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Physics Books for the Novice?
cornjchob asks: "I've been a Slashdot reader for quite sometime now, and I've seen alot of Physics articles posted. I've got a good understanding of alot of it, but that doesn't mean there's no room to improve. So what's some good reading material for Physics that will give you a good, solid foundation if you've missed something, and then give you some additional stuff? What about online articles or PDF's for us cheap folk? Quantum Mechanics is another subject area that--judging by alot of posts underneath the articles, at least--many of us could use some brushing up on. Any suggestions for books/articles/PDF's on that? Suggestions on anything pertinent to any of those would be great."
Look at a Grade 10 or 11 textbook?
"Let's start at the very beginning... A very good place to start!"
Tournament Management Online &
http://www.physlink.com/
QED (Quantumelectro Dynamics) by Richard Feynman is a great (if specialized) physics book for someone who doesn't know that much about physics. I found it to be interesting and quite educational. It also got me interested in finding out more about some of the topics discussed in the book and physics in general. I highly recommend it.
(I apologize, but somebody had to troll.. err.. say it.)
Get "Universe in a Nutshell" that's a pretty good one. Also check out A Brief History of Time. I like books by George Gamow (Mr. Thompkins) as well as some of the Sagan stuff. Those are good starters.
cheers,
pt
www.flashenabled.com
I'm sure you've heard of him. There's a reason for it: he writes good stuff and he makes it easy to understand. There are many websites and his books are in every store. Check it out!
-Valiss
I'm sure you could take a Physics class at a local community for cheap. You might even be able to audit it even cheaper. In the class you would get hands on labs and other things you might not be able to get just from reading a book
Do a search for "ebook" +physics or something on kaaza. I've found a ton of ebooks on the gnutella network.
Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time is easily understood by anybody with a high school diploma, and should take less than three hours to read. It'll get you through the classical stiff, quantum physics, and just enough relativity to be dangerous
Stephen Hawking: Brief history of time and Universe in a nutshell.
Very well written, in plain english that anyone can understand. And the ideas in them will blow your mind...
Steven Hawking's A Brief History of time is a great introduction without getting too technical. Though a bit dated it was revised not-too-long ago and now includes discussion of the ever-popular string thoeries.
He does talk a great deal about relativity and does touch upon quantum mechanics.
Physics is such a deep subject that, from there, you can go just about anywhere you want!
Adventures of a Curious Character
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
You might want to start learning with a simplified version of physics.
A good place to start is here.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
Feynman is great.... Also check out 'Surely your joking, Mr. Feynman' for some fun reading.
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
It has a lot of information on physics
The first book of Feynman's "lectures" on physics isn't bad at all. The big question you need to ask is whether or not you just want a conceptual understanding of physics, or one that enables you to do the required mathematics involved. Unfortunately they tend to be a different audience...most layman's books have no math, and most college books concentrate on the math...which isn't bad, it's just that sometimes things are introduced differently because of the required mathematics.
They're expensive, but outstanding and well worth it. He developed them for a freshman level course, so they're accesible and don't rely on particularly fancy mathematical notation.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
For quantum mechanics, I highly recommend the books by John Gribbin - In Search of Schrodinger's Cat and the more up-to-date sequel, Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality. They both give a good historical background on quantum mechanics, and provide a decent background meant for the lay-person. He also has several other books on various topics in science, but I myself have not read them.
mmm...physics...
As mentioned already, there is "A Brief History of Time" But there is also another book he recently did, which is updated and has lots of really Cool PICTURES! :) it's called "The Universe in a Nutshell" its fairly enjoyable for a novice such as myself.
Usually the school textbooks are really good. Ask your local college's physics teacher which one is _really_ good. :)
For us austrian/german folks I can recommend the books by Sexl. But probably you knew this already
have fun learning
They are 40 years old but still a great and unique introduction to the foundations of physics.
Many of the lectures in mp3 and pdf format are currently being posted to news:alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.spoken-word
If you can buy them in your neighbourhood.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
If you want to know anything about physics fundamentals, check out http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe. html
I've used it to get a good foundation on a few topics and am amazed at how much information it has, as well as how nicely layed out it is.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
It's 'a lot' not 'alot'.
While it won't give you precicely the knowledge you want when you want it, they do an excellent job of providing solid direction on some fairly complex scientific topics - even for people without a scientific degree.
It's not too expensive, but they'll do a very nice job of filling in the gaps and provide leads on where to look next for more information.
Brief history of time, Dancing Wu LI Masters and Nature loves to Hide. All good overviews, with a heavy slant from "classical" to "new" (I.E. Quantum) physcics.
That tech support that does not kill me...drives me crazier
The Kama Sutra.
Both are very current and are intended for laymen.
-B
Hmmm...
hyperphysics
Where to start with physics depends entirely on your math background. Got calculus? Got diff eq? You may want to look at some of the better text books.
If your math is weak--just algebra, for e.g.--you may want to pick up one of the popular physics for laymen or physics without math books. These'll give you a good taste for what it's about, but for the real thing, you need the right tools. Physics is a real-world application of mathematics.
I think the Feynman Lectures on Physics are generallly considered a good overall reference, he seems to have a way of explaning the fundamental principals of physics that is easy(ier) to understand.
If you want something with a little out of the ordinary I'd suggest looking at the classic Feynman Lectures on Physics. These books are old but basic concepts in physics definetly haven't been made obsolete.
Something that would go well with these books are the recordings of the actual lectures that the books are based on. It is one thing to read about it but to have one of the best physics teachers explain everything really makes a difference. If you're lucky you might even find the set of pdfs and mp3s posted somewhere on internet.
Paul A. Tiplers "Physics for Scientists and Engineers"
People with Satellite or Digital Cable or even HDTV in some markets can watch PBS's PBS YOU channel.
PBS YOU airs a show called Standard Deviants that airs weekdays with a different theme each day. They refer to Tuesdays as "Test Tube Tuesday" and air science episodes (Monday is Math, Wednesday is Writing). It's a well done series and can bring the novice up to speed on basic knowledge from which you can then move on to harder hitting subject matter.
A Brief History of Time, written by Steven Hawkings. Some of the stuff may be too advanced for you (it was for me) but you will still enjoy it, very interesting stuff!
Once I dropped an apple and it went straight up! I kid you not!
If your looking for basic, layman's descriptions of Cosmology and astro-type stuff (up to the last few years), Timothy Ferris's THE WHOLE SHEBANG is an excellent book. I was a Physics major in college, with an astrophysics concentration, and I thought the book was superb. I read it before I got into the astro end of physics, but found its explanations of cosmology were very accurate, while being presented in an entertaining, very accessible manner. There's even a comprehensive glossary!
The Berkeley Physics Course and the Feynman Lectures on Physics have been my two favorite books on the subject. The Feynman Lectures are not very easy, however.
Good Luck!!
While not a textbook on the subject, one of the best "explainations" of quantum physics I have read is Schroedinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson. It is a specualtive fiction novel which explains the concepts in a whimsical manner with a twist of strange.
Try the books: six easy pieces, and six not-so-easy pieces. Both by Richard Feynman. The second one is a bit challenging, but they should give you a good start.
It's impossible to really appreciate physics without some basic calculus, and if you're not willing to delve into the math side of physics at all, you'll never understand it.
A good textbook if you want a serious introduction to physics is "Physics" by Giancoli.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
For a really good intro to physics, you'd be hard pressed to beat Asimov's book. Barnes and Noble has the three-in-one volume for under 10 bucks, and it's hardcover.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Asimov did a nice little introduction to Physics. I found it quite readable.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
- The Elegant Universe
by Brian Greene is probably the best popular physics book I've read recently. From memory (it's been about a year), it's divided into three major parts. The first is an excellent introduction to both relativity and quantum mechanics, as well as explaining why they are ultimately incompatible and must be combined in a new theory (quantum gravity/string theory). The second part is a description of the current state of string theory, and the third is a description of where the theory might go (called M-theory). My only complaint about this book, which is brand new given other books I've read, is it doesn't mention the primary fallacy of string theory, which is that it relies on a static background. M-theory, if workable, could fix this, but I don't recall that ever being made clear in this book.I would recommend the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. Hawking is an incredibly smart man, but the book is very accessible to the layperson. It gives a good basic introduction into the concepts of modern physics (i.e., relativity, QM, string theory, supersymmetry, etc.) without going into a lot of the math. The intellectual crowd might be a bit put off by Hawking's constant references to "God" throughout the text, but I think he was just trying to please his target audience. Others have bashed the somewhat speculative and theoretical nature of the book, but lots of chapters (i.e., the one on the thermodynamic and temporal arrows) give you things to think about.
I would also recommend "Relativity: The Special and General Theory" by the man himself, Albert Einstein. This text goes a bit more into the math and explains SR and GR in a relatively straightforward fashion. This would be a good second step after reading "Brief History", which really only spends a chapter or two on the subject.
Quantum Cryptography may not be "the place to start" but it is free, and you are cheap:k ill/ph22 9/#describe
http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/pres
Saxon has some pretty good books, that makes it easy to learn math or physics. I took 2 years of physics in high school and we used this book. It was very easy to understand the basic concepts of physics, and also could lead to the understanding of deeper physics (quantium physics, etc).
If you're looking for the real, actual stuff (a book of physics as opposed to a book about physics) I would very strongly recommend the Feynman Lectures on Physics. They cover mechanics, E&M, and quantum mechanics: they were the first 2 years of courses at Caltech when Feynman taught them.
They get tough in places, but are appropriate for a physics major undergrad, someone with an already good general knowledge of mathematics and a little bit of physics, or just a bright and ambitious high school student. They're a little pricey (all textbooks are) but you might be able to find them at the public library.
Just about every student at Caltech has at least one of these three books...
--Sam L-L
Well, it's not a book but I think ParticleAdventure.org is really great. In fact, it's on of the best site on the net! ;-))
Furthermore you should have a look at QuarkDance.org
Are you part of Saddam's crack team of nuclear scientists?
My other sig is extremely clever...
Great book, totally factual and easy to understand, though it can get a bit pricey......
If you've got a basic understanding of general relativity and quantum mechanics and you'd like to catch up on what's going on in physics nowadays, Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is a pretty good book. It's a pretty good explanation of string theory for people who are relative beginners.
I agree completely, I read A Brief History of Time and I found it very interesting and very readable. And this was in early high school. I do suggest a little background knowledge in physics first, though.
Now time to go see if the book is still kicking around somewhere...
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
If you want to know about all that cool chaos theory, quantum mechanics, black hole stuff then pick up any of a number of excellent books aimed at laymen; Chaos by James Gleick is pretty good, and In Search of Schroedinger's Cat by James Gribbin is a really good hand-waving (no math) book about quantum. If you actually want to be able to do physics (or write games with realistic physics, etc.) then you'd do well to find a decent introductory textbook (Halliday and Resnick, Fowler, etc.) Note that to do physics at all two things are required: 1) you must think well, and 2) you must do algebra at a bare minimum, and calculus if you want to learn anything really interesting.
One of these days/I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/21/18 23227&mode=thread&tid=146
finding "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene.
Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction is a pretty good, mathless (well, except for the appendix) look at some of the important discoveries of the 20th century.
The world over, this is the standard Intro to Physics text. Master this and you've got an excellent grasp of basic physical laws.
http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/00index.html
Although far from comprehensive, they're summaries of topics that have come up in a physics teachers' email list.
Once there, you can go to the local book store or even the library and pick up a high school text on physics. They're mostly awful, but if you're bright, you can probably extract the basic theory from them.
--brian
For beginners I think the Feynman Lectures are quite
helpful. Feynman had a unique way of explaining physics in an easy to understand way without oversimplifying or omitting things. Here is a link
at amazon without endorsing this online bookstore.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
For QM, it's really more helpful to get a book (Griffiths is good), but you can get some of the basics online if you've got a really good LinAl background (let's hope most CSists do).
At Caltech, Dr. Mabuchi is resident QM whiz. You can get his lecture notes at
http://minty.caltech.edu/Ph195/downloads.htm
While they're really coherent, as far as physics derivations go, you might want to have someone who's had a first year's QM around to answer questions. And again, you should have a good grasp of LinAl, since that's pretty much what QM is.
As for general reading, I find that PRL (prl.aps.org) has pretty readable stuff, and it's also really interesting. Do yourself a favor--if you're at a college that has the online subscriptions, skim a couple articles a week. For a while, I tried to make that my "news site" instead of slashdot. I'll keep trying, and will let you know (or not) about the results.
Good luck
Mike's Particle Physics column on Kuro5hin explains particle physics quite well for the layman. Unfortunately, K5 is slower than balls atm, so I can't give you a direct link (search for 'particle physics' and you should get all, like 5, articles).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Like many of us here, I've had volumes of physics crammed into my head for three years at college. Go find a good school, get in, and take some physics courses. Or go buy a physics text book from a Tech school (MIT/RIT/RPI/CWRU/CMU/GaTech/etc). There's probably a marginally reputable one near you. If worse comes to worst, go on ebay and look for a textbook.
Don't expect to understand anything much past Classical (Newtonian) Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics is not easily grasped unless taught. It's extremely counter-intuitive. Thus taking a course is your best bet.
are very good, although pricey. A good excuse for a trip to the local public library. Read Amazon's summary and review archives.
Logic is not Divine.
The Dancing Wu Li Masters: Gary Zukav" A book about the dynamics of new physics without mathematics.
The Elegant Universe: Brian Greene" Again, another new physics book with neat pics and no mathmaticas. Specific to Superstrings mostly.
A Brief History of Time: Stephen Hawking" A good book about allmost everything between classical physics and the physics of the last few years. I.E. Relativity, quantum mechanics etc.
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
As many have mentioned, read breif history first, then read the dancing wu li masters. They will both ownz j00 in the eye.
