13 ms·
So You Want to Learn Physics (2016)
- fizixer 6y agoShe appears to have taken her "If Susan can..." blog post offline [0] I do not believe she's coming clean on her learning journey. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24089263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24089263
- ridiculous_fish 6y agoI think it's just an accidentally fubared link. It's still published: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/26/from-the-fledgling-physicist-archives-if-susan-can-learn-physics-so-can-you https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/26/from-the-fledgli...
- bollu 6y agoI like the list! It's very "physics person" oriented. Unfortunately, I have faced an insane amount of frustration trying to learn from the same sources because they "skip" on mathematical detail, often leading to more confusion down the line. I personally enjoyed the books I write down below to learn "rigorous physics": - Classical mehhanics by VI Arnold: We first abstract define what "space" is, analyze its properties, then move on to build Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms. Is a great book to understand formally (i) what we mean by "observer" in classical mechanics, (ii) variational problems, (iii) the precise relationships between the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian - Wald + Misner Thorne Wheeler for general relativity. MTW is the "bible", with great pictorial explanations for everything. Wald prefers to write everything in terms of differential geometric language which makes for an entertaining read. For example, he does not write "the particle is at rest". Rather, he writes "the particle is invariant under time-translational symmetry". It was eye-opening to learn how to "think like a geometer" about these sorts of ideas. There is also Leonard Susskind's video lectures called as "the theoretical minimum" where he explains, rigorously, classical/quantum/GR/QM/stat-mech: https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses. I've personally watched the GR lectures and found them very informative. Finally, there is Landau and and Lipschitz: These are dense, terse, often difficult, but honestly, written with extreme clarity. This was the only undergrad stat-mech book I could find which actually formally defines the phase space, the averaging procedure we use, etc.
- guerrilla 6y ago> Leonard Susskind's video lectures called as "the theoretical minimum" This is apparently a book too, co-authored by Susskind and Hrabovsky [1]. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theoretical_Minimum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theoretical_Minimum
- mindcrime 6y agoIt's one of a series, even. There is The Theoretical Minimum, Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: The Theoretical Minimum, and Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum.
- rstuart4133 6y agoI own the series. Combine them with video's and you have a pretty good combination. What you don't understand from one, you can pick up from the other. Susskind deliberately set out to create something an amateur could use to understand physics. Accordingly he doesn't just teach the physics, he teaches the math too as you need both, of course. It seems so obvious, but he's the only one I've seen that does both.
- crispyambulance 6y agoI think all undergrad STEM programs should put A LOT MORE emphasis on mathematics and other fundamentals before bothering with heavy specializations. The Arnold book is great, but it presumes a level of mathematical sophistication that isn't practical to achieve (at least in the US) until well into graduate school, and realistically?, only for Physics theory students or some Math students that are motivated to dive into Physics.
- prionassembly 6y agoThere are major theorems in the famous "Calculus on Manifolds" by Spivak that are exercises (and not end-of-chapter or starred exercises either) in Arnold.
- egsmi 6y ago
- Zamicol 6y agoThe Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman was a waste of money and time. It was one of the worse books I've ever read.
- guerrilla 6y agoWhy?
- Zamicol 6y agoIt's hard to explain because I found it so unremarkable and banal. But there was a small part of the book I took particular issue, "Your expectation on answering the question why goes deep. (No duh!) You might need to adjust your expectations of understanding to be less rigorous." He says the same thing in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA It's basically his book. I think not only does this not match my personal experience, experience I've understood from others at large, but in particular Einstein who had deep insights because of his depths of understanding "why" in broad categories of topics. Einstein's brilliance was a synergistic understanding. Better, if we don't know something, it's best to say, "It's not yet understood" and explain expected horizons for exploration. I would compare this attitude to Sabine Hossenfelder who says, "Yes! We can figure things out including quantum gravity. It's not our 'why's' that are wrong, but almost certainly our (amazingly crazy) assumptions."
