum mechanics [2]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD9DDFBDC338226CA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD9DDFBDC338226CA [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA2FDCCBC7956448F https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA2FDCCBC7956448F [2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA27CEA1B8B27EB67 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA27CEA1B8B27EB67
  • fsloth 7y ago
    Please stop demanding dead people to be absolute saints and please cherish their good qualities. Most of the top scientists I can name were very failed humans in other ways. If you demand absolute totalitarian compliance with modern ethical dogma you will not find many people, I'm afraid. Feynman was also obviously socially very insecure given his double jeopardy background (blue collar parents and a jew). Rampant antisemitism was very much a thing in Feynmans day. I think this affected his obvious need to pose as the cool rebel and the alpha intellectual. But he was also ruthlessly honest. And loved physics and loved explaining things. Please remember him for the things he loved. Not for his failures.
  • Simon_says 7y ago
    Poppycock! A person's art is separable from their other beliefs and actions, and Feynman was among the best both in individual contributions and communication to laymen. In any case, I'm unaware of any attitude he had about women aside from wanting to have sex with most of them.
  • timwaagh 7y ago
    I wouldn't recommend either because i find it to be impossible to learn physics or other complex ideas from an audio stream. But i don't think feynmann was at his core disrespectful towards women, regardless of his intermittent usage of swear words. Not from the accounts I read anyways. so that kind of criticism is ultimately more of the old social conservative critique against the bachelor lifestyle.
  • Quiark 7y ago
• cameronperot 7y ago
  I have a list of resources [1] I found to be helpful when I was doing my physics undergrad. I can highly recommend MIT's courses. Learning physics can be tough at times if you're doing it alone as it's common to get stuck on a hard problem and need to talk it through with someone else. If you ever want to discuss any problems feel free to reach out to me (see the contact page on my website). [1] https://cameronperot.com/resources/ https://cameronperot.com/resources/
  • hsikka 7y ago
    This is amazing, thank you! I will most definitely take you up on your offer!
• throwawaybumeer 7y ago
  You can take your Nordic feminist radical views and shove them up your ass. Do well to remember that.
• buzzkillington 7y ago
  I have a bunch of letters before my name that have something to do with physics and what you're asking is far to open. If you want a general grounding have a look at Fundamentals of Physics any addition and work through some of the problems. You will need calculus, which CS doesn't use at all. If you want something better: http://www.goodtheorist.science/ http://www.goodtheorist.science/ It will take you 10 years or so.
• thecleaner 7y ago
  Anyone knows of a good reference for numerical methods for quantum mechanics ?
• steerablesafe 7y ago
  Hi, I'm a physicist and former IPhO contestant from Hungary. Unfortunately most of the books I could suggest are Hungarian, but there are some resources in English for hard physics problems. KoMaL [1] is a high school competition, students have one month to solve five physics problems (they can solve more, but only the five best is counted each month). Unfortunately older archives are only in Hungarian, but this is an endless resource, you can come back for new problems each month. Ortvay [2] is a yearly take-home, one week long problem solving competition for University students. These problems are _very_ hard, so don't be discouraged by not being able to solve them right away. [3] and [4] are some of my favorite books with Physics problems from Hungarian authors. The problems have varying difficulty, but they are clearly marked in this regard. There are separate hints and full solutions. [1] https://www.komal.hu/verseny/feladatok.e.shtml https://www.komal.hu/verseny/feladatok.e.shtml [2] https://ortvay.elte.hu/main.html https://ortvay.elte.hu/main.html [3] https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/200-puzzling-physics-problems-hints-and-solutions?format=AR&isbn=9780521774802 https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/gener... [4] https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/200-more-puzzling-physics-problems-hints-and-solutions?format=HB&isbn=9781107103856 https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/gener...
• stared 7y ago
  I self-studied physics when I was a high-school student. I read The Feynman Lectures of Physics, and it was a great introduction (especially Vol 1 and 2; Vol 3 gives interesting insights but I wouldn't treat is like a canon of quantum physics). It is accessible online, https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/, so go there and read chapter by chapter the pace you like. AFTER there are plenty of ways to go, but for an overview, it is a masterpiece. However, make sure you practice your skills. It is very easy to get the impression that one understands something, yet not being able to solve a basic exercise (no matter if it is programming or physics). For an intro to quantum physics, I gathered some materials "Quantum mechanics for high-school students": https://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-school-students.html https://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-sc... As you come from a programming background, I really encourage you to write small simulations of some pieces. For problems, it is easy to find books with problems for Olympiad preparation (I have a long list of them but in Polish). Or something like: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/20832/is-there-a-physics-puzzles-site-like-project-euler https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/20832/is-there-a...
