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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."
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
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.
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.
Find 'em here and here
A deeper look would be Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. Amazon.com link here
Cheers
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
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...
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".
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
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.
For a calculus-based book, I think Knight is pretty good. You can also check out my own free texts via my Slashdot user page. My calculus-based book, Simple Nature, is not as mature a project as my algebra-based series, Light and Matter.
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