Try these:
alt.e-book
alt.e-book.technical
alt.e-book.flood
Someone is always posting something on the sciences in there. Recently, someone posted about three hundred Fenyman physics lectures. That was something you probably wanted.
things (He has mathworld and the physics one is up and looks like he is still adding things but it is ok). Wolfram's Physics World
Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics
by Robert Gilmore
Copernicus Books; ISBN: 0387914951; (August 1995)
It's just like the title suggests: Alice in Wonderland meets Quantum Physics. I loved it.
- The Turning Point (Fritjof Capra),
- Einstein's Dreams (Alan P. Lightman),
- Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott ),
- The Mechanical Turk (Tom Standage).
(Sorry. Hit enter the first time I posted this)
Try "The God Particle" by Leon Lederman. Great book for quantum theory or even just basic particles. It was my constant reference when I was doing a report on particle accelerators.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
- A course in Mathematics for Students of Physics by Bamberg & Sternberg
- Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics by V. I. Arnol'd (anything by Arnol'd would be a terriffic place to start)
And then move on to the physics, like- The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime by Hawking and Ellis
- but first you might want to skim Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.
- Dirac's Quantum Mechanics is nice and short without being overly simplistic.
Hope this helps!IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
The best book of this type I've read in the last few years is Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". It's written in plain, understandable English (AFAIK there aren't any formulas in the entire book) and goes through everything from relativity to quantum physics to superstring theory.
It's definitely an overview book for the layman, written for reading enjoyment rather than as a textbook, but I learned more from this book than anything else I've read in the past couple 'o years. I found it completely fascinating... highly recommended. Sorry, not available (AFAIK) as an e-book, but well worth the $12 or so you can get it for online.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Sorry, can't remember the author, but as a rather extensive backdrop to the development of atomic power and weaponry it dicusses the surge of development in physics starting in the 1860s or so through trinity. Here is the link on Amazon
Everything you need to know about the laws of physics you can learn by watching Wylie E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons.
Beep! Beep!
The single best source for a basic explanation of much of modern physics is Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces, and at 137 pages you won't feel like it's too great an undertaking to ever be acomplished.
It contains a basic history of physics, how it relates to the other sciences, and then goes into energy, gravitation, and basic quantum mechanics. Feynman is someone I had heard of in my college physics courses, but until I read this book I had never realized what an incredible man he was. He was a brilliant physicist but at the same time can explain things in a language anyone can understand, a definite rarity these days.
Anyway, Six Easy Pieces is definitely a great starting place, if you start really getting into physics you might want to look into his entire series Lectures on Physics, but I'm not gonna lie to you he gets pretty deep in some of them.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
It has been said that physics is motion (although I can't remember by whom). Movement of a particle through space, movement of a ball through the air, movement a wire through an electric field, whatever. In cal terms, this pretty much works out to a hell of a lot of derivatives, and I personally don't think simple qualatative physics is enough for real understanding past the high-school level.
Now I know some Slashdotters'll disagree and say "You don't need to know vector math to know gravity pulls a ball down." But then again you don't need to know what bytecode is to type on a word processor, and if you want to understand how computers work you need to take it to the next level. Same for physics.
Just my two cents (three cents CDN). If you're bored and want to learn what happens when you move a wire through an electric field, pick up a grade 11/12 text. If you want to learn why, pick up the 11/12 text, a good calculus book and a few university level texts.
Working Link
I strongly recommend Feynman's lectures on physics. I think that in the event of nuclear war devastating all of the world, these books would be at the top of the list for the recovery manuals...hmmm, sounds like an interesting Ask Slashdot.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
The Illustrated Brief History of Time
The original version is cheaper, but the illustrations go along way to making concepts easy to grasp for someone with very little physics background.
The Universe in a Nutshell
This book is a follow up to A Brief History of Time with updated information. This book is illustrated as well.
Anyone interested in more info about Stephen Hawking can check out his website.
That's the title of a really good book by Isaac Asimov. Starts out nice and light as a read adn gradually accelerates to really advanced topics, as its 3 books in 1. You could either do that or just read Newton's Principa Mathematica...!!!
Richard Feynman's Six Not So Easy Pieces is a great explanation of some fundamental concepts of physics, especially the whole time/speed of light relationship (do you really really understand why the speed of light is the speed limit? if not, read this book). it has alot of forumulas, but they do not need to be understood for the book to make sense.
Brian Greene has a very thorough explanation of the leading edge of quantum mechanics and string theory (or m-theory) in The Elegant Universe. this book is free of formulas, but very good at explaining how theories evolved, up to current research status.
if david letterman were to write a smart, fascinating physics book, it'd be "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?" a wonderful, funny, interesting read that covers some of the coolest physics concepts i've ever run across. could not recommend more highly.
For the physics behind lasers, transistors, and other semiconductor marvels, check out the Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics!
It's hard to relate high level physics to people that do not specialize in the discipline. I am a Nuclear physicist and I find this to be the most complicated task I have. Some people have mentioned Feynman and Hawking but if you really want to learn basic or fundamental physics, I recommend not taking their advice on that. Those books are "fun" to read for people that aren't advanced in physics but they offer very little with respect to useful substance. The most damaging aspect of such books is that they make the reader believe that they truly understand what is going on when they in fact do not. My recommendation is to brush up on basic calculus with a Freshman/Sophmore level calculus book. Then go thru a Sophmore level general physics book backwards and forwards. If you do this, you will place yourself way beyond most people with respect to truly understanding fundamental physics. Some will say that this is too detailed for the average person but I disagree. The true nature of the formulaism is no where near touched with such books. From this point, you are now ready to read up on any topic you are truly interested in such as Quantum, Electromagnetism, Chaos, etc.... You can't just jump straight into Quantum for instance without first knowing fundamental physics. It's just not possible. Those that say it is are fooling themselves. Anyway, I hope this helps.
Maynord
It's Quantum Electrodynamics, and covers pretty much everything you'd need to know about electrons, which means 99% of the stuff we deal with in everyday lives (everything but gravity, that is).
A good intro book should be brief and interesting. Two books that everyone should read are: Vibrations and Waves by Anthony P. French -and- Introduction to Quantum Physics by A. P. French, Edwin F. Taylor. I found french to be be very clear and fun to read. Vibrations should be read first because the concepts are more familiar but the math is similar and it will make the Quantum Book easier to digest. If you are the sort of person who must have The Bible for ever subject, you have to pick up: Quantum Mechanics Vol I&II by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu, Frank Laloe. CTDL is an indispensible reference for the serious student covering everything from scattering to electron spin and magnetism to lasers. It is a really dense book and should not be studied lightly or you will get lost. If you are looking for a solid state physics Bible(semiconductors, superconductors, slashdot fodder)there is no better book than: Introduction to Solid State Physics by Charles Kittel. Chapters 1-3 covers crystals and once you have that, the rest is easy. This is again a higher level reference. Lastly, there is a really good book called QED by Richard Feynman. Quantum Electro Dynamics is a really cool field and this book is totally accesible to any reader (it is a short little paper back). However, this book contradicts alot of QM and will confuse someone who is trying to conceptualize QM using French or CTDL.
Let's see...
;)
:)
"Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality: Solving the Quantum Mysteries" by John Gribbin. Very readable and occasionally funny. Bit of a steep learning curve but you don't really notice it if you've got a few physics classes under your belt.
"The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene. excellent read (although I'm only halfway through - there might be plot twists that I don't know about.
Oh, and I'd also pick up a copy of "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn. No, on second thoughts, I'd pick up a copy on CD. It's a play, and should be seen...but since that's not available, you're better off listening to it instead.
Triv
Raymond Serway's text, "Physics for Scientists and Engineers (with modern physics)" has EVERYTHING that a beginning physics student needs. All that you need to bring to the table is some basic math skills (you can even get by without calculus if necessary). This is (was?) the workhorse textbook for virtually every first-year "real" physics course that I've ever seen. Heck, we used it in two first year courses, and three second year courses. It's a great book. When I did my physics degree (graduated 2000) I used this book clear through to my senior years as an overall reference. I used the 3rd edition, but I'm sure newer editions are just as good.
:)
It is clear, concise, complete, and easily available on the cheap. I'm very sure you could go to your local college or university and buy it in the used textbook store. Don't worry if it's five or ten years old -- first-year physics hasn't changed much in ten years
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
I grew up on this one. He uses clever little drawings to explain physics principles. Gonick is only the cartoonist though. He collaborated with a physicist named Art Huffman to write this. It's a great introduction to the principles of physics and electricity for novices.
Just search for his name and physics on Amazon or at your favorite bookseller.
He's also written some excellent history books.
(Cartoon history of the universe I and II. These got me through me freshman year history courses. Lots of interesting little tidbits. Did you know the Egyptians used crocidile dung as birth control?)
No-one understand quantum physics, so I wouldn't worry too much. The best you can do is be less confused than most people by it.
I'm not good at physics, but have really enjoyed that book. And though I love Feynman's stories, I have no hope of understanding his or Hawking's writings on physics. (Maybe they should've made cartoons?)
Excellent book. Quite readable, but not as condescending or formula-averse as many layman-oriented science books. Used as a textbook in the best QM course I've had. Also discusses philosophy of QM in fascinating detail.
Im sorry, never quite understood how someone could say they knew anything of physics without understanding the mathematics involved in it. While all of those books are great for a thimble full of info, their only purpose should be to inspire to go on to learn the meat of physics. just my opinion anyways..
Cosmos, Broca's Brain and Billions and Billions are a few great books, but more about cosmology. Being that he was an English major I believe they are very well written.
Try http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/ it sports weekly updates and well organized topics.
Feynman (Six Easy Pieces) is great, but Paul Davies (About Time) is a more enjoyable read.
catch a wave and ride till ya hit the beach
To understand modern physics a deep understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) is absolutely neccessary and that means you have to do MATHS! Without computing some problems with your own brain cells a lot of the important structure of QM will be hidden. Not one of the popular book on this topic, be it Hawking, Penrose, Barrow, or else, can explain this, because - well, because the structure lies in the mathematical form itself. You can't translate this in layman's terms. No, you can't.
Also, you can't determine the limits of QM without knowing what maths is used for it. And to explore far more advanced topics like QED, QCD, or even Super Strings and M-Theory, you should be aware, that the underlying maths is far more advanced, too.
"Principles of Quantum Mechanics" (2nd Ed.) by Ramamurti Shankar is a good introductory textbook. If you worked through it, and solved all the exercises, you will have a good understanding of classic quantum mechanics.
You can't understand a subject without actually studying it - and by studying I mean studying as you would for an university exam.
This is a great book that explains physics on a human level instead of being way over your head. Also not simplistic. I suggest this book to anyone who has also wanted to know about physics, but was intimidated(sp?)by the subject matter.
Ok first of all great question... I love physics books and have read a bunch of them. Probably one of the best all-around physics books to read that is really exciting and sexy (yes, physics can be sexy!) and well written is: -A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking: this book covers everything including the big bang, special relativity, black holes, the nature of time, and quantum mechanics. It's a fantastic read and it's one of the few books that really changed my life. It's very heavy (I respect anyone who can make it all the way through this book) but it's also relatively easy to read. After reading this book it's also fun to rent the documentary movie version of it. This is a must read. As for quantum mechanics, which, as you pointed out, is a whole field of it's own; my favorite book is: -In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin: It's another book for lay-people that follows the history of quantum mechanics (which is quite interesting... unlike relativity, QM was developed by dozens of different geniuses over a period of about 50 years...) and describes many of the fascinating experiements that have changed the way we percieve the world. It's a delightful read that will leave you very well-informed on the quantum world. If you still want more you can read the sequel called 'Schrodinger's Kittens' too. :)
For a little more depth on physics in general including quantum mech and relativity, you should read the classic:
'The Feynman Lectures on Physics' by Richard Feynman:
Actually, read anything by Richard Feynman. This collection was actually taken from a series of lectures he gave at Cal Tech. It's actually a textbook, so it's not as easy as the above books, but it's a great reference to have on the shelf if you want to look up any of the subjects mentioned elsewhere in a bit more detail. Feynman is a fantastic writer and his descriptions of mind-bogglingly complex topics are easy to understand as he uses lots of analogies to more comprehensible.
One other fascinating topic of late is super-string theory, aka M-theory which is an attempt at a Grand Unified Theory (a theory that unites the four fundamental forces into one unified whole) that is gaining popularity today and is probably the leating GUT around. A decent book on string theory is:
'Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Univers' by Michio Kaku
My only complaint with this book is that it doesn't go into quite enough scientific depth... but that's probably to be expected considering there are probably about a dozen people in the world today who truly understand string-theory. It raises some really interesting points though, and you'll know enough after reading it to be able to understand news articles about string-theory.
If you have to read just one of these books get 'A Brief History of Time.' It's a classic among classics. Anything by Stephen Hawking is good. Roger Penrose is another good writer to check out and Richard Feynman has a ton of funny books of essays and stories that deal with physics in a truly unique way. Hope this helps!
I wish I could read all these books again for the first time! :)
gg
The book The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene is about String Theory and the quest for the Ultimate Theory (the one Holy Grail theory that is the basis for all forces in the universe). It does have four or so chapters on Relativity that are really easy to understand. The overall read was great: layman enough not to go over your head, but not patronizing either.
Go to zeropaid.com and download "kaazaa lite" and FastTrack Accelerator for it so it is faster... then search for "physics" and you will have yourself a library of free documents. I was also able to find feynman, hawking and einstein.... in text and as audio files, also many a place have free lessons, or you could go to your local mega univercity and sit at one of the 200+ student physics lectures
One of the most comprehensive books you will find is probably "College Physics". It covers virtually every aspect from motion, right through to quantum.
I used this as a reference whilst in college, and found it a fantastic book - enjoyable to read, no verbosity, and has plenty of meat to sink your teeth into.
A great companion book is "problems in physics", which is a compilation of physics questions, again, covering the entire physics spectrum, and going from the easy to the ridiculous.