  • jhrmnn 7y ago
    Second this. Vol 1 was the most influential physics book at high school for me. Though be prepared to go through it repeatedly. At least as a teenager with still developing abstract thinking, I had to think things through over and over again.
• aplause 7y ago
  http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html
  • enriquto 7y ago
    This is an extremely good site (especially the physics part). I go back to this page quite often, whenever I want to start learning something new.
• amelius 7y ago
  May I suggest Susskind's lectures: https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses
• iSpiderman 7y ago
  I discovered the post by Susan Fowler a few years ago and really liked it. I studied physics (2001-2006) and teach physics (and math) at a high school and am working through the list of proposed books (and others [1]) again, just to stay up-to-date :) Other ressources: brilliant.org, quanta magazine,youtube channels (Veritasium/Vsauce/Physics Girl/PBS Spacetime...), ... [1] e.g. Leonard Susskind's "The theoretical minimum" series.
• billfruit 7y ago
  That is a good list. I also suggest looking into Newton's Principa, there is so much cleaverness in that book. I would suggest S Chandrashekhar's Principia For the Common Reader.
• orbifold 7y ago
  There are a few themes that physics revolves around: 1. Action Principle: A lot of problems in mechanics can be boiled down to writing down the correct Lagrangian. 2. Statistical physics, this teaches you about to think in terms of "Zustandssummen" and is the starting point for deriving lots of interesting laws like black body radiation. 3. Field (Gauge) Theory, turns out you can write down and derive interesting Lagrangians for Electrodynamics, Fluid Dynamics and General Relativity as well. 3.1. Noethers Theorem and Symmetries allow you to get a unified view of conserved quantities. 4. Spinors, they are fundamental for understanding the quantum behaviour of matter 5. Path Integrals necessary to understand Feynman diagrams and Calculations in Quantum Field Theory. 6. Do the harmonic oscillator in as many different ways as possible, a lot of physics can be understood by solving the harmonic oscillator or coupled oscillators. Once you've understood why this is the case and the situations in which it isn't true, you will have understood a lot of physics. I would recommend a depth first instead of breadth first approach. Pick something advanced that really interests you and work backwards what prerequisites you need to understand it. There are parts of classical physics that are super interesting but barely anyone learns about them anymore (I skimmed through Sommerfeld's lectures on theoretical physics once, they contain all kinds of super interesting problems with spinning billiard balls, tops and so on, this was at a time when Quantum Mechanics was in its infancy).
  • thatcherc 7y ago
    I think points 1-6 apply best to someone with an undergrad degree (and maybe even an undergrad degree in physics), since it's hard to grasp ie the action principle and Noether's theorem without having seen at least a bit of Newtonian and classical mechanics and E&M. Certainly my high school self would have struggled here. I really like the idea of "depth first and work backwards" though. I finished undergrad with a degree in physics about a year ago, focused mostly on AMO, but since then I've seen all these headlines about AdS-CFT correspondence and cool quantum gravity papers and trying to read them is wayyy over my head. What I realized was that to read these papers, I needed to backtrack. I kinda needed to be familiar with some of the toy models for black holes in a quantum setting, which requires quantum field theory, which requires classical field theory, which I never got around to in school. So now I'm reading a set of classical field theory notes and loving it! Plus I get to look forward to the eventual dig all the way back down to AdS-CFT.
• atemerev 7y ago
  Mostly what other people have said here, I’ll recap: — Solve exercises — Learn the fundamentals (action principle, conservation laws, symmetries, statistical physics) — With that, work on generalized coordinates, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics — Brush up your calculus, vector calculus and linear algebra kung-fu — Have a personal project to aim your efforts. For me, it was understanding precisely how nuclear weapons work (so I have to run many geometrical and hydrodynamic calculations). For you it might be something else. — If you stuck with some textbook, grab another one, you will be able to return later with the new knowledge. Physics is fractal. Best of luck!