- supernova87a 6y ago"It's a warm summer evening..."
- mysterypie 6y agoYou'd like to know more about the author? https://www.susanjfowler.com/ https://www.susanjfowler.com/
- millstone 6y agoSusan Fowler is legit terrifyingly brilliant. In only a year and a half she went from pre-algebra to grad QM while being a writer at NYT. Some people are just set to a higher gear.
- Retardo_88 6y ago"In only a year and a half" --> How do we know she is not exaggerating? People have strong incentives to lie about their own accomplishments.
- Yajirobe 6y agou can learn it in 2 months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGD6KQ6bRS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGD6KQ6bRS8
- johndough 6y agoTo put this into context: The video is from the same guy who plagiarized a paper and replaced "quantum gates" with "quantum doors" and "complex Hilbert space" with "complicated Hilbert space". https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/14/siraj_raval_paper.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/14/siraj_raval_paper.pdf
- millstone 6y agoIt's a distraction; care about your own learning at whatever pace.
- wrycoder 6y ago“Now, she tells her full story for the first time: a story of extraordinary determination and resilience that reveals what it takes—and what it means—to be a whistleblower. Long before she arrived at Uber, Fowler's life had been defined by her refusal to accept her circumstances. She propelled herself from an impoverished childhood with little formal education to the Ivy League, and then to a coveted position at one of the most valuable companies in the history of Silicon Valley. Each time she was mistreated, she fought back or found a way to reinvent herself; all she wanted was the opportunity to define her own dreams and work to achieve them. But when she discovered Uber's pervasive culture of sexism, racism, harassment, and abuse, and that the company would do nothing about it, she knew she had to speak out--no matter what it cost her.” — blurb for her book “Whistleblower”
- WhiteSage 6y agoBeware the first link inside the article redirects you to a phising site (someone's server got compromised)
- kuang_eleven 6y agoI will second any and all recommendations for reading Griffiths, I have not met better written textbooks in any field.
- BeetleB 6y agoHis E&M book is the best, bar none. I know people talk a lot about Jackson, but a physicist friend gave the best description of Jackson's book: "The best book to teach me about all kinds of mathematical techniques used in solving physics problems. My problem solving skills went through the roof because of Jackson. My understanding of E&M was not at all affected, though." For E&M intuition, Griffiths is fantastic. His quantum mechanics book, while decent, is not that great. I don't know if I've found a single great book on QM.
- fareesh 6y agoMy biggest struggles with Physics are psychological. Because of how the universe works, if you fire a gun and drop a bullet from the same height they both reach the ground at the same time. Maybe it's because I have a cartoonish version of physics in my head, my first instinct is "no that can't be right" and I start from a place of extreme skepticism that gnaws at me even as I watch myself being proved wrong. The other common struggle I face is that so much of the physics you learn at a basic level comes with caveats like "assuming no air resistance" or "in a vaccuum" or "at sea level" and perfect weights and I end up wondering how futile all of it seems because in reality I'll never be able to apply this stuff the way it's being presented. If I have to actually apply it - I'd have to start thinking all the possible ways in which the system can be affected, then measure those ways and add them to my calculation. Then I feel overwhelmed by all the possible things I would need to factor in. Did I forget friction? Is this surface 100% horizontal? Is it windy right now? Am I really at sea level? I feel like the street I'm on is 30m higher. Then I start thinking about the practicality of measuring things. Even if I eventually learned all of the physics in theory, if I was one of the last 100 people on Earth and the person with the best physics knowledge, could I use it to build even something as simple as a bridge? How precise would my tools need to be? Is it ok for my execution to be off by 0.1 degree? Is that too much of an error? How would I even know? With programming I feel like there are more opportunities to blackbox things and focus on building practical solutions, whereas with the material world I would have to worry about whether I got a faulty batch or whether the manufacturer was reputable or whether I should have spent more money on a better manufacturer. By comparison it feels incredibly inaccessible to do anything tangible with.