College Physics
Few of the books I've seen recommended are real physics books, they're popularizations. Here are some real recommendations, arranged in order of increasing difficulty in each category:
: Quantum Mechanics
Mechanics:
Feynman lectures vol. 1
Kleppner & Kolenkow: An Introduction to Mechanics
Marion & Thornton: Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems
Goldstein: Classical Mechanics
Arnol'd: Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics
Abraham & Marsden: Foundations of Mechanics
Electricity & Magnetism:
Feynman lectures vol. 2
Purcell: Electricity and Magnetism
Griffiths: Introduction to Electrodynamics
Jackson: Classical Electrodynamics
Quantum Mechanics:
Feynman lectures vol. 3
Rosu: http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0004072
Shankar
Sakurai: Advanced Quantum Mechancis
Feynman & Hibbs: Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals
More advanced stuff:
Wald: General Relativity
Feynman: Theory of Fundamental Processes
Peskin & Schroeder: Introduction to Quantum Field Theory
Weinberg: Quantum Theory of Fields, vol 1 - 3
Guckenheimer & Holmes: Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields
Statistical Mechanics:
Kittel: Thermal Physics
Landau & Lifshitz: Statistical Physics
Feynman: Statistical Mechanics Lectures
Oh, and don't look for PDFs for physics stuff! Look for postscript. Much more stuff in that format.
http://www.arxiv.org The archive of physics pre-prints (be warned, some stuff here is not by professionals). Search for "introduction", you'll find good stuff.
I'm a big fan of Einstein's book Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. It's easy to read, intellegent, short, and cheap.
Of course, it's only about relativity.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
I found In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality to be a good introduction. It explains a lot about quantum at a level that is easy to read but also accurate. It has some companion books, basically anything by John Gribbin. They cover quantum, cosmic creation and evolution, various theories on cosmic destiny. "In search of the Big Bang" is great and detailed. I read the earlier books, circa 1990. There are later updates (Kittens is recommended) that should ring them up to date.
I only wish I had time to go through them all (again). Sigh.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker is now in its sixth edition.
This is the book that I used when I was a freshman in college (am now a physics grad student) and it is excellent. It covers everything, including basic modern physics in its extended version, and has many cool gee-whiz examples of physics. It costs a pretty penny when new, but you could probably find a used, previous edition for cheap. I'd not buy any lower than the 4th edition.
You will, however, need to know some calculus, as it is designed for a calculus-based university physics course. This is a good thing, I think, since the real meat of physics is based on calculus.
Reading the popular-science type of book will only take you so far, if you want to start learning the real thing, you have to start dealing with books that have math in them.
"So much I don't know about astrophysics. Why didn't I read that book by the wheelchair guy?"
--Homer J. Simpson
GMD
watch this
The basics can consist of the following areas.
Very Basic and easily understood compared to the other areas.
1. Special Relativity
This is just Einstien's theory of Relativity.
Math level:algebra
This stuff explains what happens at relavitistic speeds.
2. Mechanics
Math level: calculus, differential equations
This explains basic motion, such as falling rocks, equations of orbits, etc.
The nitty gritty areas. But many subfields are based on the following areas: optics, mechanics, lasers, properties of materials, electronics, etc.
1. Electricity and Magnetism
These all are followed by Maxwell's equations.
Math level:Vector Calculus
This stuff explains the behavior of charges, current, magnetism and light.
2. Quantum Mechanics
These are all about Schroedinger Equations.
Math knowledge: Partial Differential Equations
This explains stuff about on the microscopic scale. Is used to explain radioactive decay, chemical reactions, lasers, etc.
3. Thermodynamics (including statistical)
These are about the 3 laws of thermodynamics and the applications.
The hard stuff.
1. Gravitation
Math knowledge: Differential Geometry
This explains stuff like black holes.
2. Quantum Electrodynamics
This is based on merging Quantum Mechanics and Electromagnetics.
3. String Theory
Don't ask me what this entails but this sounded interesting to add to the mix.
The cheap method is to do a search on Google. I found how a Tesla Coil works with a similar search.
The novice level books are usually used in the basic college courses.
The hard core books are usually used in the graduate courses.
The Feynmann Lectures are very good reading if you have a good background in math and physics.
WhatMeWorry!
Find 'em here and here
A deeper look would be Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. Amazon.com link here
Cheers
Stop the Caltech (California Institute of Technology) book store. You occasionally see Steven Hawkings there--enough said.
His first A Brief History of Time goes into standard theoretical physics with some exploration about black holes, etc.
His most recent book The Universe in a Nutshell has lots of great explanations, in layman terms, of modern theory. He covers p-brans, M-theory, lots of relativity type material. I highly recommend this one.
Professor Hawking also has several lectures on his website that can give you information on more specific aspects of his research.
this material will give you enough background in theoretical physics to wax philosophical and impress your geek friends with talk of alternate universes and multiple dimension objects. At the very least it is interesting material.
Depending on how modern you want to go I would highly recommend "The Evolution of Physics" by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld. It is written with a lucidity that only a true master of the subject could achieve. This will get you up to speed on most of modern physics (the subtitle is 'From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta') If you want to explore more into the present day thought, "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene is an excellent book describing the fundamentals of string theory. And finally there is always "A Brief History of Time" but that IMO relates more to astrophysics than anything (but it's all interrelated in the end so...).
If you're looking for alternative descriptions of the same ideas take a look at "The Tao of Physics" and "Dancing Wu Li Masters"
I found Physics for the Rest of Us to fill this role nicely. I wanted some more in-depth info about major physics topics but didn't want to have to go back to college and get a physics/math degree. It also provides nice real-world examples of physical properties resulting from the underlying theory.
8 09 237164/qid=1031605560/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-364315 9-0188828?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
...written by Brian Greene is a great book on Superstring theory - and a really great read. I highly recommend picking it up...for $12 you can't beat it.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
The one major criticism you can make is that mechanics are covered without using the Lagrangian formalism, which is much more powerful and much more applicable to quantum mechanics. For this, you may want to check out Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. This is a very dense book but it covers a lot, and in a way geared towards programmers. Warning: uses the Scheme programming language heavily. If you don't like Scheme, you won't like this one.
For general relativity, I highly, highly recommend A First Course in General Relativity. The prerequisites are pretty minimal, and it's extremely well written.
Beyond that, check out John Baez's list of favorite books. Actually, you might want to read anything and everything Professor Baez has to say about physics, he knows a lot, explains it very well and is willing to talk to people. He's one of the few working physicists who still bothers with usenet. I'm currently working through his book on Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity, and am enjoying it immensely.
On the various theories and interpretation of quantum theory most of these are readable. The last one is an introductory level book on quantum theory (so 3rd/4th year university text book). More advanced work on quantum mechanics falls into the real of atomic and molecular physics and quantum computing (for which you actually need to do the math, and it's not all that meaningful if you aren't doing research anyway).
Jauch J.M. Are Quanta Real © 1973 Bloomington Indiana university press
Heisenberg, W. Physics and Philosophy; the revolution in modern science, © 1958 Harper, New York.
Lindley D. Where does the Weirdness Go? © 1996 Basic Books New York
Nuri, V.Z. Local Deterministic Hidden Variable theory based on a Loophole in Bell's Theorem © June 1998
Merzbucher, E Quantum Mechanics and the Copenhagen Interpretation
Symposium presented at CUNY © March 27 2000.
Zeilinger A. On the Interpretation and Philosophical Foundation of Quantum Mechanics, © 1996
Kent, A. Against the Many worlds Interpretation © 1997.
Barrett J.A. Everett's Relative state formulation of Quantum Mechanics © 1998 Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Gasiorowicz, S. Quantum Physcis © 1996 John Wiley & Son's. Printed in the United States of America.
For special or general relativity steven hawkings a brief history works, for slightly more technical on special relativity there is a handy book called special relativity by ernie Mcfarland.
For electromagnetic theory any first year physics book Young and Freedmans University physics has lots of readable substance.
For quantum computing (writen for a computer scientist) M.A. Nielsen and I.L Chaung Quantum computation and quantum information is a good book, but I used it as a graduate level textbook.
I find that Dilbert's engineering insights are commonly applicable. Dilbert
I thought Jesus Saves by shopping online and using double coupons?
I agree that The Elegant Universe is a great book but the Ask Slashdot guy is asking for something on BASIC physics -- not cutting edge superstring theory.
BTW, I read an interview with Brian Greene in a magazine (I believe it was Scientific American) where he said that while he was surprised/pleased with the response to his book he wasn't planning on writing a new one. The reason is that he just cares about his research too much and felt that writing a book just took too much time/energy/thought away from his first love: string theory. Our loss.
GMD
watch this
Many of his lyrics are closely intertwined with science. While it's a bit peurile for mature people like me, it would be perfect for an ignorant person like yourself. You can't deny his contributions to physics.
Like in "Kill You", when he says "You faggots keep eggin me on/ till i have you at knifepoint and then you beg me to stop" is simply a stroke of genius. This song has the best explanation of f=ma that i've ever heard in any of my ivy league university's classes.
Or perhaps in "Bitch Please II", when he says "here want me to tone it down? / {*LOWER pitch*} Suck my fuckin dick, you faggot", it simply sends shivers down my spine the way that he contradicts himself in the same way that Newton's laws contradicts the perpetual motion machine.
"My Dad's Gone Crazy" is another stellar example. "Before I'd ever bite my tongue, I'd slice my gums" is a prime example of tooth inertia in humans. I highly recommend that physics novices pick up the latest Eminem CD or single.
(I do not work for Arista records)
I got a 1600 on the SATs.
The Elegant Universe is quite excellent. The first half of the book, as it builds up to current string theory, is quite good. It's very readable (AP Physics was as high as I went).
I recommend it whole heartedly.
http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/FOUNDATIONS/i ndex.html
His science fiction is great as well.
Read The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukov. It explains all of the developments in physics from the last century in non-technical language.
I highly recommend the book, it is a winner of the American Book Award and truly will blow your mind...
Similarly, remember that all physics texts more or less require you to actually solve (or attempt to solve) the exercises. I do not mean you should do this in order to be the most earnest student. I mean that a great deal of material is often presented only in the exercises. (This is also true in Computer Science texts as well. It is probably a feature of any disciple where, at the end of the day, you actually have to solve problems.)
Granted, sitting in on a university could can be hard to do if you have to work 9 to 5, or your local university is very strict about such things, but you might be surprised to know that most profs would probably more than welcome a student who was just there to learn, not tick off another requirement from their list.
Texts: Get the Feynman Lectures. Then get a good intro text like a recent edition of University Physics by Sears, Zemanski and Young (I think it's now just "Young", who isn't) -- no reason to pay US$100 for the lastest one, go ahead and get the previous edition, I bet it's a lot cheaper. Then get a good Modern Physics text. For advanced stuff, I heard many good reviews of Understanding Quantum Physics by Michael A. Morrison (Univ. of Oklahoma) -- very readable compared to many such texts, possibly because the author has not only a Ph.D. in Physics, but also an advanced degree (Ph.D.? I don't recall) in English.
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
The Cartoon Guide to Physics (Gonick and Huffman) and The New Way Things Work (Macaulay, Ardley) are both excellent books for a low-level introduction to physics. Both books present physics in an accurate, yet simplified way suitable for anyone past the 7th grade.
Whatever books you choose, remember that simply reading is not sufficient to really understand what's going on: you must work the exercises and problems. One of my professors once remarked to the class that "you haven't read a book until you've worked all the problems."
Some books I haven't seen mentioned:
*** Work like a king, command like a slave, create like a dog.
There is no better writer when it comes to explaining science. Although it covers a lot more than just physics, the broad coverage is useful when you want to follow up on information that leads you away from physics proper.
The only disadvantage is that it is no longer in print, but thanks to the wonder of the internet, that's no longer a problem.
-BbT
Also, Introducing Quantum Theory was an excellent read. Find it at Amazon, etc. It's part of a series of introductary titles of a range of subjects.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
I see a lot of recommendations for excellent books that are essentially popularizations of physics. That's fine if all you want to do is feel like you understand the science. I would argue (and some may disagree) that you don't understand it if you're unable to actually apply your knowledge to actual problems.
The only way to test and develop this skill is to work problems. It's slow and painful, but essential. No one (except in movies like Good Will Hunting) learns real science or math without working problems.
My recommendations: quantum physics texts by J.J. Sakurai. Mechanics by Goldstein. I wish I knew a good statistical physics book with problems.
Oh, and I make no claims to fully understanding any of the aforementioned books. They are all good reads, and I have read parts of them more than once. Understand them? Heh, I don't think so. I really like Hofstader's stuff.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
yes, forget it. I've spent years studying physics. it's not Linux or VB. you can't hope that you'll produce anything close to be valy=uable without years of studying that subject. years.
start with the library, buy some basics books. if you get interested, then continue. don't be fooled with easiness of textbooks' picture of nature. it's greatly misleading. the reality is much more complex.
there's a smallest chance that you'll achieve anything in physics. so, just forget it
A good overall Physics introduction for the non-technical reader is Physics for Poets by Robert March. It does an excellent job of covering the essentials of modern physics (from Gallileo to Heisenberg) without subjecting the reader to either too much mathematics (as with most good textbooks) or too many cartoons (as with most some popular science books).
I always found that experience is the best teacher for beginner physics. First off - Gravity - find an umbrella, next find a 2nd story window. Open window, open umbrella, JUMP. There ya go. The sound was your ankle breaking on the ground that you hit going around 9.8m/sec or so. Also you learned that an umbrella under no circumstances should be used as a deceleration device.
-
Next Inertia. Once your ankle has recovered of course. You will need a car for this experiment(not your own car!!!). Also you will need a very tight turn preferably one where you can reach speeds over 60mph. Give yourself several miles to warm up and to get your insurance in order. Make sure you get your speed up to at least 60 mph preferable 80mph and don't worry about the signs that say SLOW DOWN CURVE AHEAD. As you enter the turn and attempt to turn the car you will notice that the car does not want to turn. Instead the car wants to continue moving straight. No matter how hard you turn the wheel that damn car keeps going straight.
did you survive that one. Maybe not. But you did learn some physics and more than likely a nomination for a 'darwin award'.