• Jugurtha 7y ago
  Gerard 't Hooft[0] has a dedicated website called "How to become a GOOD Theoretical Physicist"[1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_'t_Hooft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_'t_Hooft [1]: http://www.goodtheorist.science/ http://www.goodtheorist.science/
• Myrmornis 7y ago
  I've also been self-studying physics recently. Here are the books that I settled on as providing a good introduction to classical mechanics: Classical Mechanics - John R Taylor Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics - Sussman & Wisdom https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-classical-mechanics-second-edition https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-... The Theoretical Minimum - Susskind https://theoreticalminimum.com/ https://theoreticalminimum.com/ Introduction to Classical Mechanics - David J Morin
  • thatcherc 7y ago
    Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics is so cool - I highly recommend it, especially to someone with a programming background. It's one of the main reasons I switched from CS to physics in college.
• jgehrcke 7y ago
  The other comments are great! Great resources and points. I think what is crucially important is to have someone to talk to. To engage with another human being in a discussion, at every step of the learning curve. I studied physics in Germany 2005-2010, an then did my PhD 2010-2015. In hindsight, I must conclude that being forced to discuss things with other people at every step was what taught me the most, was long-term the most rewarding. About my own level of understanding, about judging my abilities, about how to actually solve problems. Examples from my time studying: - discussion among two people: trying to grasp and crack the same exercise - discussion in the larger study group (5 people): when helping each other out, having to admit not having understood a certain thing, and specifically trying to address the "wait, I don't get this yet"s everyone has. - discussion in exercise class (20 people): presenting "your" solution in a concise way, seeing other solutions, discussing caveats, pros, cons, elegance, deficiencies - discussion in seminars: presenting "old" concepts to each other, discussing them and their historical relevance ... and so on. In hindsight these countless discussions in smaller and larger study groups were _priceless_ towards understanding what physics is about. I mean it! After all, physics is science, and in science you can only contribute in a meaningful way when you understand the mental model of your fellow scientists reasonably well, when you "speak the same language". I understand that this might be in conflict with "self-studying physics". If it is then it's important to be aware of it, possibly to try really hard to compensate for it (to find someone to do this together with, maybe!).
• impendia 7y ago
  Hi hsikka, Are you a PhD student? And if so, are you aiming at a career in academic research? I'll offer my advice as a math professor, and as someone who supervises students. If you want to get a strong foundation in physics, then reading Halliday + Resnick, and doing a large number of the exercises, would be one good way to go about it. (Look for used copies of previous editions on Amazon -- they'll be cheap.) There are plenty of other good suggestions in the blog post you linked, and also in this thread. However, and I hate to throw water on such a noble aspiration, are you sure that this is what you want to do? Getting a "strong foundation" takes a lot of effort. If you want to invest this effort, then great! But you might consider investing that effort into learning something closer to your field, which would both be interesting and directly help in your research. In my observation, it is common for graduate students and professors to learn about areas outside their research area, but they don't always worry so much about getting a "strong foundation". For example, when I was a PhD student, one of my fellow students enrolled in a graduate course in physics, without worrying too much about whether he satisfied the prerequisites. It was a great experience for him, and it's one that apparently helped him a great deal in his mathematics research career. Myself, I have invested a fair amount of time learning algebraic geometry, which is a difficult area of mathematics, different from my specialty. The results have been ambiguous -- I still don't know the field nearly as well as I wish I did. In particular, I still have only a sketchy understanding of the foundations. But, happily, I know enough to talk to algebraic geometers. Indeed, I'm currently writing a paper with a colleague in the subject, which involves both his specialty and mine -- it's not one that either of us could have written on our own. In any case, good luck and best wishes to you!
  • pks016 7y ago
    +1 for Resnick Halliday or Fowler. Don't start with Freyman. I made that mistake, wasted a lot of time.
  • Simon_says 7y ago
    How does Halliday + Resnick compare to Young + Freedman?
    • 7y ago
• Jun8 7y ago
  If you have the freshman/junior Halliday-Resnick stuff down I'd suggest jumping right in. Susskind's Theoretical Minimum (https://theoreticalminimum.com https://theoreticalminimum.com) is excellent, he has a lot of videos online. I'm using the book version (https://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Minimum-Start-Doing-Physics/dp/0465075681 https://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Minimum-Start-Doing-Physi...) for self study.
