Physics Books for the Novice? 485
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."
Why not take a class? (Score:2, Interesting)
Quantum Reality - Nick Herbert (Score:2, Interesting)
Carl Sagan?? (Score:1, Interesting)
two great books on quantum theory (Score:2, Interesting)
Find 'em here [amazon.com] and here [amazon.com]
A deeper look would be Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. Amazon.com link here [amazon.com]
Cheers
Physics for the Rest of Us (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
The Physics of Baseball (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Problem with pop science (Score:1, Interesting)
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".
as written by the man himself (Score:1, Interesting)
Paul Tipler - Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Serway, Serway, Serway. (Score:3, Interesting)
For a calculus-based book, I think Knight [amazon.com] 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.