Best of luck to you.
The whole idea is to go from fundamental physical principles and derive everything. This is unlike high-school physics books which merely force you to accept various equations, while handwaving over the assumptions required to get their simplified result.
I am a Physics Major. I have used both books in-class, and I keep them around because they're good, comprehensive Classical references.
Hope this helps.
This was the textbook that we had in my college introductory physics back at the dawn of time... I don't know if students in this decade/millenium (youch) still us it, but it was a classic back in 1980 (double youch).
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Fundamentals of Physics, by Halliday and Resnick.
Online at Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/047
It didn't cost $125 back then though.
I didn't do the entire freshman physics course, but thought this was a good text with regard to not crushing me with advanced calculus that I was learning simultaneously in another class. It didn't seem gentle at the time, but I took a physical chemistry class later that proved to me that I had no future in math at all after about 3 sessions.
The best place to get a broad foundation is probably the place that's designed to teach it to you.
Visit your local university's bookstore, and pick up a first-year physics textbook, and probably a first-year calculus textbook too.
These will keep you busy for months or years. I know I'm still looking through my physics text every now and then for interesting tidbits.
As students enter university from a wide variety of backgrounds, the first-year texts start at an understandable level.
You can find free introductory physics books at www.lightandmatter.com They are downloadable as pdfs.
"The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene. excellent read (although I'm only halfway through - there might be plot twists that I don't know about. ;)
At the very end, you never do find out the true nature of the universe. The author just leaves you hanging in an obvious lead-in for the sequel: "Elegant Universe II: The Wrath of God".
GMD
watch this
I would suggest both of these books by Michio Kaku and also Paradigms revisted by John L. Casti. All have proved to be great mind churners.
While the Feynman, Hawking, Herbert, Wheeler,.. books are more widely known, the Mr. Tompkins series of articles explains a lot of elementray physics in the most unusual format I have encountered.
Mr. Tompkins is a layman who experiences physics through a series of dreams derived from seeing lectures in physics. The articles were first written in 1940 and updated in 65, but they are still very pertinent.
Mr. Tompkins in Paperback
If you want books that you can read for fun, but that also contain a lot of solid physics, I can recommend the following:
"The Second Creation", by Robert Crease and Charles Mann - contains a history of particle physics, from Becquerel to superstrings.
"The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes - a Pulitzer Prize winner - the first 400 pages or so contain a detailed history of nuclear physics.
"The First Three Minutes", by Steven Weinberg - about the Big Bang, Nucleosynthesis, and all that. Great little book.
"The Character of Physical Law", by Feynman - it's great if you like Feynman.
"Einstein's Universe", by Nigel Caldwell (I believe) - a solid book about the experimental consequences of General Relativity.
If you just want to learn quantum mechanics you could try David Bohm's book on the subject. It's easy to follow and also contains a discussion of the probability interpretation of quantum mechanics, which I haven't seen anywhere else.
Hope this helps.
Guglielmo
is The Cartoon Guide to Physics, by Larry Gonick. I would recommend it for everyonet ail/-/0062 731009/qid=1031606611/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-425889 0-9035212?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de
Sounds silly but without learning the maths behind physics it is meaningless.
Check out http://www.superstringtheory.com/ They give you and option to choose whether you are [basic/advanced], and the material they present is pretty good.
Sanity is not statistical - 1984
Quantum Physics and the Language of Nature by Heinz Pagels is a great book for beginners.
As long as your math is up to snuff (Calc, Vector Calc, Diff-Eqs), Robert Resnick's "Quantum Physics" is the bible in colleges for undergraduates.
Try Reichenbach's "From Copernicus to Einstein." It's an awesome history of physics that's under 200 pages.
Another book that sounds exactly like what you're looking for is Alan Wolf's "Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for non-scientists."
I'd also suggest reading lots of science fiction. You can learn more about physics from reading David Brin than you can in an intro university physics class.
If you want a good understanding of most of the stuff posted here about physics, then you really need a good background in some specific specialty in physics, like astro or semiconductor physics.
If you're interested in semiconductors, for instance, you'll want a good set of books for basic physics, then E&M, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and finally a good book on many body problems (a.k.a. condensed matter physics). In many cases, the textbooks are behind the times (especially for quantum and condensed matter), and the only way to really catch up is to read the research articles themselves.
Astro requires a lot of the same subjects (and a hefty dose of GR and optics to boot). Cosmology gets even crazier.
But, for the classical stuff, a list is fairly easy to provide:
Freshman Physics: (pick any single set, but understand calculus first)
Feynman Lectures
Halliday and Resnick
Serway
Sears and Zemansky
E+M
Griffiths (good all around book)
Jackson (only for the hardcore)
Landau and Lifshitz
Classical Field Theory
Marion and Thornton
Goldstein
Landau and Lifshitz
Quantum Mechanics
To my knowledge there isn't a really good quantum book that doesn't require some foreknowledge of the subject, although I've been told that Dirac's book is readable.
Statistical Mechanics
Goodstein (quite readable, light on the math)
Condensed Matter
Kittel
Ashcroft and Mermin
GR
Schultz
And, just because it's so important, Math
Boaz
Arfken and Weber
Carrier, Krook and Pearson
Mind you, the books I just outlined probably cost in excess of a thousand dollars if you buy them all. The big problem is, physics is a big area to want to understand, and a working knowledge of the subject requires years of dedication to that goal.
Einstein's relativity and the quantum revolution, from the teaching co., is an excellent "intro" type of lecture series by a real professor, and it's the best physics "class" i've ever taken. Most (if not all ) the teaching co.'s audiobooks are great for learning outside the classroom with a real professor (and no homework too :)
------ Poo-tee-weet?
enuf said
okay, written by Richard Feynman - probably the best physics textbook ever written for student understanding
Try www.lightandmatter.com This is exceptionally good introductory material! Many have commented that the Feynman lectures are good. They are indeed good, but they are not introductory. Have a look at the pdf files at light and matter before springing for the Feynman books. If light and matter is too easy for you, then the Feynman books might be more your speed.
Try The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics
Excerpts from Einstein, Feynman, Schwinger, Hawking, Turing, von Neumann, etc.
-tharant
There are some great suggestions already mentioned here but, unless I missed it, no one has mentioned my favorite text book:
Newtonian Mechanics (The M. I. T. Series) by A. P. French, W. W. Norton, 1971. ISBN 0-393-09970-9.
Still one of my all time favorites for it's clarity, exercises and readability.
--Peter
This is a good thing, I think, since the real meat of physics is based on calculus.
Funny - I always thought the real meat of physics was based on principal bundles, gauge theory, and the functional integral. Oh well.
You can also ask any one of her past boyfriends about the malleable properties of silicone -- an important part of semiconductors.
GMD
watch this
One of the better textbooks if you have at least calculus is Sommerfeld's Lectures on Physics. There are 6 volumes starting with mechanics. Feynman lectures are good, but dont give a very good method for solving problems. He was too smart.
www.howstuffworks.com now you wont get a full understanding of physics here, but when a article comes up on slashdot and you find yourself srcatching your head just got there search for whatever is confusing you and return to slashdot with enough knowledge to bs your way around the topic. Seriously how many people on slashdot really understand general relativity and quantum mechanics beyond the basics, sure most of us have had an intro physics class and talked about relatvity and quantum but hey most of us do not have a physics phd. And we all spit out our bs and 99% of it is just wrong anyways. Oh shoot now I am giving away my secret
Understanding Physics by Issac Asimov:It may be too much for the lay person if you already have some background in physics but the writing is incredibly lucid.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
hawking, feynman, gribbin. good good good. all on my shelf.
everyone recommends six easy pieces but might I suggest that you be sure and get the audio of the lectures. I taught myself to rollerblade while listening to Feynman explain everything else. do note though that the first lecture sounds somewhat crappy due to the original source material. but the other five are dandy and Feynman is a funny guy.
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Try these articles on Particle Physics
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Political Correctness is doubleplusungood.
I have read quite a number of layman's Physics books, and I think that John Gribbin's are amongst the most accessible. He writes clearly and consicely, but also has some color to his style. He is also quite the polymath, and has written books on a broad range of Physics sub-categories and some other topics too.
If you're interested in cosmology at all, then I would highly recommend Hyperspace by Michio Kaku. The middle of the book is a quite meaty, but as a whole the book is a good read.
And since you mentioned cheapskates, there's abebooks.com, which is a site just for those of us that don't particularly want new books, and would rather support some independet retailers.
There are lots of great free books on many topics there. I recall in particular several introductory level physics texts including one by Prof. Firk, who by all accounts was a fantastic teacher at Yale in his day.
www.theassayer.org
It is in 3 volumes (sections is a better term than volumes): Mechanics, Optics, and Modern (relativity, quantam mechanics). Very easy to read, and he makes the material very easy to grasp, providing some historical notes and plenty of easy-to-visualize thought experiments. Even for a pretty educated fellow (in physics at least) this is a fun and educational read, because it brings a lot of information together without bogging down.
It can be picked up for about 7 bucks used at Amazon if you search for Asimov: Understanding Physics. Definitely grab a copy.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
The God Particle by L Lederman is definitely a must read if you want to learn about particle physics. It's very easy to follow and has maybe two equations in the entire book. Lederman spends as much time talking about the history of particle physics (and his role in it -- awarded Nobel prize in 1988) as about the actual science itself. The story about them ripping apart some poor grad students just completed cloud chamber in the heat of the moment was particularly amuzing.
for the usenet pysics FAQ, and the assosiated newsgroup.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I have done an applied physics degree and am currently finishing my Phd in physics. My University physics bible was Sears,Zamansky and Young. (8th Edition Now I think). Covers everything including quantum mechanics and relativity. Also has good descriptions and excellent examples. Anything more technical than this and your spending AUD $100+ for a particular subject per book, Just My 2c :)
A few years ago I decided to tackle physics. I had only taken a couple courses in school (now ten years ago) and I was curious for more.
I read Hawking's popular books: Brief History of Time, etc. While these gave me the gee whiz we live in a weird universe feeling they didn't really help me to understand any of it. I was looking for that light-bulb-over-my-head feeling when you actually understand something.
Next I cracked my old college textbook. This was a mistake as my text lacked clarity, thorough examples, and diagrams to make learning easy. I went to the university and browsed all the available textbooks and one stood above the rest Physics for Scientists and Engineers by Paul Tipler. It's a great book. The only disadvantage is that you need a basic understanding of calculus. This isn't so bad because I'm not sure if you can really understand physics without understanding calculus anyway.
A few people have recommended Feynmann's lectures. Feynmann turns a first year physics course on its' head by changing the order and methods that most topics are presented. This is great if you are having trouble understanding the traditional methods but can also be very confusing to a first time physics student. The lectures are a great resource in addition to a standard textbook but I wouldn't recommend them as your sole book.
ain't there fixin' to be alot more acceptance of substandard English up in da hizzouse? I don't mean to dis' nobody, but you be talkin' some wack shiznit, know what I'm sayin'?
Word up, y'all!
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Second, Feynman has a book called the Character of Physical Law. This is an excellent series of lectures on the process and history of physics. It is a must read for anyone who wishes to know physics. It is much more accessible than the Lectures on Physics, which are much more suited to the serious student.
Third, any book by Dover Publishing is a good bet. These books are usually reprints of historical or definitive texts. They have books on subjects such as Quantum Theory, Crystallography, Relativity, and Thermodynamics, often by the scientist that defined the field. Remember, basic physical concepts are not quickly refuted, so a book written 50 years ago is still a good resource.
All of these books are available from your favorite book outlet, or do a search.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
A very good (tho dense) intro text on E&M
is "Electricity and Magnetism" by Purcell.
I recommend it if you really want to learn the basics of E&M.
That 3-in-1 Asmiov book is the feckin' dogs bollocks, I can tell you. You can push through the whole thing and learn all kinds of cool physics/chemistry stuff, or you can just dip into it whenever you feel like it. Get it, it's well worth it.
How about Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics? :-)
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I picked up his books years back, and they are all great. Most are very easy going reads, if you are into reading about physics. He uses a lot of good analogies that get your mind working.
t s.asp?WRD=michio+kaku&userid=529XSYBO5D
Here's a BN.com link:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/resul
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
In part it's a history of physics from World War II onward, in part it's a look into one physicists love of the subject.
I found it inspiring.
I have a B.A. in Physics from UC Santa Cruz.
I also recommend the Feynman Lectures if you want to actually understand the material. I think they're very readable. You will need to know some differential and integral calculus to be able to understand them, but you will need those for any real physics textbook - Newton invented calculus in order to study physics.
Finally, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb is just an astounding book. It's a history of physics from the 20's or so up through the 50's. It really communicates the feelings of the times.
After reading it I found myself saying "I could do that" and finally got it together to go back to school and finish my Physics degree - I should have graduated in '86 but didn't graduate until '93.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Anything by Richard Feynman, esp. Six Easy Pieces, & QED. Schrodinger's Kittens is also a good and mind boggling book, including Elegant Universe. I also recommend Hawking's latest book, The Universe in a Nutshell, its a good read and has a lot of pretty pictures.
would advise you to read 'Quantum Reality' by Nick Herbert. It is the *only* lay explanation of the subject I have ever read actually worth a damn in terms of the actual physics involved. Virtually all of the other books being recomended here are good reads, but I wouldn't call them physics at all. My interpretation of your question is that you want to go beyond that sort of book. Read Herbert's book, pay attention, and you'll have a better understanding of the state of quantum physics then some physicists I know. All without a drop of math too.
For "good reads," rather than good physics, try:
Steven Weinberg's 'Dreams of a Final Theory." A good look by a real physicist at where some people are trying to take physics.
What's physics without a little math? David Berlinski has done the impossible and written a *book*, not a text book, a *BOOK* about the calculus. 'Tour of the Calculus.' Loverly little bit of work. Thank you David.