• scottlocklin 7y ago
  For the love of God, don't use Feynman lectures to learn physics. That's something you read after you know physics, for relaxation and conceptual stuff. Resnick & Halliday is a much better freshman/sophomore book. Susskind's "theoretical minimum" is actually pretty good. http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses Fowler gives a pretty conventional undergraduate physics curriculum (adding Feynman in there somehow). If it were me: learn the math tools first. I assume you know linear algebra; learn differential equations. From there, go straight to higher level books. There's very little difference in undergraduate vs graduate quantum mechanics and E&M other than the math is slightly more sophisticated in grad school. Might as well do it right. Messiah for QM and Jackson for E&M. Classical mechanics, the tradition is to learn Lagrangian mechanics in high level undergrad and Hamiltonian in grad school. There's no real reason to do it in this order, and a decent reason (understanding Quantum) to do it in reverse order. Amusingly, the math is cleaner in Hamiltonian mechanics, but you may find yourself unable to do some simple problems you can do with Newtonian physics; so this will be a weird working backward thing. Stat Mech, I think you should just read Reif; skip Ma or whatever they use in grad school now. FWIIW I know/knew people who did this: started grad school without having done any undergrad courses in physics. I think skipping a lot of the introductory stuff, and visiting it later is actually better. The rest of it can be done with the same machinery you learned in QM, E&M, Mechanics and Stat Mech. Max leverage if you had to pick one: probably classical mechanics for a DL guy, E&M for general knowledge of tools. I'd suggest not actually trying to simulate physical systems on a computer: you probably stare at computers too much anyway.
  • thinkr42 7y ago
    "For the love of God, don't use Feynman lectures to learn physics. That's something you read after you know physics, for relaxation and conceptual stuff..." Agree with this 100%. To learn math or physics you have to do it, experiment, and all that.
    • beezle 7y ago
      Feynman lectures are fine as a supplement to more standard text.
• wwarner 7y ago
  MIT Open Courseware is the best I've found. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• tuckerpo 7y ago
  Find the source outline for an undergraduate physics program at a university you like. Find equivalent offerings of those courses for free (YouTube, etc). Watch a couple lectures per day, taking notes, doing the homeworks. 4-5 years later, you're done. : ^ )
• Fiveh2751 7y ago
  I dunno but I think I once came across a reddit post about a user who asked how they can understand the bits and bites of electronics and they were reffered to a book which I don't really know its title and its what I currently looking for. I need some help to remember this book.
  • PascLeRasc 7y ago
    It was probably "The Art of Electronics". It's a fantastic book and absolutely worth buying.
• kevstev 7y ago
  I see a lot of people recommending Halliday and Resnick, but I used Serway- Physics for Scientists and Engineers in college and that textbook was one of the best I felt I ever read. Its been quite some time since I was in college though, maybe its fallen out of favor?
  • knzhou 7y ago
    No, Serway's totally fine! But Halliday, Resnick, and Krane was written for honors freshman physics courses, so it's just kicked up a notch relative to the other intro books.
• weeboid 7y ago
  step 1. study math
• macco 7y ago
  https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-course... Is a great starting point. There are also free online courses for that.
• topaz0 7y ago
  I'm a current PhD student in physics. Here's a bit of an oddball idea, that might be complementary. Read, sit with, and understand this paper: https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.106.620 https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.106.620 I say this because -- It motivates and sketches statistical mechanics, which I expect is the most interesting topic to you given your specialty. -- It elegantly makes a point that I think is very important about physics: that physics is _almost entirely_ mathematical. The remainder is just about constraining the math to reflect the possibilities that seem to be actually realizable in nature. Of course there's a lot more to physics than is described here, and you'll want to study the particular phenomena that emerge -- that's the whole point. But I think that given your background, setting this perspective will allow you to ask the right questions when you approach a new topic, and allow you to go out of the normal order. One more note about the nature of doing/understanding physics: a huge part of it is taking the right limit. Reasonably complicated systems described in the language of some theory are generally intractable to analyze exactly, or to draw general conclusions from, so you need to throw something away to make progress. Figuring out the right limit is the same as figuring out what details you can throw away while preserving the core phenomenon you're interested in.
