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?
Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
81–90 of 194 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#82step 1. study math
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#83There 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 Lag…
If you were writing a good guide on how to scare off a beginner from physics, congratulations.
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#84For 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 Fowler gives a pretty conventional undergraduate physics curriculum (adding Feynman in there somehow). If it w…
"I'd suggest not actually trying to simulate physical systems on a computer" I cannot disagree enough with this statement. I am double major in Physics and CS.
There are two kinds of physics, Math and Physics. Most of what you learn in uni physics is Math. But the Math is only one (outdated) description of the nature of physical law.
Leonard Susskind himself has said on multiple occasions that the equations of physics are at most highschool math however the solutions are sometimes phd+ level.
To me Physics is the study of the relationship between state. Mostly this state is finite and the laws governing its evolution are simple and local. A computer is the best tool to discover the solutions to this evolving state.
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#85I 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.
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…
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.
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#86Hi 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.) Ther…
How does Halliday + Resnick compare to Young + Freedman?
At that level, the textbooks are more or less the same. So neither is superior than the other.
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#87https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-course...
Is a great starting point. There are also free online courses for that.
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#88For 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 Fowler gives a pretty conventional undergraduate physics curriculum (adding Feynman in there somehow). If it w…
"I'd suggest not actually trying to simulate physical systems on a computer" I cannot disagree enough with this statement. I am double major in Physics and CS. There are two kinds of physics, Math and Physics. Most of what you learn in uni physics is Math. But the Math is only one (outdated) description of the nature of physical law. Leonard Susskind himself has said on multiple occasions that the equations of physic…
I am to really glad to hear commentary like this coming from physicists. (read: glad to see others siding with my biases).
Ceteris paribus there is one significant distinction between Mathematics and Computer Science: state.
The Mathematical Universe is immutable/stateless/timeless. The Computational Universe is mutable/stateful/time-bound.
The observer effect in physics can be trivially expressed and evaluated as a mutating getter in any programming language.
It cannot be expressed in any Mathematical grammar.
Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#89There 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 Lag…
"A lot of problems in mechanics can be boiled down to writing down the correct Lagrangian." There's something that intuitively sounds very right about that... This list seems very interesting... I will have to explore all of these areas in greater detail... I'm not a physicist by profession, but I find most of your list's topics fascinating...
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Re: Ask HN: How to self-study physics?
#90For 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 Fowler gives a pretty conventional undergraduate physics curriculum (adding Feynman in there somehow). If it w…
"I'd suggest not actually trying to simulate physical systems on a computer" I cannot disagree enough with this statement. I am double major in Physics and CS. There are two kinds of physics, Math and Physics. Most of what you learn in uni physics is Math. But the Math is only one (outdated) description of the nature of physical law. Leonard Susskind himself has said on multiple occasions that the equations of physic…
> Most of what you learn in uni physics is Math. But the Math is only one (outdated) description of the nature of physical law.
Is this the lack of additional parameters for the equations? All of my physics problems (only took a couple courses) were like "what if this spherical horse rolled down a hill at 34 degree decline" but failed to include friction, atmosphere. Just gravity. It always felt fake to me. Perhaps this is what you were alluding to by the "outdated" description?