Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#11

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are: - University Physics by Young and Freedman - Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker - Modern Physics by Krane You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics. For a nonrigorous introduction/overview: - The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose…

Landau! my soviet physics teacher would say the same thing!

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#13
post #7

Felder & Felder's Modern Physics is pretty good ( https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/physic... ). I also second OgsyedIE's suggestion og Young & Freedman.

The Felder & Felder book looks really good and doesn't seem as mathematical as Walecka i.e. more expository. Looking at the ToC/Sample the chapters have a good progression and are nicely setup.

The print copy however seems prohibitively expensive :-(

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#14
post #12

I think I used this exact Ivanov book (but in Russian) in school and quite liked it.

It is not meant to be the primary textbook but an adjunct to one. It succinctly covers a lot within 500 pages.

There are more advanced Physics books on that site which are also worth looking into.

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#18

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are: - University Physics by Young and Freedman - Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker - Modern Physics by Krane You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics. For a nonrigorous introduction/overview: - The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose…

Landau was Einstein+ level genius and the course was a soviet theoretical physics bible many years ago. But it’s not a good educational resource by modern standards and pretty dated.

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#19

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are: - University Physics by Young and Freedman - Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker - Modern Physics by Krane You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics. For a nonrigorous introduction/overview: - The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose…

Landau was Einstein+ level genius and the course was a soviet theoretical physics bible many years ago. But it’s not a good educational resource by modern standards and pretty dated.

True it is pretty dated. OP was requesting resources that cover *all* of physics and Landau popped into mind. Is there a modern series of textbooks that offers such a broad coverage?
Post reply on HN