• brummm 7y ago
  I think the guide is ok, but I actually believe some of the things that are in the graduate section should be in the undergraduate section. One thing that is important: Everything starts with classical mechanics. Newtownian phsyics is the base for everything and you will never advance without knowing this really well. That said, in my undergrad mechanics class in my first term as a physics student, we started out with classical Newtonian mechanics and then quickly moved on to the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics. I don't see why that should be something reserved for graduate classes. Further, since you're not a math or physics student, I assume you will quickly reach the limits of your math education. Things that are required for properly understanding the theoretical foundations even just mechanics are: - n-dimensional calculus (think Tensors, Gradients, divergences, Laplacians, etc.) - complex numbers and functions - basic knowledge of differential equations and ways to solve them - things like Fourier transforms and things like Vector spaces, groups and symmetries - basic statistics knowledge of course - linear algebra Second, like some people have already mentioned: Just reading a book will not teach you physics. Actually solving the problem in whatever resources you're using will, though. They take much, much longer than just reading a book, however.
• deleted 7y ago
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• Cartonju 7y ago
  The answer is not mine, it's from Quora. But I think the info, which is presented in it, will be useful to you. In a nut shell, information-wise, Physics entails primarily: - principles and laws; - definitions, terminologies and nomenclatures; - process flows; - causes and consequences; - problem:solution; notwithstanding a slew of lab experiments in problem solving; So, it's good to know a good number of diagramming techniques, e.g. idea maps, concept maps, Venn or matrix diagrams, flow charts, fish-bone diagrams, etc. to help you to flesh out important information, as part of your note-taking/note-making; First thing first: Learn to segregate the "core material" from "elaborative material", with the help of your subject/exam syllabi." - Core material" = key concepts; principles; laws; definitions; terminologies; nomenclatures; diagrams and drawings, etc.;" - Elaborative material" = examples, illustrations, anecdotes, etc.; That's to say, your focus is on "core material", and using Pareto's Law, generally about 80% of exam questions are more likely to come from "core material". This is not to say "elaborative material" is not important. Tactically speaking, once you have the full grasp of "core material", "elaborative material" is more likely to fall in automatically. You may even want to explore the use of the following study tools: i) SQ5R reading/studying strategy: It's a structured system [SQ5R is an acronym for SURVEY, QUESTIONS, READ, RECORD, RECITE, REVIEW, REFLECT], but it equips you with efficient and effective ways to navigate academic materials, especially the intellectually-intense ones, with ease and expediency. I append herewith a nice document for you to read: http://www.saddleback.edu/upload.. http://www.saddleback.edu/upload... ii) Cornell Notes: It's a far more superior system that the conventional outline method, known to most students in schools, college and universities. It's latent power comes from its simple and yet elegant three-column spatial configuration for taking notes and making notes. The "cue" column is the most powerful system I have ever known, as it facilitates - and expedites - your memory retention/recall via self-testing. You may want to read this nice write-up on Cornell Notes method of note-taking and note-making, in conjunction with SQ5R reading strategy: Guide to Effective Note Taking - SQ3R and Cornell - The Student Power If you think you have an artistic streak in you, you may even want to explore the multitudinous graphical methods of note-taking and note-making, like idea mapping, cluster diagramming, and other graphic organisers and visual tools. As a supplementary routine to SQ5R and Cornell Notes, you may even want to explore the use of the proven Index Card Strategy to deal with your "core material", particularly the definitions, terminologies and nomenclatures, for quick and convenient "learning-on-the-go": commuting and waiting in queue. For your final test/exam preparation, you can even expand the foregoing "Divide and Conquer Strategy" as follows: Grab a large sheet of blank paper, butcher roll or news print roll, say 8 ft by 4 ft or so, and paste it on the wall, and a box of colour markers, both fat-tip and fine-tip. Some assorted colour sticky notes, too! Now, pick up your subject textbook. With the fat-tip marker, write the subject title on the centre of the paper on the wall. You may want to draw a simple image of your choice to represent this title. Using your knowledge of "core" ideas and "elaborative" details you have developed earlier, write them all down, using your fine-tip markers, on the wall paper, all along the periphery. You can transcribe "elaborative" details on to your sticky notes, and place them alongside the "core" ideas. Upon completion, stand back, do a gallery walk and quickly review just to make sure that you have not missed out any important data from your notes and/or subject textbook. This single sheet of completed wall paper for the chosen subject will be your consolidated and summarised study sheet for your subject test/exam. The beauty of this elaborate process is that you have at your complete disposal all the "core" ideas and "elaborative" details all nicely laid out on one single sheet of paper, at a visual glance. You can then use each large consolidated/summarised sheet for self-testing or reciprocal questioning with a study buddy. For the fun of it, you may even want to paste the completed wall paper on to the bedroom ceiling hovering over your bed, so that you can do what I often like to call the 3 R's (recap/review/reinforce) prior to hitting the sack. I just realize, I could just paste you the lik. Sorry. https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-study-physics-by-myself/answer/Say-Keng-Lee https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-study-physics-by-myself/answe...