Someone else mentioned 'The God Particle." I'll second that. Most books on physics talk about theory or "gee whiz" stuff. This is simply an anecdotal telling of the real life of a hardcore experimental physicist. Well worth the read.
For more elementary physics there are already umptynine recommendations for the Feynman Lectures, all moded up to +5. Who am I to object?
BUT: Whatever you do don't miss Feynman's anecdotal books, 'What do you care what People Think?' and 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'
They have absolutely nothing to do with physics, per se, and yet at the same time seem to have everything to do with physics, plus they'll be the most fun you have reading this year, and maybe next.
You want to get a little more hardcore? Get 'Physics' by Hallidy & Resnick. Read 'em. Learn 'em ( and all the relevant math). Work all the problems. Congratulations, you're an A.S. in physics.
There are some online sites for physics but I've never warmed up to them. You need the books, you need to be able to open the page, read a bit, put it down and ponder, go for a walk and ponder some more, pick the book back up, read a couple more pages, go "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm," take it to bed, read a few more pages and fall asleep with visions of quarks dancing in your head.
You need the bloody books. Buy them, steal them, whatever you have to do to *possess* them. Keep them as treasured Holy objects. You won't regret it.
KFG
Just checking.
One of the best physics books I've read is "Space and Time in Special Relativity", by N. David Mermin. It was the Special Relativity (SR) textbook in my freshman physics course and is definitely a physics book rather than a book on physics; thankfully it also has tons of prose explanations.
.9c get shorter, etc), the math really isn't that difficult and the logic is very straightforward.
SR is great to learn for those interested in some serious dabbling in physics, because while the implications are quite cool/profound (rulers flying past your head at
www.motionmountain.org
Granted, somebody mentioned this earlier... but only in a passing reference and I felt it deserved a lot more discussion.
The long story short: It's a book by a liberal arts major for liberal arts majors, but without dumbing down the material.
Beatiful. Well-written. And examples that even I, a lowly history major, could comprehend. Not that I would say that I fully understand the book or the concept. But this helped a million times over.
Yup - Serway is excellent. I'm still using it as an occasional reference years after university.
This was going to be my suggestion - go to a used bookstore or university bookstore and buy textbooks instead of most of the things being suggested here. Sure "Brief History in Time" is interesting, but there isn't much in the way of detail.... it's lots of handwaving but very slim on actual facts and concrete concepts. It's the stuff of magazine articles but not something to really LEARN from.
Go find a textbook - they are meant to teach. And you can find used ones generally very cheap.
Off the top of my head... besides Feynman, and Hawking, "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku is a nice one, as are "Flatland" (Abbott) and "Flatterland" (Stewart).
MJC
short review from a web site:
Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld. The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938. A very readable yet often overlooked nontechnical summary of the physics and its origins.
I have this book, which describes complicated physics with simple metaphors. Plus, it's by the man himself!!
my hobbies include space walks, ether chugging contests and marathon sleep contests.
(Remembered another one.)
"The Universe and Dr. Einstein" if you can find it.
MJC
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
by John Gribbin
good, easy to read even for non scientist types. Also, I've heard some of Hawking's stuff is great but haven't read any.
Another drawback is that textbooks tend to lose something in the readability category, although physicists are fortunate enough to have some fairly lucid undergraduate-level texts. David Griffiths in particular is quite a good author. His texts on Quantum Mechanics and Electrodynamics are reasonably in-depth with a focus on physical intuition over mathematical rigor, and are written in a manner that is accessible and (if you're a nerd like me) even entertaining. You should be able to get either at any decent library.
First you need to understand the basics i.e. classical physics with some brief introduction to quantum mechanics, this book will do:
Mansfield, O'Sullivan: Understanding Physics, Wiley 1998
Then you need something about the structure of matter:
Brehm, Mullin: Introduction to the Structure of Matter
And finally you can take some introductory text on quantum mechanics:
Liboff: Introductory Quantum Mechanics
Then you need to know some linear algebra and functional analysis from mathematics. These will do (though this stuff could be read before anything else):
Kreyszig: Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications, Wiley
Shilov: Linear Algebra, Dover Publications
Now you can start approaching the real thing. And of course everything assumes you know multivariable calculus. Those books are what covers the first 2 years of physics studies at Helsinki University of Technology (with the addition of Shilov's book, because it's as good as the book we should read and it costs a 1/3).
It's a classroom book, college freshman level. It's got great explanations of concepts with almost no math. Very good book.
It's a small paperback, so I don't think it's worth the >$50 price bn.com has for it. Check Amazon.com's used books or ebay.
Except for the most basic physics, there can be almost no meaningful discussion about the subject without college level math. There are many physics books written for the layman dealing with relativity, quantum mechanics, and other "modern physics" topics, but any critical reader will be disappointed by them. All these books can do is describe physics by way of analogy, and frankly, the analogies just don't cut it. Even *with* a little college level math thrown in, it would be tough to cover these subjects in any meaningful way without something resembling a textbook. Physics is based on a hierarchy of definitions and related mathematical machinery, and although the final laws are often expressed as very simple equations, knowing what they mean requires a discussion of the lower level concepts.
Despite that, it *is* possible to explain *some* of the concepts without math. One example would be the nature of quantum mechanical uncertainly, known as the Copenhagen interpretation of the wave function. There is value in understanding that, though it isn't enough to get the big picture.
I have read many layman's physics books, written both by famous and unknown authors, and there is only one I recommend:
_The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics As the Language of Nature_, by Heinz R. Pagels.
This relatively unknown book is a real gem. You can buy it at Amazon for eight bucks.
Nice and subtle there calling us all monkeys with regards to Quantum Mechnaics (not that it's not true). Quantum Mechanics is something the leading minds could brush up on...it's a bit of a nebulous and contradictory field at the moment. Eventually a "Unified Theory of Everything" will fix it though or at least make it consistent with Einstein.
Hawking does an admirable (and concise) job of recapping scientific thought since ancient Greece, and explains principles such as the need for scientific theories to be falsifiable. This intro is really good for the science newbie and wasn't boring (in my opinion).
A lot of the book's detractors have expressed a problem with concepts such as "imaginary numbers" -- people who can't handle junior college math don't have a chance with physics. I wouldn't let that dissuade you from reading ABHoT.
For what it's worth, the movie is basicly about Hawking -- the man, the chair, the speech synthesizer -- and reduces the science to passing gee whizzery.
but just to be clear, my name is Matt.
The articles are linked on my website.
Anyone heard of this series of books- Physics for Entertainment? They are out of print but there are still copies of the whole series of 3 or 4 books still floating around. Read them during middle school days and they were indeed fun.
I found this to be a very approachable look at quantum physics. By Wilczek and Devine, if I recall correctly. I don't know how outdated it'll be today, I had my nose in it almost a decade ago.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For a beginning text, I would recommend Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. It's by far the best (college freshman level) intro. text book I've ever seen for physics. For something of higher level (such as quantum mechanics) there are always the Griffiths books. I would recommend a text book as opposed to a popular media book (such as QED or Brief History of Time) because text books tend to be more complete, whereas popular books try to hit the interesting subjects.
Phyz.org is run by my physics teacher, Dean Baird. He has his whole 'Book of Phyz' posted in PDF format online there. Check it out!
Just remember: physics without Math is like beer without alcohol. It may look good, taste good, and go down good, but at the end of the day it won't do anything for you.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
For quick, digestible physics snacks, check out Lew Epstein's masterpiece, "Gedanken Physics".
The best physics-theory-for-the-layperson books that I've /ever/ read are 'Hyperspace' by Dr. Michio Kaku and 'Beyond Einstein' by Kaku as well. I highly recommend them!
I agree that Hawking's books are excellent. For anyone interested in particle accelerators, The God Particle by Leon Lederman is an interesting read. Also, Steven Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory discusses some of the implications of modern physics. The New World of Mr. Tompkins by George Gamow and Russell Stannard is the tale of a layman on a quest for knowledge of modern science - funny and informative.
Two great perspectives are;Stalking the wild pendulum, and The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. Not Mathematically intensive BUT extremely thought provoking. Accessable language and readable.
However, as the books FORWARD expresses, only two-dozen out of the first 200 student (at CalTek) taught from the LECTURES got a clue. RF explains that only those who don't need to be educated can be ... so watch your azz. The elementary stuff is presented without coddling. 'Course RF sez he never understood QM till he re-formulated entire mess in a Lagrangian motif. But then ... K-V or K+V what-the-heh ...
Isaac Asimov's "Understanding Physics" is a good book. It's short on mathematics and long on descriptions, and intended to explain physics concepts in non-technical terms.
"I've seen alot of Physics articles posted"
No, you haven't. You have seen "a lot" of Physics articles posted. There is no such word as "alot", gdict has no record of such a thing nor does my English dictionary. "A lot" however has meaning and two words involved.
*sigh*
You should start by going through all university math courses. After that, take a look at quantum mechanics. It needs quite a bit of functional analysis skills.
I would recomend "6 Easy Pieces" and it's follow up "6 Not So Easy Pieces" by Feinman. They give a nice overview of some important concepts and are aimed at the layman (liberal arts major).
I was going to be (-1 redundant) and recommend them myself. I also highly recommend "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Edwin A. Abbott. It's the book about extra-dimensional space for those who don't quite grasp the concept. It's an easy read, and it's a classic from the late 1800s. Also, "The Fourth Dimension" by Rucker is essential for delving deeper into hyperdimensional string theory. It picks up the story of A-square a hundred years later, and adds a lot of new discoveries in science to the extra-dimensional quest.
Having a physics degree, I've gone through practically all the standard books at one time or another. "Feynman Lectures" are well respected, but take a long time to read and absorb. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible for most people to teach themselves this field with any serious rigor from textbooks without the benefit of a class. It requires intensive problem sets and LOTS of time. You probably aren't so interested in learning to solve differential equations, rather you want the core science. "Scientific American" provides that.
The 1950 and early 1970's "Scientific American" articles were written at a surprisingly high level. They'll provide introductory material appropriate for the "average" scientist/engineer and push into theoretical and experimental details that are appropriate for PhD's working in the field. The key equations are provided and explained without overly obscuring mathematics. The articles are written by the top scientists in their respected fields and often provide subtle understanding and real-world implementation of ideas that you never obtain from textbooks. The information density of the articles is much higher than from most other sources, so it is a very efficient method of learning. The older articles were definitely intended for professional scientists so they can be a challenging read. The 1950's and 60's articles are so theoretical, they could easily be used as basis for college courses.
You will learn the theory behind whatever physics topic interests you and can follow developments over several decades to understand how theory develops into experiments and get a sense of future directions in the field. The chronological development of the topic combined with re-enforcement of basic theories make this an extremely compelling method of teaching yourself.
For instance, although I've taken a number of courses in particle physics, most of my working knowledge of the field, including the "Standard Model" and "String Theory" has come directly from reading and re-reading old Scientific American's. I can say that I've developed very solid understanding of those topics from reading S.A. articles, something that none of my textbooks came close to providing.
You'll quickly find that "Scientific American" is an invaluable resource for learning physics. (And lots of other science.) Check it out!
An earlier poster mentioned the feynman lectures on physics. As opposed to buying the book, you can download mp3 files of the actual lectures themselves on any gnutella or kazaa network client. There is a basic series of 7 or so topics, plus an advanced series. Search on "Feynman" in Kazaa or a gnutella client like Bearshare or Limewire and you'll find many many sources for the audio of these lectures. I think it's fascinating to listen to the feynman lectures and then to download and listen to Stephen Hawking's stuff to get a real sense of what the best minds in physics were thinking about, 50 years apart.
look for 'Introducing Physics' published by Totem books (they're British if i recall). they've got a great series of quick reads about everything under the sun. very shallow read but hits most every point - good to help you figure out exactly what it is you don't know.
- im just sick of fixing windows all the time -
For a serious text, if you can do math, I liked Eisberg & Resnick's "Quantum Physics" OK. It was the text for our 2nd year "modern physics" courses. This is a course text, and not some fluffy gee-wiz technobabble pop-literature crap about black holes and alternate universes and such. How it will help you with Slashdot news postings is unclear. It's about atoms, spectroscopy, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, elementary particles and such. Broad, basic and wordy, which makes it a nice intro.
So what's some good reading material for Physics that will give you a good, solid foundation if you've missed something, and then give you some additional stuff?
Do you really want a SOLID foundation? Then learn high school level calculus first and then be prepared for hard work. Reading popular physics books for laymen will not give you a solid foundation but a rough intuitive idea of the important concepts in physics. For a solid foundation, you need to do read good technical books on physics, and practice problem solving for at least one year.
Physics is a vast subject. If you want to develop a solid ability to use physics for understanding macroscopic everyday mechanical, thermodynamic or electrical/magnetic phenomena both qualitatively and quantitatively, then read good foundantion books on classical physics. I would recommend Physics by Halliday and Resnick vols. 1,2 for its lucidity and excellent problem set.
Remember that as in many other fields, including programming, practice makes perfect. Repeated practice of solving a well-chosen variety of toy problems makes you proficient in thinking physics and using it. Resnick and Halliday has an excellent problem set in this regard.
For understanding and solving problems related to quantum phenomena, start by reading a good introductory book on Quantum Mechanics. The following well-written books with practice problems are among the most popular in undergraduate physics courses:
1. Principles of Quantum Mechanics - By Ramamurthi Sankar
2. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics - David Griffiths
For relativity:
1. Gravitation - Charles Misner and John Wheeler
2. Problem Book in Relativity and Gravitation - Alan Lightman and Richard Price.
(Read 1 and do 2 thoroughly and you can become an authority on relativity.)
Try "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat". It gives a history of the growth of quantum mechanics as a science. It involves very little math and is intersting at times. It is a good start before you consider anything mathematical regarding quantum mechanics. I used it for my introductory quantum physics course and it helps to explain the difficult concepts in quantum mechanics.
just fyi, the new edition is $142.95 on amazon.
