The best I've read was Elegant Universe(although I didn't fully understand it) and Einstein's Dreams by Alan P. Lightman which totally changed my view of time, amazing book! Whats yours ??
I feel obligated to impress upon you that what you're reading are not what most scientists would call 'physics books.' Most scientists would instead call them 'novels.' The best physics books I've read are Feynman's three-volume "Lectures on Physics." - Warren
actually, i almost exclusively refer to my books as texts or textbooks, and when that guy said physics books, i just assumed he meant laymen s books.
I dont know if this qualifies but I remember enjoying Hyperspace and A Breif History of Time. those are both faily layman.
Yeah, but you also masturbate with your left hand. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! - Warren
My favorites are: Modern Quantum Mechanics by J. J. Sakurai Quarks and Leptons by Halzen and Martin Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths Mathematical Methods of Physics by Matthews and Walker Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler On my "to-buy" list are the Feynman lectures and Weinberg's QFT set.
Sakurai is good. Have you had a look at his book "Advanced Quantum mechanics" I find the Schaum's series good because they are cheap and too the point, but sometimes lack on rigor. I too poor to buy brand new textbooks, so they are a good option for me. How about Tensors and Manifolds by Wasserman?
good book. not only did i have this book as a textbook for a course i took, but one of the authors was teaching the course!! it is a decent textbook, it covers the material. personally, i think griffiths particle book far excels halzen and martin. it might be less advanced, but only slightly so, and it covers almost an identical curriculum. can t argue with that. that s where i got started with E+M. there is also wangsness, which was a required textbook. not really a whole lot better, but there were one or two concepts that wangsness did better, like multipole approximation. there are better places to learn this than jackson.
Hi Tom2, 1. Well, I liked Griffiths' "Introduction to quantum mechanics" more than his electrodynamics book, so I would add that to the recommendation list aswel, perhaps Sakurai is a bit "heavy" for a first introduction (though I only skimmed through it once, never read it actually). 2. I hated "Spacetime Physics" by Taylor and Wheeler... There is hardly any maths in the book, and I can't stop having the impression that they try to explain things in words, while one formula could have summarized three pages of text in there Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ... I would recommend this as a book to have on the side while reading a more serious introduction to special relativity, just to have an (interesting!!) second opinion and to clarify some physical ideas. But as an introduction on itself, I would definitly not recommend it. I join Warren in saying that the Feynmann Lectures on Physics are a must to read... In some other thread somebody proposed that some wacko guy had divine inspiration while formulating some ideas... all wrong... there is only one guy who had a divine inspiration when writing physics, and that was Feynmann when he wrote his lectures Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ... Or it also could have been that he was simply a genius and had loads of experience Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Bye! Crisp
'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene is a very good book certainly one of the best pop-sci books I've read, I found it very easy to understand as it's quite clear. Another good non-technical physics book is 'The Big Bang', Third Edition by Joseph Silk again very easy to understand and a very good primer for modern cosmology. I've also read 'The Feynman Lectures on Physics', for what are meant to be an undergrad textbooks, there quite entertaining. At the moment I'm reading 'Quantum Mechanics' by Alstair M Rae (undergrad textbook), it's not too challeging but it's quite a nice technical reference book.
Yes, I took a course based on that book. I don't like his notation (he uses the dreadful "ict" notation, instead of covariant and contravariant). I would choose Bjorken and Drell for that course. Speaking of that, let me add to my list: Relativistic Quantum Mechanics, Bjorken and Drell Relativistic Quantum Fields, Bjorken and Drell I swear by Schaum's outlines. They are succinct and have many worked examples. Don't know it. I learned tensors from a Schaum's outline. LOL (Tensor Calculus, by David Kay). I heard about Griffiths book on particles, but I never looked at it. One of the reviews said it has a "painless introduction to Feynman graphs", which if true would make it the best introductory particle physics book on the market. Sakurai is intended for first semester graduate work, although sufficiently prepared seniors can handle it. I have not seen Griffiths QM book, but my friends from other schools used it for their undergraduate QM course. At my school, they use Liboff for the same course, so I'm guessing the two are equivalent. Yes, it's extremely wordy. I taught a course from this book (was forced to use it), and at first I hated it too. But I soon saw the value of their well-documented references in the Exercises section. If you use the text itself as an outline just to plan a syllabus, then you can have an interesting course discussing the problems and journal articles. But yes, I had to write a lot of supplemental mathematical notes for the course.
a "brief history of time" is good, "the nature of space and time" was way the fuck over my head, you definately need to "know" QM and GR for this book to be of any interest. I want "elegent universe" is it much different than "brief history of time"?
I think elegant universe is much better than Brief History of time as it manages to be less misleading (most physicists have issues with BHoT) and alot clearer (though the last time I read BHoT, I was 13, but from what I remeber it wasn't as clear as it might of been).
I saw that book the other day... my grandma was reading it. Isn't that more of a biography on Feyman, than talking about any physics whatsoever?
Yes but Ryans posted this so I thought I'd mention his autobigraphy coz its great. Seriously, ask your grandma for a loan!
I've only read his first series of lectures but I heard that his second series (which is more advanced) is incredibly hard to understand! Dont get me wrong, I think Feynman probably has the best way of explaining things than any other physicist that ever existed but QED is a tricky subject!