• beezle 7y ago
  The most difficult thing will be getting your math up to speed so you really need to dual track the physics and math. The Landau books are good but assume probably more math than typical college text in mechanics, em, qm, etc. Probably a bit down the road for you if following typical curriculums (perhaps not others) the MIT 80X series by Zwiebach were good.
• daxfohl 7y ago
  After decades of successful and unsuccessful self study, the thing I have found for myself is that I have to have an end goal in mind of what I want to do with the knowledge. Then it's usually pretty obvious how to work backwards and figure out how to get there. I've been tremendously unsuccessful when trying to learn just with the goal of learning. It's much harder then to quantify what is good enough, and just end up with a very surface level understanding even after putting in a lot of work.
• JabavuAdams 7y ago
  1) Richard Wolfson's _Essential University Physics_ is excellent! It doesn't get lost in math, but also doesn't oversimplify. It's thinner than Halliday & Resnick, e.g. I've read a lot of Classical Mechanics books, and this is my favourite for a solid foundation for university-level physics. The first half (volume) is Mechanics, and the second volume is on electricity and magnetism. So, that's a typical first-year (two term) course in physics. After that, do Purcell for Electricity & Magnetism You'll often get advice, like "you need to learn XYZ math first". Don't listen to this! Just learn the math as you go along -- it's much more efficient. The have to learn X first puts up unnecessary roadblocks and chances to get discouraged. You can always circle back for more elegant treatments once you math up. E.g. learning 4-vectors makes special relativity a lot less ad-hoc and weird seeming. It becomes obvious. P.S. I was prototyping a subscription app to teach E&M, but started to think of just teaching physics in general. Would you pay something like $15/mo to have a adaptive-learning app/game/personal AL tutor to teach you first & 2nd year physics?
  • JabavuAdams 7y ago
    Regarding simulating mechanics, and combining physics + CS: 1) Have a read through Witkin & Baraff's Physically Based Modelling SIGGRAPH 2001 course notes. Short, sweet, and packed with real-world expertise/tricks. 2) Look up stuff by Chris Hecker from the '90s and early aughts. 3) Ian Millington's _Game Physics Engine Development_ is very good.
  • Koshkin 7y ago
    > Purcell for Electricity & Magnetism This once came out as part of Berkeley Physics Course [1] which I think would be a great complement to Feynman's Lectures. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Physics_Course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Physics_Course
• blablabla123 7y ago
  Probably first you should get a rough idea what you want to learn. When I studied Physics the standard track was Mathematics, Experimental Physics (Mechanics, Electrodynamics), Theoretical Physics (Mechanics), and then other topics, Wave Physics, Thermodynamics, Solid state Physics and Particle Physics. Normally first the experimental course comes and then usually with some delay the theoretical. Still, you can decide if you want more Mathematics, more Theory or less. (Probably the CS Maths should get you covered pretty well for the start) I'd do a research on popular recommendations of books and then see which ones you like and interest - the styles and contents are often so different. While going through the books you can try to find nice YouTube videos and other stuff. Of course you get a deeper understanding when doing some exercises, although this can be tough. I'd highly recommend finding a book that has a solution section/solution book or maybe some online course that offers that. The exercises for Experimental Physics are usually not long but can be surprising. ;) Also it might be surprising that depending on your interest a strong foundation in Mathematics is not critical, although you'll still need to wrap your head around the common math problems. One motivating thing is that while you go through the topics (Mechanics, Electrodynamics, Wave theory, QM, ...) the frameworks and approaches are somewhat repetitive and just get more sophisticated over time. TL;DR: pick a curriculum and combine it with your favorite material
• Hasz 7y ago
  I would like to add one of my favorite mathematical "cookbooks" -- "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" by Mary Boas. Bad Integrals? Tensor Analysis? Fancy functions and special polynomials? PDE tricks? Boas has solutions! Methods are practically explained and succinct. It's my favorite book to brush up on a old technique or learn some new methods. Wolfram's Mathworld is also a good reference, but not as much of a learning tool.