"a lot" is two words! When people read what you write, and notice such atrocities, it completely distracts them from the topic at hand! Stop doing it!
Second of all, learn to find information for yourself! Physics is such an open and popular field that you can find a ton of book reviews online. Also, use Google for Christ's sakes for those PDFs you mentioned.
Then again, you might have already thought about the above, and came to the conclude on:
Why do it yourself when you can "Ask Slashdot" to do it for you?
The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics
:)
By, Gary Zukav
Mass Market Paperback: 337 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.05 x 6.88 x 4.20
Publisher: Bantam Books; ISBN: 055326382X; Reissue edition (September 1994)
I'm quite surprized noone has posted this book yet. Very accessable, well written, and full of interesting anecdotes and some humor. It may be dated, given that it was published in 94, but alot of the work towards the Grand Unified Theory of Physics has been going on alot longer than 8 years
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964 350416/qid=1031612316/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/002-205001 3-9568050?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
:)
It's a Japanese textbook translated in to English-
As such- you get a bunch of goofy Japanese cartoons in there too
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
Larry Gonick's "Cartoon Guide to Physics" is fun and entertaining.
I think that I think, therefore I think that I am. I think. . .
I'm going to assume you want to learn some physics, as opposed to learning about physics. If this is the case, you can ignore stuff like "Black Holes and Time Warps" and "A Brief History of Time" -- they're good bathroom reading material but won't actually get you anywhere in your understanding.
Next I'm going to assume you have had enough calculus to be able to differentiate any function and integrate some of them. If not, well, you need to learn some calculus first off (You might be able to do this concurrent with reading Serway; it could help solidify the concepts.)
For introductory fare, try Serway's Physics for Scientists and Engineers. Don't let the title put you off--there's an unspoken law of textbook publishing where you have to inflate the titles of easy books and deflate the title of hard books. A book subtitled "For Scientists and Engineers" will usually be easier than one with "Elementary" or "Basic" prepended to its title. Serway has good exercises (for any book you use, do the problems or you won't learn anything! You don't have to do all of them, but enough so that you can look at the ones you haven't done and see what a good approach should be.)
Serway will cover mechanics pretty well. Passing out of Newtonian mechanics and getting into real physics now, there are several areas of physics which the typical undergraduate science education touches on. These are, approximately, Electricity and Magnetism, Special Relativity, Wave Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, and Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics. In order:
Anyway, that should keep you busy for a while
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
So you should spent fifty years studying mathematics first, in order to attain a sufficient level of enlightenment to safely bind yourself to the Wheel.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
If you can do basic calculus (differentiate and integrate), you will be able to handle the Mechanics text by HRK. You should also be able to understand the Electricity and Magnetism volume also.
If you want to delve further, the best quantum mechanics and E&M texts (IMHO) are by Professor David Griffiths of Reed College, Oregon. He knows how to present the material in an easy and straightforward manner. Unfortunately, to delve this deep you will need to understand differential equations- there is simply no way around this. Quantum mechanics really requires understanding basic linear algebra also- fortunately, Prof. Griffiths gives the basics of LA we need to know to understand QM in his text.
If you want to understand where all the equations in HRK come from, you could check out the Marion Classical Mechanics text, which is more formal (ie mathy). There are several other texts that are equally as good, but this is the one I used.
Thermodynamics comes in 2 flavors. Thermo for physicists, and thermo for everybody else- engineers, chemists, biologists, doctors, etc. The physics version has roots in both classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. In my opinion, there are NO good thermodynamics texts out there. In the end, thermo is nothing more than some dressed up statistical analysis, with a smattering of diff. eq. thrown in for good measure. Seems simple, in reality it is not, and is very difficult to grasp due to the combinatorics. Standard text undergrad text is the Kittel and Kroemer book, Thermal Physics . It helps to know a lot of little math tricks to understand thermo, and also when to properly apply approximations.
That being said, what about people who got up to algebra, and maybe trig, but not calculus? Well, these texts are not for you. I think the best texts in this genre are not the high school texts, but the college texts written for students not taking other related courses, such as calculus, etc. An example would be Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt . This book can be bought with a workbook, in the back of which are all the answers with explanations. This type of book is good because the math is kept to a minimum (mostly). Even so, you can still use basic arithmetic to explore various physics concepts, and then check your answers in the back of the book.
As far as the Hawking books go, I find it difficult to believe that laypeople actually understand where he is coming from. It is pretty heady stuff, and I know I didn't understand it the first time I read it (before I started taking physics courses). These books by "star" authors like Hawking tend to be very specialized books that concern themselves only with the subfield of the author- in this case, black holes and quantum gravity. If you want to understand how basic things work (like why we hit a terminal velocity, or how come things fly off a spinning disk, how does electricty work, etc), these types of books are not the ones you should investigate. I'd say that Hewitt book is much better suited- it goes over basic mechanics, basic electrostatics and magnetism, thermodynamics in the form of phase changes and entropy, and a dash of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. And it does all of this with a 1000x more pictures (not just diagrams!) than a Hawking book will.
Any comments on my choice of books?
Sounds improbable, but it is a good intro to general physics. The author / illustrator does a great job. I can't say enough about this book.
0 62 731009/qid=1031613465/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-635038 8-1471003
Find it at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
=brian
As you're posting here I'll assume you have a reasonable degree of intelligence and want to learn physics to a decent level, and have some initiative. (Okay, maybe that's a rather sweeping assumption but what the hey...)
Go to your local bookstore. Get Feynman's "Lectures on Physics". Start at the beginning and read it through slowly, bit by bit, until you understand it. When you can really say to yourself that you understand Volume 1, you've got a good background. When you can say the same of Volume 2, you've got a more solid background than many Physics graduates, and when you can say the same of Volume 3, you have as good a basis for understanding physical problems as pretty much anyone (though you might need to do some further reading if you want to specialise more).
The above should take 2 years full-time if you're smart, if you do it properly and don't just skip the bits of maths you don't understand, and if you do enough problems to know that you really do understand it. (Make them up and get someone to check them or do problems from a few second-hand undergraduate physics primers.)
Feynman is great; the diagrams are a bit old-style but everything is solid and everything is as solidly built from first principles as any course I have come across. Although it isn't by any means complete, if you can understand everything in the books properly then you'll be able to get to grips with what it doesn't cover quickly and efficiently.
As previously mentioned, Feynman's Lectures are great. I would also recommend The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. The stuff about string theory is stuff you can ignore, but the sections on relativity and QM are pretty good "in a nutshell" type explanations.
BlackGriffen
It's actually got a lot of very good material.
I used it to revise for my semiconductor electronics course and was surprised by the quality or the text (and the decoration).
I also own "Darwin for Beginners" by Miller and Van Loon, and it's an excellent distillation of a very complicated subject.
Plus - and this is importent - they are really fun to read.
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
Other posters have mentioned the Feynman lectures. Those are more generic, but if you want an introduction to all of Physics they're hard to beat. Your best bet is to buy both, including the video.
take a look at www.fearofphysics.com--even explains some simple quantum mechanics!
My wife's family is a six-hour car trip away, and my wife and I have taken to books on tape to make it more endurable. We recently listened to "Six Easy Pieces", a collection of lectures by Richard Feynman when he taught the intro physics class at Cal Tech for one year only (I think it was 1961). They're a great summary by a great mind if you've had physics, and a great intro if you haven't.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
The Physics of Baseball
by Robert K Adair, Ph.D.
This book may not be exactly what your looking for, but it does put across some of the fundamental principles of real world physics in an easy to read format. One nice thing is that the equations are explained, but completely skippable. There's also a lot of interesting history pertaining to each topic.
I personally enjoyed reading it, even though I'm not a baseball fan.
Yeah, I have a webcomic...
I am an nth year grad student at UTexas-Austin. Here are my suggestions:
QED by Richard Feynman
QED stands for Quantum Electrodynamics -- the modern theory of how light travels and interacts with matter. It also stands for Quod Erat Demonstratum -- the phrase mathematicians use to show the successful completion of a proof. QED (the theory) is one of the most beautiful and precisely verified theories in all of science; the author is not only one of the principal architects of that theory but its clearest expositor. Feynman carefully paints a clear, physical picture of a mindblowing esoteric landscape populated by particles that spring into existence or annihilate into photons, taking all possible paths in order to find the 'natural' one. This is the best science book for a general audience I have read.
Any educated person with an appreciation and interest for science should enjoy this book.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1
by R.P. Feynman and R. Leighton
For the more serious and technical reader, the first volume of the Feynman Lectures serve as an excellent self-study textbook. Reading these books made me change my major to physics. I referred to them consistently well into my graduate studies, since they do the best job of describing a tangible, physical model of what is happening. For example, the chapter on conservation of energy does the best job I have seen of not only describing the principle but explaining the importance and relevance of conservation principles. Six chapters of this book are sold as 'Six Easy Pieces' -- but anyone geeky enough for Slashdot should spring for the real thing.
Any person with a technical background and college mathematics will enjoy and refer to this book -- especially as a supplement to lesser textbooks.
Nobel Lectures in Physics 1901-1921, pub. Elsevier 1967
Nobel Lectures in Physics 1922-1941, pub. Elsevier 1967
(possibly out of print; try BookFinder or similar)
Each Nobel Laureate gives a talk that is supposed to describe the science behind the prize at a general level. Most of them succeed in doing quite a good job. The science from these first four decades of modern physics is well described elsewhere, but these lectures give you a first-hand account that complements the textbook approach, and can be quite enlightening scientifically as well as giving a history, social, and scientific context.
All the heavy hitters are here:
Laureates in vol. 1 include Roentgen, for X-rays; Becquerel and the Curies, for discovering radioactivity; JJ Thomson, for discovery of the electron; Michelson (of the Michelson-Morley experiment and the precision measurement of the speed of light); Laue, and later the Braggs, for X-Ray diffraction; Max Planck, for the quantum hypothesis; and some dude named Albert Einstein (who won for his theory of the photoelectric effect but gave his lecture on relativity, which was understood to be more important but was still speculative at the time).
Laureates in vol. 2 include Bohr, for the structure of the atom; Millikan, for determining Planck's constant; Franck and Hertz, for verifiying Bohr's quantum model of the atom; DeBroglie, for matter waves; Heisenberg, Schroedinger, and Dirac, for quantum mechanics; Davisson and Thomson, for demonstrating that electrons are waves as well as particles; and Fermi, for artificial radioactivity.
Any person who wants a first-hand account of the story and the science behind the great developments in physics will enjoy these books.
The Flying Circus of Physics by J Diamond
This book simply contains a series of single paragraphs, each of which describes an ordinary or extraordinary physical phenomenon followed by a series of general questions on that topic. (For example: Why are sunsets usually more colorful than sunrises?) Some conundra would make good science fair project for a middle-to-high school student, or amateur hobbyist; most can provide a group of geeks with solid dinner-conversation material as they puzzle out the answer. Even a physics professor will have to think carefully before answering each question, but they all depend on basic physics -- an elementary physics student with motivation has the tools to answer any given question. The back of the book contains a brief answer to each question and pointers to journals or books giving more information. However, the real value of the book is to make you sweat out the physics and sharpen your intuition, so looking at the answers is cheating (early versions of the book had none).
Physics majors or students taking college physics classes who want to plumb the depths of their understanding or find jumping-off points for independent study should get this book.
It does a good job of telling you about some of the more cutting-edge research areas in physics. Unfortunately most pop science reads something like Star Trek: Voyager. It introduces a lot of fancy words and tries to describe the mathematical models behind them in easy, pictorial terms. Unfortunately this doesn't tell you much more than looking at the images on nasa.gov. Use this as the acid test for anything that purports to teach you about science (or anything else for that matter): could I, having read this, do even the simplest calculation in the field? Or even say how I would go about doing the calculation?
If you can't do that, all you have is a pretty picture.
There's no point trying to claim you can understand physics if all you've read is "A Brief History of Time". You'll have a lovely mental image, but unless you can say something interesting based on what you've read then you don't understand it. (It doesn't have to be something new, just a deduction based on what you've read so far.)
If this sounds elitist, well sorry but it is. You wouldn't expect to walk up to the track alongside Maurice Greene and Dwaine Chambers and run a competitive 100m; likewise, don't expect to pick up a pop-science book and understand modern physics. You'll do much, much better starting at the beginning and getting a really solid grasp of calculus and 19th-century physics, then moving on through special relativity and basic quantum physics, and solid-state physics, and then, once you've got a really solid understanding of that, moving on to try to think about stuff like general relativity or advanced quantum physics. With those two subjects in particular, if you don't have an extremely solid grounding in the relevant maths as well as the older physics on which they are based, then you will come well and truly unstuck and may as well just have read "A bluffer's guide to quantum physics".
The Physics of Christmas by Roger Highfield. It takes a whimsical, and Yule-tied view at several historical and physical characteristics of every Christian's favorite holiday, such as the aerodynamics of reindeer, and the thermaldynamics of turkey.
Although, i did find that it addressed the history and psychology behind Christmas, as much as it did the physics. Still I think it'd be a great "Gateway" book for novices and younguns.
If you want to know about Chaos (which isn't strictly physics but is a very useful mathematical tool for when you get good at physics, and for producing motivational pictures while you get good at physics) then I'd agree about Gleick's book, but add recommendations for the original and best - Mandelbrot's "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" - also a rather out-of-date book called "Fractal Programming in C" which might be a useful introduction for the CSers among you. Two other books I can't pass over are Lorenz's "The essence of Chaos" and Jackson's "Perspectives of non-linear dynamics" (2 vols.), though the last is pretty heavy on the maths.