- findthewords 6y agoI have the same struggle. It's just neuroticism. Physics becomes fun when you ignore precision.
- UncleSlacky 6y agoWhen you know the theoretical (perfect world) model, it can still be applied in the real world as long as you're aware that you won't get an exact answer, but it will often be "good enough". One of the few times I was able to apply my physics knowledge in my job, I was able to hack together the relevant equations and constants to give realistic answers (to do with still-air cooling of a mobile phone on a charging pad in a car) and I was able to estimate roughly how accurate the answers were, given the remaining unknowns.
- _hzw 6y agoI wish there’s a similar list for modern math.
- Rerarom 6y agohttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html There are others, but this one explicitly says "Math is a much more diverse subject than physics, in a way: there are lots of branches you can learn without needing to know other branches first... though you only deeply understand a subject after you see how it relates to all the others!"
- sampo 6y agoI have found that there is a world of everyday physics, related to things like temperature, humidity, weather, materials (durability, permeability etc.), clothing, nature, cooking, farming, cars, and also now in covid times about droplets and droplet evaporation, turbulence, breathing and face masks. These are fascinating and come up in everyday life. And maybe they might come up in your work if you're an engineer and work about manufacturing physical things. But typical university physics curriculum is, I guess understandably, focused on fast-tracking you to the borders of known fundamental physics: quantum mechanics, particle physics, astrophysics. Whereas the everyday physics builds on more classical things like thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, structural mechanics, which are usually covered only quickly, and partially only in elective courses. So if you want to learn physics for more practical purposes than understanding the progress of research in quantum and particle physics, a normal physics curriculum does not serve you too well. But it still gives you the foundations to self study these topics.
- jhrmnn 6y agoHave a Phd in physics, agree fully. I love talking to people about the physics and chemistry in every-day life, and you need very little of quantum mechanics or advanced electromagnetism. Perhaps statistical physics (thermodynamics) is the single most useful topic. Also, if you want to understand the science in every-day life, chemistry (or more broadly materials science) is arguably more relevant than physics per se.
- codesuki 6y agoDo you know any books or courses that focus on every day /chemistry? That would be a nice way to learn.
- cmehdy 6y agoI've always thought that one could write a book of recipes that also goes into the chemistry of things (pressures, heat, types of reactions, acid-base stuff, etc). Making delicious things while understanding what goes on, which coincidentally is what sometimes chefs do pretty well when explaining their recipes (I've discovered Kenji Lopez on HN and he does a bit of that in many of his videos)
- dschuetz 6y ago"Everyone can learn physics" is a flat out lie to make other people feel better. Without a proper tutorium and insufferable fits of frustration it's only possible to learn such complex subjects on your own you if have the right mind (whatever that is) for it. That arrogance some people have saying "If I can do it, why can't you?!" is beyond tolerable. The knowledge transfer process is different for every person, because people learn things differently. The school doesn't teach you HOW to learn, only WHAT you are supposed to know to be a productive member of society with some value to companies. More inquisitive minds go to sciences and engineering, only to discover that universities are just a next level of schooling. Only people aiming for PhD learn how to do "independent" research, only to discover that research paper business is dirty. The article only lists books and what the author thinks about them. It doesn't say how to learn physics. Also, learning physics without experiments is as valuable as learning to drive without ever getting in the actual car.
- blargmaster33 6y agoYou need the nessesary level of IQ
- crispyambulance 6y ago> It doesn't say how to learn physics. OK, but can any article ever hope to give a real prescription for "how" to learn physics? Far more important than "how" is "why" or "to what end". It's no different than obtaining mastery in any other big subject. The article is perfectly fine as a reading list or set of suggestions for students that have some passion for learning physics. There's other advice out there consisting of long lists of exactly which topics to study and in what order. All good advice, but totally fungible and not critical to anybody's path. I would not take her other article "If Susan can learn physics, so can you" as a "lie". It's a piece of inspiration. So many folks don't live up to their potential because they prematurely self-select themselves out of endeavors which they feel passionate about. If I remember correctly (the link seems to be down), in Susan's case, she was a home-schooled kid living in a not wealthy rural place with few resources and low expectations from her family and peers. She ended up at University of Pennsylvania in a Physics PHD program. Does that mean "everyone" can literally do that? No, but rather, there's no excuse not to try (whether it's a PHD or any other seemingly infeasible challenge). Sometimes people people really need to hear that and she told her story eloquently.