  • dorchadas 7y ago
    This is the book we started to use in my Mathematical Methods in Physics course. It was good, but the professor decided (rightly, in my opinion) to focus more on working from linear algebra/differential equations textbooks so I never went through it. Might pull it back out and do that.
• madhadron 7y ago
  It would help to know what background you have and what interests you/what you hope to get out of it. Did you have basic physics in undergrad? Foundation can mean a lot of things. It can mean having a really solid grasp of how Newtonian mechanics is put together. It can mean having a solid grasp of doing experimental physics on classical systems. It can mean having a mathematical understanding of symplectic manifolds and quantization. It can mean replacing your naive physical model of motion in your hind brain with a learned, Newtonian model. If you've never done any lab work, actually getting a stopwatch and conducting experiments with balls rolling down inclined planes and the like can be...eye opening. You will need problems to work, otherwise anything you do is superficial. For example, here's a collection of elementary physics problems: https://archive.org/details/BukhovtsevEtAlProblemsInElementaryPhysics/page/n23/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/BukhovtsevEtAlProblemsInElementa... (The Russians were great about building this kind of collection.) If you can give some more detail, it will help us direct you better.
• thebiglebrewski 7y ago
  I was interested in this too as someone who's worked in web apps the last 8-10 years and was super inspired by the SpaceX Falcon Heavy landing (science fiction is now science fact!) I looked into graduate programs, especially those online, and found the JHU Space Systems Engineering program. The prerequisites for THAT program are a year of college Calculus and a year of college Physics. I'm currently taking that, "year", which is really just Physics I and II and Calculus I and II at Thomas Edison State University. They've been doing distance learning for decades. The courses aren't super cheap, they're around $2,000 each, but having classmates, a mentor, deadlines, and a legit program to structure my learning around has been so helpful. Not to mention that my grades are legit for pre-reqs if I do want to go the full grad school route. I'm almost done with the I level courses and started the II level courses 2/3 of the way through the I. I think a lot of people on here might say my approach is kind of basic (I see people recommending working differential equations or something to start), but I've found it really enlightening to start from the very beginning and things are starting to get challenging as I get into the second level, especially with Calculus. Maybe if you just looked up Physics I and II and Calc I and II curriculums, and got the textbooks (Conceptual Physics by Paul G Hewitt and Calculus: Early Transcendentals by Robert Smith) you could do a lot of the same exercises. Hope that's helpful!
• brg 7y ago
  If you can find Walter Lewin's courses online, they can get you through the first years of physics. The main way to learn physics though, on your own or in a program, is by doing problems and labs. You can start by doing the coursework you find for an established class. Another is by working through problems in a text book. As for labs, hacking together what you can is both valuable and rewarding. A few examples are estimating absolute zero, measuring the coefficient of friction, exploring momentum with ball bearings. A few other things that I have found work for me. First, work towards a goal. Whether that be to calculate the orbit of a planet, understand quantum tunneling, or estimate a dynamic process. The second is to take the time follow thoughts as far as you can, using the social communities and resources available on the web (quora, reddit, etc).