The Tao of Physics
An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism
Fourth Edition, Updated
By Fritjof Capra
if you've got the math, the H&R undergraduate introductory physics text "Fundementals of Physics" is very good. there is a supplement: "Basic Concepts in Relativity and Early Quantum Theory, 2/E" which is quite good, very accessible, pitched at college sophmore level (in the US scheme).
there are lots of sophmore level "Modern Physics" texts -- I like Ohanian as a teaching text. Tipler is also good. If your math is up to it, there is Resnick and Eisberg "Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles". This was my undergrad modern physics text. didn't suck. i still use it as reference.
i've tried to use the Feynman lectures to teach undergrad physics. unfortunately, i am not Feynman. they are very nice to have on your shelf (they are impressively large and -- in the anniversary edition -- very handsome). reading them can be inspiring, but i have not found them to be particularly useful either as teaching texts or as reference.
to assess the level of your ignorance, i highly recommend Hammermesh & Bayman "Review of Undergraduate Physics" -- a title designed to depress graduate students using the text to prepare for their qualifying exams. it is an excellent tool for identifying deficiencies in your understanding of the big 4 (mechanics, e&m, thermo/stat mech, and quantum).
When I went to junior college I took Conceptual Physics in which my instructor used his book "Thinking Physics." His style made the class much more interesting. There's almost no calculations involved. Some samples from the book can be found at this web site.
Nothing beats "The Dancing Wu Li Masters."
Bantam Books
ISBN:055326382X; Reissue edition (September 1994)
PROBLEM SETS!!!
It's a bit of a joke, but actually not at all...I took my first physics class as a 2nd semester Junior in college. I did pretty well in the course (B+), tough prof. I even did poorly (C) in calculus....I attribute my success in physics to the textbooks that we used.
Six Ideas that Shaped Physics. I just tried to find it on Amazon and it was NOT THERE.
See if you can get any other good physics textbook. That advise sucks, I know.
a couple of books that i have used in my undergraduate courses are...
Quantum: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Griffiths.
Astrophysics: An Introduction to Modern Stellar Astrophysics by Ostlie.
Thermo/stat mech: a good intro book is Heat and Thermodynamics by Zemansky and Dittman.
Classical mechanics: Classical Dynamics of Systems and Particles by Marion and Thornton.
All books require a working knowlede of claculus and all supply the math techniques that are needed for the book. The only math intensive book is the Classical Dynamics of Systems and particles which uses calculus of variations in the latter portion of the book.
At least according to www.m-w.com and www.dictionary.com... now if you had just said "dammit!" then I'd be ok with it ;)
If your serious, Cohen-Tannoudji is the standard undergraduate text.
Amazon
You read the Feynmen Lectures for pleasure. CT is for doing work. If you want to serviously understand Quantum Field Theories, you'll need CT (or something like it) as a basis.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
If you are looking for an on-line physics course covering the basics, with a free on-line PDF textbook, check out Light and Matter. This course starts out at square 1, describing what science and physics are, moving on to what a "measurement" is, why mathematics are useful for physics, then starts with Newtonian physics, continues through optics and electromagnetism, and to quantum mechanics.
The site also contains some astronomy texts, physics Java applets. This is an excellent site for anyone teaching physics.
albert einstein wrote a fantastic book titled "Relativity: The Special and the General Theory" that describes relativity without the heavy math. lots of examples. great stuff. http://www.anybook4less.com/detail/0517884410.html
You might check this one out. There is more info at:
http://www.dontknowmuch.com/adults/index.asp
I have not read this particular book, but the other Don't Know Much books are very good.
I have a book called Einstein for Beginners. It is an illustrated cartoon type book, but I really liked it. It explained relativity and several other concepts in a manner that my 14 can understand. I really liked it alot and I would hope that you also like it a lot.
Excellent all-around foundation for someone with a high-school background in math and physics. Covers everything from Thermodynamics to Quantum Mechanics to Astrophysics.
Not only is this book extraordinarily clear and well written (considering it *is* a physics book), it's loaded with full-colour pictures, real-world examples and illustrations of all the concepts at work.
I'm guessing this book is used for College courses - there's a ton of problem sets with each chapter, and solutions are provided, as well. From the nature of the content though, it would probably be used for a first-year 'foundation' course, though it does go into some more advanced material: if it's not in this book, you probably wouldn't understand it without reading this book first.
http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/boo ksearch/isbninquiry.asp?userid=0EZJTPBVUS&btob=Y&i sbn=0521639921
A great place to start if the mathematics/calculus of quantum physics too much to handle.
I can teach you two quick things about physics and quantum mechanics.
You don't capitalize either one in a sentence.
Insert witty sig here.
Aww, never mind AC... *I* can tell it was a joke.
Stupid fucking moderators... what the hell is wrong with them?
Just a small pet peeve. It's Caltech. Not CalTech, or CALtech, and certainly not Caltek. And my God it is NOT CalTek. That's the worst perversion of the abbreviation I've seen yet.
-The Good Sumerian (Hoping to get into Caltech
The Assayer is a site for user-submitted book reviews, with an emphasis on reviews of free books. It turns out to be very difficult to attract reviews, so if you've read any of these, reviews would be much appreciated!
Find free books.
I was hoping alot of people would pick up on that.
Ooops...
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
The book is called Physics for poets. Its a good intoduction, yet advanced enough to be used as a university text in a physics for liberal arts majors. Its comparatively inexpensive,
I like mmy serway college physics text though, its more difficult but has interesting "real world" physics examples.
While it does include a bit of math it is also good at telling you some basic/advanced topics on physics. Mostly physics as pertaining to bouyancy, forces, acceleration, velocity, etc.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
D
Here is a 700+ page book similar in content to a freshman college text MotionMountain
This is a Classical Electrodynamic book at a graduate level Classical Electrodynamics-Bo Thide
A site for Statistical and Thermal Physics with some good notes by Harvey Gould Statistical and Thermal Physics (STP) Curriculum Development Project
Quantum Mechanics--Niels Walet-- see the "Big .ps file
Lecture Notes on General Relativity-- Sean M. Carroll
A list of books to look into Cease's Book List
A few authors I like are A.P. French, Halliday Resnick for intro, Griffiths
A very respectable Oxford Physics booklist can be found in their handbook here
It's at http://physics2000.com/
The Feynman Lectures on Physics - three large red-covered
paperbacks - cost about $150 new - but can be found cheap
in 2nd hand bookstores near any University campus!
For less intense reading - alternate chapters from these books
with chapters from the many biographies of Feynman.
Feynman was an awesome physicist and a great educator - but
in his spare time he was...well - just read the biographies!
www.sjbaker.org
Try this one: 'Physics for the Rest of Us' by Roger S. Jones ISBN: 0-8092-3716-4
And this one is really good, too: 'Coming of Age in the Milky Way' by Timothy Ferris ISBN: 0-385-26326-0
The first book is an excellent one for non-physics class taking people like me, and the second one is excellent for anyone that likes physics, astronomy, and philosophy. Both really excellent books, that should do a good job of putting your brain to work.
For a very basic introduction to the ideas and thinkers behind quantum mechanics, check out this url: http://www.symonds.net/~deep/stuff/qp/index.php. You may find it helpful.
If all you want is a conceptual, "in-your-head", reasonably math-free treatment of physics, your best pick absolutely has to be Hewitt's _Conceptual Physics_. This guy writes in an easy-to-understand style and uses plenty of graphics and self-drawn cartoons to demonstrate and illustrate. If you "just don't get it" and the math only mucks up your thinking, go for this one.
A good standard AP high school/basic college text would be Serway or Giancoli. (Hint: Serway's cheaper. =-)
The top-of-the-line in easily accessible physics textbooks is definitely the Feynman Lectures on Physics. You'll only get as far as QED (since they were written in the late 50's), but for most people, quantum electrodynamics is as far as they *want* to go. Ol' Dick Feynman will give you the full math treatment, but explains it so clearly and concisely it'll go down like fresh-churned buttermilk. I swear by the Red Books, and I know many a colleague who wouldn't be caught stranded on a desert island without 'em.
Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker
Check out "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David Griffiths. I've heard good things about it, and having used his electromagnetism book as an undergraduate I can really recommend his style.
"Physics for Poets" by Robert H. March.
This is a excellent introduction to physics and is more approachable for some than either Feynman or Hawking.
Now that you've seen Slashdot Science, wander over to K5 and look at the Physics summaries which are being posted there.
I've always liked Tipler.
I often reread Feynman's autobiographical stuff for inspiration when an experiment is driving me nuts. For an illuminating look at the foundations of physics I'd recommend his _The Character of Physical Law_ (my favorite bit is where he says that although we used to think that the planets were held in place by angels pushing them out away from the sun, nowadays we know better - the angels, in fact, push _in_).
I'd recommend AVOIDING gee-whiz quantum mechanics pop science books. Sorry to all the Gribbin fans out there, but it took me the first 3 years of my degree to finally shake off some rather unhelpful ideas I'd gotten from "Schroedinger's kittens".
If you want to learn "serious" physics, especially quantum mechanics, in a meaningful way, there will be some maths involed. Serway and especially Tipler seem so make this less unpleasant than most. If you have a semi-solid maths background already, the first few chapters of _Quantum Mechanics_ by Townsend will show you how quantum mechanics actually WORKS, without any wavefunction messiness, and without any hocus-pocus. It does require basic vector calculus and linear algebra to about first-year university level, but such is the nature of the subject.
These two are easily enjoyed with minimal formal physics education:
Kip Thorne, "Black Holes and Time Warps" -- painfully cheesey name, but an excellent introduction to Einstein's relativity (special and general), the historical development of astrophysics leading to currently expected black hole phenomena, and possibilities for worm holes and other trekky stuff. Includes helpful sketches. I'm told Thorne is an awful lecturer (he's a Caltech theorist now), but he writes a good book.
John R. Gribbin, "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" -- Lots of cool qualitative quantum physics, minus the linear algebra. Extrapolates the favored "Copenhagen interpretation" to apply to the macroscopic "real" world. The particle physics at the end is slightly out-dated, as this was published in the early '80's, but the fundamental ideas haven't changed.
Thought I'd throw some alternatives out there.
Anecdotal evidence! I'm sold!
"If I could do that I wouldn't have gotten a Nobel Prize for it"
Don't know if its true or apocryphal but it fits.
it was my Quantum Mechanics (Pronounced: Condom Mechanics) 2 book.
It is super amazing, its easy to learn. it is to the point with no bull shit, and its funny.
for basic first year bullshit : get the latest copy of serway.
ps. physics is Quite Broad
Thermal, Quantum, Optical, Astophysics, Clasical, EM, Partical.....you might want to narow it down...
or plan on spending 4+ years learning.
It depends what you're looking for, but here's a list with comments. Many of these are mentioned above, but I always take multiple recommendations
as a useful sign.
For non-scientists wanting an understanding of things, not to solve equations:
1. Thinking Physics; Epstein. This is a little question/answer book that I picked up years ago. It's all about understanding concepts without solving equations, and I think it's very good for what the poster asked for. It's probably hard to find, though.
2. The Cosmic Code; Pagels. Also, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat; Gribbon.
I read both of these ~ 15 years ago and liked them very much. I think that quantum mechanics is one of the more interesting areas of physics to read about. This is because the concepts are so interesting on their own, without working through equations. You really don't want to slog through a text on classical mechanics, on the other hand.
3. QED; Feynman. Already mentioned by several people. My only caveat is that I'm not sure that someone who hasn't read/thought about quantum mechanics a bit will get so much out of it. I read it after taking a semester of quantum mechanics and I was fascinated; it remains one of my favorite books.
4. "The Flying Circus of Physics"; Walker. A list of questions that anyone might have about how the world works (of the "why is the sky blue" sort, but on many topics) with short answers and references.
Fun to have around.
Other:
The Astronomy Cafe; Odenwald and Just Visiting This Plant; Tyson. Both on astronomy/cosmology, and I found both to be enjoyable reads.
Boojums All the Way Through; Mermin. A collection of writings, and a few will likely not interest a non-physicist. However, Mermin has thought a lot about the whole "understanding quantum mechanics"/EPR paradox/quantum measurment thing and a whole section of this book is on that topic. Also, he has a couple of cute articles on math topics that should interest anyone who enjoys that sort of thing.
Finally, I didn't really enjoy "Brief History of Time" very much. It's been a while, so I don't have a great reason why, but basically I didn't feel like I got that much out of it.
Sir Herman Bondi derives relativity using
simple geometry, good stuff. There was an updated version of this with a sligthly different title, check under Bondi at your favorite online bookseller.
It is by coff... er, will, alone I set my mind in motion...
but what it means to me is different from what it means to you.
Why? Because it has become one word through it's use by many people as one word.
"It's" means "it is". "Its" (no apostrophe) is the possessive form of "it", just like "theirs" is the possessive form of "their".
Anyway, "alot" as a single word may be common, but it is not common in the usage of educated writers, and any dictionary or stylebook that you pick up will advise against it. While the English language certainly evolves over time, your writing will likely be judged by the prevailing standards of the day.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I highly recommend _The Elegant Universe_ by Brian Green and _The Tao of Physics_ by Fritjof Capra
Their series are still the best. A bit on the
advanced side but self-contained and very
logical.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/s ubjectstart?QC
I would also suggest looking at the Univ of Washinton's "video on demand" site.d ex.html
http://www.washington.edu/uwtv/ondemand/in
We are lucky enough to have the channel live on DISH NETWORK and I watch some of the programs . If you are interested in the subject they can be quite good.
The ones on the BIG BANG and astronomy are quite interesting. Some explanation of "string theory etc"
Also look at the med stuff (UW has a med school) some sports medicine , some is fairly technical.
This is basicly info from the guys who are doing it.
mike
...Gribbin rocks, don't believe me? He wrote a book for the Get A Grip... series, his was Get A Grip On New Science.
I have read a good number of the books listed above but this one made a bigger impression on me that Breif History...!
Paperback, ISBN: 0297827030
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London), 1999
Out of print but B&N have many copies listed as 2nd hand.
(2 volumes) is highly regarded.
I hope this is not repeat:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/
It is not a book you can read but a very good reference to look up formulae etc.