- spodek 6y agoI earned my PhD in physics at Penn and Columbia, helping build a satellite still taking data (XMM-Newton). I love physics. I loved learning physics. Physics is not math. It is an experimental field. Ctrl-f experiment yields no results on that page. Ctrl-f lab shows only results in the comments. I love that that page exists, but it's missing the physical component of physics. Learning only theory may serve many people, but it doesn't serve the field. Now that I teach project-based learning, albeit in leadership not physics, I see huge gaps in my physics education about experiment, curiosity, doing things with our hands, realizing we can test things ourselves. Most lab classes I took walked us through known results so we could write the data we were supposed to find if we measured wrong -- the opposite of science. If you want to be a theorist, great, but distancing physics from what anyone can do seems to make it less accessible. For example, I work on sustainability. People routinely seem shocked that their turning on a light switch or air conditioner necessarily today means somewhere some power plant had to convert that energy from something else, polluting in the process.
- a9h74j 6y ago> experiment, curiosity, doing things with our hands, realizing we can test things ourselves Partially-related, I have heard it claimed that would-be surgeons are showing less dexterity than previous generations, presumably from lack of hands-on hobbies when younger.
- petermcneeley 6y ago"If you want to be a theorist, great, but distancing physics from what anyone can do seems to make it less accessible." Well said. I also dont fully understand this strong desire to push everyone towards the theoretical boundaries of physics. "Physics is not math." I would lean towards agreeing with this statement however its pretty much considered heresy. "Most lab classes I took walked us through known results so we could write the data we were supposed to find if we measured wrong " This is extremely unfortunate. Perhaps it was a time/resource constraint issue. Real labs can be very time intensive but I found them to be very rewarding and motivating.
- BeetleB 6y agoWhile I don't particularly disagree with you, I can assure you that there are plenty of physics PhDs who focus on theoretical physics and know as little about the experimental world as the archetype you are trying to criticize. You definitely can get a PhD in physics and be fairly clueless about the experimental world.
- xchip 6y agoThe questions is, why do you want to learn physics? And once you answer that we can give you the contents that will satisfy that "Why", but just giving a list without any connection with the interests of the reader is useless.
- paulpauper 6y agoIt is assumed that the reader already has a reason
- xchip 6y agoSure, and depending on it the approach changes
- daffy 6y agohttps://www.bookdepository.com/University-Physics-with-Modern-Physics-SI-Units-Hugh-D-Young/9781292314730 https://www.bookdepository.com/University-Physics-with-Moder... Is this the full book? I'm confused by some items' being marked as "third volume".
- pontus 6y agoThis is a good and accurate list (albeit rather aspirational!) For context, I did my PhD in physics.
- pontus 6y agoAlthough, referring to Wald as a "high level overview" is not right. In my mind, Wald is a very abstract and rich book and one that should not be read until you've mastered GR reasonably well.