• knzhou 7y ago
  Back in the day I self-studied through MIT OCW, and found it remarkably complete. It's better in quality than what you would get at almost all universities, including MIT itself (!), because only the best lecturers tend to get immortalized on OCW. Going through the series 8.012, 8.022, 8.03, 8.033, 8.04, 8.044, 8.05, 8.06 will give you the core theoretical knowledge of a physics major. (I assume you already know all the relevant math background.) If you prefer lecture notes, I imagine the best thing is to go through David Tong's lecture notes [0] from start to finish, as these cover almost the entire Cambridge undergraduate curriculum very clearly. If you want textbooks, at least in America, the books one uses for these courses are pretty standardized, and Fowler's blog post lays out these standard choices. For more advanced books, I have a pretty extensive bibliography in the front matter of my personal lecture notes [1]. 0: http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/teaching.html http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/teaching.html 1: https://knzhou.github.io/#lectures https://knzhou.github.io/#lectures
• peter303 7y ago
  The second time I learned physics or other subjects is through history science and physicist biography books. This is not as efficient as physics textbooks, but fleshes out the how and why many of these ideas came about.
• james_niro 7y ago
  Get Young and Freedman- university Physics and start working on problems. You can find help with those problems online. Make a study guide with timeline. Make flash cards and learn the equations. Find exams online and take those just like you were in school and have a friend grade it.
• antognini 7y ago
  My personal recommendations for an undergraduate course in physics (based in large part off of my own undergrad curriculum): Foundations: 1. Newtonian Mechanics by A.P. French (https://archive.org/details/NewtonianMechanics/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/NewtonianMechanics/mode/2up). This will give you a good foundation for what is to come. 2. Spacetime Physics by Taylor & Wheeler --- first edition if you can find it! It is much, much better than the second! Special relativity is conceptually strange, but mathematically pretty easy, so you can jump right into it after learning Newtonian mechanics. Have a little fun! 3. Electricity & Magnetism by Purcell. This book is a little unusual in that it derives magnetism from the laws of special relativity. This is the more natural approach than just asserting the laws of magnetism since magnetism is fundamentally a relativistic phenomenon. 4. Waves by Crawford. (https://archive.org/details/Waves_371/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Waves_371/mode/2up) A bit hard to find in print, but a really excellent textbook. Waves are a fascinating topic because they come up in every area of physics, so a course focused around them has a huge number of applications. 5. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Griffiths. The best introduction to the topic you will find! 6. Thermal Physics by Kittel & Kroemer. I haven't actually found an introductory book on statistical physics that I'm crazy about, but this one isn't too bad. That should last you some time. But once you're through with those and are looking for more, then here are some advanced topics: 7. Analytical Mechanics by Hand & Finch. This will teach you advanced Newtonian mechanics --- in particular Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics. There is a chapter on chaotic dynamics towards the end, too. Another option here is Classical Mechanics by Goldstein. 8. Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths. More advanced E&M than Purcell. If you want to go further, then there's always Classical Electrodynamics by Jackson. 9. Principles of Quantum Mechanics by Shankar. This spends more time on the mathematical foundations of QM than Griffiths does and goes into the path integral formalism and touches on relativistic QM towards the end of the book. 10. A First Course in General Relativity by Schutz. There are arbitrarily advanced texts on GR, but I'd recommend starting off with something friendly like Schutz. 11. An Introduction to Elementary Particles by Griffiths. Not super advanced mathematically, but it's a good thing to read over to prepare you for more advanced QFT texts. The first chapter is especially good as a history of the development of particle physics. 12. Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by Zee. 13. Modern Classical Physics by Thorne & Blandford. This is a tour de force. It's an enormous book but it really touches on everything that is left out by the above books. It covers optics, fluid dynamics, statistical physics, plasma physics, and more. (I'm currently reading through it and have only gotten through 6 chapters, but it's really an incredible textbook.) 14. Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity by Sethna. This is a really fun book, but almost all the material is in the problems. Finally, and most importantly --- remember that physics is not a spectator sport! You must do problems. A lot of them --- and hard ones, too!
• tmoot 7y ago
  Physicist here. Since you probably have a good background in optimization, work through problems in: - Taylor for Classical Mechanics or Goldstein (a bit more advanced) - Griffiths for E/M and Quantum. For stat. mech. I find the chemists have more intuitive textbooks. - Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics by Chandler
• mdo123 7y ago
  Ummm, open a physics text book?
• utxaa 7y ago
  start with http://www.brilliant.org http://www.brilliant.org
• mam2 7y ago
  You need to chose a subfield, find the classic academic books or moocs on them until you reach a level that enables you to read research articles. Then you read the research articles..