For physical insight, the standard reference would be "Feynman lectures on physics". You cannot beat that. For fun stuff "Mr. Tompkins in paperback", try to find the original edition though. It won't make you think tigers are worthless, don't worry.
ato
Try George Gamow's One Two Three... Infinity ISBN 0-486-25664-2. Good general purpose science book though being first published in 1948 some topics have been proven wrong.
Has anyone looked at Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guild to Physics? Great stuuf, and in the same flavor as his famous Cartoon history of the universe here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062731009/ ref=pd_sxp_elt_l1/102-3203929-9127341
I've never seen a good QM book that's completely nonmathematical; my impression is that there aren't any. I think you'll have to read something with equations, which means some calculus and linear algebra.
The two books that seem to be used most often as undergrad texts are Liboff and Gasiorowicz. Both are pretty good; I've used both. I like Gasiorowicz a bit better, but tastes probably differ.
If you've got a strong mathematical background, the most elegant summary of quantum mechanics I've seen is the first few chapters of Dirac's Principle of Quantum Mechanics.
I've only been into Q-mechanics for a few years now, but I'd have to say the most useful book you could ever own on Q-mechanics is "Q is for Quantum". It's an encyclopedia based guide to all you would need to know and a bit more. Published by The Free Press. Author: John Gribbin. Copyright: 1998.
Seek not such worldy things. Instead, present yourself to the gods in perfect simplicity. -Marcus Aurelius
two additional chapters, including indepth discussions regarding the possibilities of time travel.
Hawking is a perfect example of a crackpot and/or charlatan who has managed to get his crackpot ideas accepted by a generation raised on Star-Trek physics and cheap sci-fi novels. Any physicist of reknown who gets away with talking about time travel as if it were a valid scientific pursuit, makes it on my list of notorious time travel crackpots. Any physicist of reknown who teaches that anything can move in spacetime (or that "time dilation" is a form of time travel, or that we are moving in time toward the future at the rate of one second per second) deserves to be tarred and feathered and paraded through the streets as an example to the others. Damn it! This hogwash has been around for way too long. One hundred years of this crap is about enough, in my opinion. For more information on why time does not pass and why time travel is the ultimate crackpot idea, check out the page below.
Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics
Truly a marvelous book, easy to understand, yet full of knowledge. I recommend it to almost anyone I meet.
I do too, especially if you're a Star-Trek fanatic wearing your little Ferengi outfit. Still, I've got a little gift for you. Hopefully it will wake you out of your stupor: Spacetime is changeless from the infinite past to the infinite future. Chew on that for a while.
The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav
Written for the layman in the 70s (I think) by Gary Zukav. An excellent book that anyone can understand (though it does get a little hairy at times, but at least there's no math and equations). Zukav has gotten weird and written some spirituality books (Seat of the Soul) and is a regular guest on Oprah. Kind of a logical progression, I suppose, from physics. But the book is excellent, I highly recommend it.
Well, if you're interested in a basic text on quantum mechanics (and its application to chemistry), you might check out Linus Pauling and E. Bright Wilson's _Introduction to Quantum Mechanics_. It's available from Dover Books which means it's about $10. Well worth it especially if you're also interested in how quantum theory came about and some of the older versions of the theory. My local Barnes and Noble had a copy.
... ;)
Of course, I'm a chemist, so I'm more focused towards applying things to the real word than most Slashdotters
-- Rick
If you want to get a sophisticated layman's intro to modern physics I would recommend Erich Greene's "Elegant Universe" -- it has a lot to offer to layman and physicist alike.
There are also a _lot_ of online texts available, particularly at the high-school or undergraduate level (its gets a little thinner as you try to specialize).
This is an excellent beginner's text that is considerably deeper than the title implies. What the "cartoon" part of the title really means is that it is saturated with illustrations. It packs a phenomenal amount of physics into 200 pages. Go leaf through it at the nearest college bookstore and you will want a copy.
i found them a easy read (deceptively easy) and so did my friends i recommended the books...for non mathematical guys. Another book which i remember was by one Bell. (E.T.Bell ? anybody know?) gave a good overall introduction to modern physics. for laymen too.
Landau and Lipschitz. Skip the pop science crap and get a few volumes of L&L. If you can get through them, you'll know more physics than most physics grad students.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss (Intro by Stephen Hawking) is a fun/interesting read. It talks about the technologies used in the sci-fi series and movies and how they may or may not actually work (warp drive, "beaming", photon torpedos, impulse engines, ...). The pre-req knowledge isn't that great either and the author fills in the gaps that a newbie to physics might not understand.
PS: i'm not a trekkie/er, but it's still a good book.
If water were beans, I'd be 70% beans.
'Physics For The Rest Of Us' by Roger S. Jones is a excellent book to get a basic grasp of physics. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809 237164/qid=1031639933/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-779415 6-1488666?v=glance&s=books&n=75
*** I Know Everything, But Can't Remember It All At Once ***
Halliday and Resnick is an excellent text; I'd get a copy any way I could. An older edition is fine--classical mechanics and E & M haven't changed much.
:-b)
I have a soft spot in my heart for David Goodstein's _The Mechanical Universe_, both the text and the TV show, but I don't think that the text is the best out there. I can say from personal experience (Ph 2b at Caltech) that Goodstein is an excellent lecturer; the TV shows are worth watching (N. B. the kids in the audience were all hired from nearby Pasadena City College--real Caltech students are a bunch of lazy, inconsiderate bums.)
Avoid the Feynman Lectures and "Six Easy Pieces". Everyone I know who bought the books looked at them briefly and then filed them away on the bookshelf never to be touched again. Feynman may have been a legend, and for all I know he was an excellent lecturer, but his Lectures are no substitute for a real physics text.
Purcell's text is good if you want a standalone E & M text.
By the way, don't think that you can tackle physics without a good math background. My inability to get much past freshman level math at 'Tech was the main reason why I couldn't handle quantum mechanics when I came to it. Mastering Apostol's _Calculus_ texts, both volumes, would be a good start (but then I would say that, being a former 'Tech student
Finally, remember that physics isn't the be-all and end-all that it used to be. There's a reason why the president of Caltech, a school which once taught physics (and a few other sciences on the side), now is a biologist. The hardcore physicist might say that chemistry, astronomy, and biology are all physics in the end, and that's true, but the specialist in quantum electrodynamics never synthesized a drug or created a new disease-resistant strain of wheat.
Good luck,
hyacinthus.
The original post didn't make it clear which category was asked about: Completely non-technical books, introductory technical books, or books for people with a technical background (engineers or math-oriented geeks of various sorts) who want an introduction to the field?
Since the first two have already been covered pretty thoroughly, here are a few suggestions for the third, based on classes I've taught (undergrad physics) in the past few years:
For generic physics, there are standard freshman physics books like Halliday & Resnick or Serway, but these are good mostly if you want to learn basic mechanics of balls rolling down inclined planes and so on. If you're not interested in carefully learning the mathematics and techniques but would rather go for the ideas, a slightly harder book is a gem, Feynman's "Lecture notes in physics." Three volumes, each worth their weight in gold. That man can explain things.
For quantum mechanics, the best intro book for someone with a technical background is probably D. J. Griffith's "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics." Very friendly writing style and overall good, although the way he covers a few topics still makes me wince a bit. The background needed for this is calculus up through basic differential equations, and linear algebra.
For general relativity, AFAIK there aren't any books which are both good and "exciting." The two most common books to start with are either Schutz's "A first course in general relativity" or Hawking & Ellis' "The large-scale structure of space-time." Both are a bit on the dry side, but can quickly get you up to spin. I'd recommend the latter more for someone who just wants to survey the field, since although it's harder to learn the technical basics from it, it gets on more quickly to exciting topics such as black holes and cosmology.
For things like field theory and string theory, unfortunately your choice is either Brian Greene's book and similar nontechnical works, or jumping straight into hardcore texts like Green, Schwarz & Witten or Polchinski. Not for the faint of heart, but quite nifty. If anyone knows any mid-range-technical books on this, I'd be glad to hear about it...
And finally, an ObPlug for an upcoming book: In the not-too-far future there should be a book by Lindesay and Susskind on the quantum theory of black holes which promises to be very neat, though definitely on the technical side. (Conflict of interest notice: Susskind is my thesis advisor. But he's remarkably good at teaching this)
...is an excellent explanation of the more interesting bits of quantum mechanics, aimed at the layman, but perfectly enjoyable by physicists as well.
I wholeheartedly recommend another of Davies' books, God and the New Physics, which is about what QM and relativity can tell us about our beliefs.
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
Fine book, mixing science with a yarn about Rincewind and the other Unseen University wizards.
The Turtle Moves.
Newtonian Physics
www.mkaku.org
I have read everything he has written except the textbooks. Hyperspace and Visions will give you a very low level intro to quantum mechanics, chaos and various other mind bending topics.
From there you might try "In Search of Schrodenger's Cat". I can't think of the author offhand but Amazon is sure to have it.
While I'm sure that Gribbin has written very accessible books, I would be careful of reading too much into his material. I've read "Schrodinger's Kittens", and as a physicist I found that some of the things he wrote were misleading.
If his work gives you a taste for physics then great, but if you are going to start discussing physics afterwards you may do well to work through a real text-book.
Check out any book by Michio Kaku. He does a great job of making physics understandable to a person of average intellect.
I thought Hyperspace was a great book; pick it up if you're interested in theoretical Physics.
Okay,
Firstly a commentary then an answer.
Never think that people on slashdot have a clue about physics... Some do, some don't but on average I see more people on here that had a semester of physics, didn't get it, and are very vocal, than people that actually know even the basics.
Now, best place to get cheap physics books... Well, I think the best place is any school (college/university)bookstore at the end of the semester! There will be a table set up for students to sell back their old (last semester) books and you can legally and with no hassle (usually) stand right there and get a nice $80 text from a student who probably barely opened it for like $25, and that happy student will be glad you are there, as the bookstore is probably offering $20 for that book.
Also, many physics majors are happy (once they reach junior/senior level) to tutor for a small fee! (free if you just show interest and they are TAing already!
Just a thought.
Oh, by the way, physics is very math intensive, books for courses like Physics for Poets are what you want if you do not want to spend some time reviewing algebra/calculus/differential equations (depending on the level you wish to take your understanding to)
Good Luck!
(Also In search of Schroedinger's cat by John Gribbin)
Jose / Saletan: Classical dynamics : a contemporary approach
A good book on advanced classical mechanics. This might be handy for example in game programming.
Sakurai: Modern quantum mechanics
A really comprehensive book on QM, though you'll probably need to read a lighter book first, and you'll need some math for understanding this one.
John Baez: Knots, Gauge theories and gravity
A wonderful melange of some essential math (differential forms, group theory, some topology), and physics (gauge field theory, general relativity, and even some quantum gravity!)
You'll probably need some college level math before this book.
Frankel: The geometry of physics: An introduction
Some math that is used a lot in theoretical physics: Differential geometry, algebraic topology, etc. This book is about the same level as Baez' book.
if you have fair mathematical background I suggest:
classical mechanics: Herbert Goldstein.
Electromagnetism: Jackson.
basic QM: Resnick.
QM: Cohen-Tanoudjy + Sakurai.
solid-state: Ashcroft-Merman.
these are, IMHO, the best undergraduate texts I read. If you don't have enough copies in the library, invest your dollars in them, it will pay.
other nice texts are:
statistical physics: Greiner, Neise and Stocker.
Q.M.: Merzbacher (advanced)
plasma physics: Krall & Trivelpiece.
Working for necessity's mother.
Tao of Physics by Fritjaf Kapra and Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy are two real good books.
cosmix banditosby A.C WEISBECKER, Never had I read such a hilarious, nonsensical, and metaphysical book. If only more people had heard of "cosmic Banditos," I truly think it would have become a genuine cult classic. If you haven't read this tale of drugs, corruption, fate, Mexican spoofs and ... QUANTUM PHYSICS, now is the time to BUY IT.
You'll thank me after....
a book called COSMIX BANDITOS by A.C WEISBECKER, Never had I read such a hilarious, nonsensical, and metaphysical book. If only more people had heard of "cosmic Banditos," I truly think it would have become a genuine cult classic. If you haven't read this tale of drugs, corruption, fate, Mexican spoofs and ... QUANTUM PHYSICS, now is the time to BUY IT.
Warning: This book is warped, and your mind may be too after you've finished reading it. _Cosmic Banditos_ is an examination of the wonders of quantum physics, couched in a South Ameircan drug-runner's quest for enlightenment. The physics is accurate. I know. I have no personal knowledge about the bizarre lifestyles portrayed, nor do I want to. The combination, though, of physics and somewhat insane crooks is unforgetable. This is not a book for the culturally timid, but it is an absolute treasure for those sufficiently off the wall to read it.
You'll thank me after....
incorrect text books
There is no substitute.
Some personal favorites.
The Mechanical Universe is a fantastic series produced by Caltech and the Annenberg/CPB Project. I watched it on my local PBS station when I was a whippersnapper. Not only will it give you solid physics, Caltech professor David Goodstein gives you biographical and historical insight into the minds and times of the principal scientists. The info is often humorous. The story about Galileo's finger will crack you up. I'm not exaggerating when I say it will even change your life. I think the insights I gained from this series had a big impact on how I turned out (and I'm still turning.)
The video format is invaluable for physics instruction because physics very often involves changing quantities (hence the need for calculus.) The series is chock full of brilliant animations to illustrate complex formulae and phenomena. The section on angular momentum is an excellent example. (Dot products, dot products)
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
For an introductory level, I would recommend Physics: A Self Teaching Guide.
4 71 134473/qid=1031683760/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-962880 2-9631840?v=glance&s=books&n=173507
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Official beta tester of the 21st century... Linux security...to mend and defend. Crusin' around in my modemmobile.
If you are such a braindead thing as to not understand even physics, just like some of the students Richard Feynman had to deal with, get a good Phy. prof. to teach you, or forget.
AND DON"T SPREAD ANTI-FEYNMANN FUDs