- paulpauper 6y agoThe problem with learning physics is there is little to no money involved in spite of all the work required, unless you plan to teach it or get a job that requires it. There are plenty of very difficult problems in which finding the answer can yield an immediate payoff. One such problem is, how do you create and use cheap google adwords threshold accounts that do not get suspended . Answering such a question is as intellectually challenging as the hardest of physics problems but the answer means getting effectively free ads from google. Same for similar problems in regard to Twitter and Facebook ads. Fingering out how to evade a social network's spam filter can man a lot of $ if exploited.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoThis is a pretty good list. I used it is a starting point for my own studies. I just have two comments to make: 1. It's very likely you do not have good enough math skills to start learning physics. I have a math minor and CS major, but after being out of school for a few years I had forgotten a lot of stuff. I needed to spend a week reviewing algebra and trigonometry and then longer reviewing calculus. This is humbling but will make your progress a lot easier. If you don't do this there will be examples you can't follow because you don't know what trick the author is using to go from one step to another in a solution. 2. If your mathematical preparation is good you can skip a lot of the introductory stuff. I.e. just go straight to Taylor's Classical Mechanics, and Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics. You can also learn QM from the graduate texts. No need to read Griffith's QM book first. I'm working through Shankar's Principles of Quantum Mechanics and it is definitely doable. He introduces all the math you need for the rest of the book in the first chapter, so if you can make it through that (it is mostly linear algebra) you will be ready for the rest of the book.
- BeetleB 6y agoRegarding math, one topic that is often neglected: Asymptotic approximations. I would often read a grad level textbook, and the author would whip up some fancy approximation, and it always seemed like brilliant magic. It was demoralizing: I could never come up with that. Do I not have what it takes to be a physicist? Then my math department offered a (rigorous) course on doing asymptotic approximations. I took it, and it all made sense. There are well known techniques, and the physics authors were merely using them. Yet it's rarely taught formally in physics programs. I've occasionally seen it covered as part of a "Mathematics for physicists" course, but they can cover only so much. There are books out there on the topic.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoThat's interesting. Are there any books in particular you can recommend?
- vmilner 6y ago
- euix 6y agoCourse of Theoretical Physics by Lev Landau, Evgeny Lifshitz was considered the gold standard at the graduate level, although not very pedagogical. It's better to read the particular books after one has already taken a course on the corresponding subject. Affectionately known as L^2
- charleshmartin 6y agoLearning physics is not the same as learning to do physics. If you want to learn how to really do it, you need to work problems. This means you to learn the techniques, and you need problem books, with solved examples, that you can work through on your own, or with a small group. This is absolutely critical. This includes both complex mathematical calculations as well as back-of-the-envelope calculations. Moreover, while textbooks are great references, nothing replaces a good video lecture or presentation, that gets to the heart of the physical concepts without being overly technical. n And remember that physics is fundamentally an experimental science. It is not just advanced mathematics. Even if you yourself are not an experimentalist, you need to understand the basics.
- MengerSponge 6y agoI should mention that "good video lectures" are extremely hard to come by. Experts appreciate a clean narrated delivery, and novices like it too, but students generally don't learn from a monologue. You can't just watch videos. You have to work through the problems. If you have a lot of free time, and you're curious about designing effective educational multimedia, check out Derek Muller's (of Veritasium fame) dissertation: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/super/theses/PhD(Muller).pdf http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/super/theses/PhD(Muller).pdf
- abnry 6y agoThe right sort of textbook is just as good as a good lecture. In math, books like Rudin's Principles of Analysis are extremely thorough, rigorous, and a great source of problems, but not a good book to start learning from. On the other hand, Abbott's Analysis is a less detailed book but a much better introduction. Any textbook that takes itself too seriously is probably not going to be as good as a lecture.
- kiliantics 6y agoGerard 't Hooft, Nobel laureate in physics has a list of resources to learn theoretical physics here: https://www.goodtheorist.science/ https://www.goodtheorist.science/ Basically, whenever you become a physicist, especially a Nobel-prize-winning theorist (this even happened some to me during my non-theoretical PhD), you get a bunch of emails from cranks that believe they have "figured it out" without ever having engaged with the centuries of work and results that we are building on. So he made this reading list that he requires people to be familiar with before he engages with them. All the information you need is available and easily accessible and he just curated it into a full course.
- beefield 6y agoThere was a nice list of good popular physics books in the beginning of the article. I wonder if anyone has similar lists for other science disciples?