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Book Recommendations For Maths To Astrophysics?
sexy_flying_yoda writes "I have just graduated from 3 years doing a BSc in Mathematics in the UK and will be beginning an MSc in Astrophysics and Astronomy in September. I have very limited knowledge in physics, and as my new course of study is basically physics, I'm currently searching for books that will enable me to get up to speed. What books would you recommend that would help a mathematics graduate convert to a physicist?"
Try "The Feynman Lectures on Physics", Vol.s I - III. I've never encountered a better reasonably high-level introduction to the topic, and they're eminently readable. Here's a site devoted to them.
licet differant, aequabitur
I've audited several of MIT's OpenCourseWare offerings in Physics. Some are ridiculously easy while others have thrashed my intellectual behind back and forth across the Internet. And the best part? They're free. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/ [mit.edu]
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Physics to a degree will get you thinking like a physicist - it covers most undergraduate topics in physics with tutorial style questions and answers.
I found Introduction to Modern Astrophysics an interesting read after I graduated. It covered most of the stuff we did at Birmingham and did so very well.
Our introductory book was Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics by Michael Zeilik, which was ok, and then Astrophysics: Stars Vol 1 by Richard Bowers and Terry Deeming, which was very good and Vol 2 similarly.
You don't mention what your course is going to cover or what its aim is - you are not going to cover the whole of astrophysics in 9 taught months. You also don't mention your interest in astrophysics - numerical simulation? So it is difficult to come up with any more specific recommendations.
Good luck anyhow. Post below with more info if you want any more detailed recommendations.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein
Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger
Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2
Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.
Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll
That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.