Hi everyone. Today I'm with my friend David again.
David Gozzard runs his own Youtube channel which i'll link down below and...
We thought today we would like to talk to you about some of the books we recommend for learning physics.
So this is a question I've had reasonably often which is
How do I either go from nothing,
to knowing something about physics and how do I find books to do that? So...
I thought David, having done physics yourself and
now you're working in physics, you'd have a good perspective on that.
Yeah, so I thought a good one to start off with for these would be for those of you who are looking at this
recreationally or you want to get the very first idea of
what's involved in a certain topic and for those I can recommend a series of books called: Very Short Introductions.
You, can get A Very Short Introduction to Nuclear Physics,
A Very Short Introduction to Particle Physics or Quantum Mechanics
And they do those for lots of different subjects,
you can get a very short introduction to business management and Islam and
anything -- any sort of studies you want they have over 400 of these books they're very very small.
You can read them in a few hours you can pick them up for about thirteen dollars.
If you get the kindle version their are as little as seven on nine dollars so
So, they don't give you any of the maths of the physics but, they give you a very brief overview of the concepts.
Where the science is today.
So if you're doing cosmology it'll talk about big bang, nuclear synthesis
Evolution of the universe, how we got to where we are.
So those are for people that are-- sort of--
They don't know any physics at the moment. Like it's not any required background knowledge.
Yeah. If you don't have any background in physics yet these are good books
to get you started or get you interested or just for recreational reading.
I'll make sure like, everything we're about to say is linked down below.
Like in the description and I'll put like little pictures of the covers.
So what else do you think is good for total beginners in a way.
For total beginners I know you're a fan of marcus chan i'm a fan of market town - that's one of my favorites so
I guess in high school was when i started reading marcus chan books and he writes popular
science or popular physics books and I
Thought you didn't really need any background in physics to understand them but they were really interesting so one in particular
which was recommended to me by a friend in high school was
We Need to Talk About Kevin and it's got like really good descriptions of like stellar nucleosynthesis
and how stars work and just how
astronomy works in a way i found that really interesting
yeah, I've read several of Marcus Chown books they're real they're all really really good there's a reason he's one of the most popular
- science writers - I was
actually luck enough to meet Marcus Chown one day back in New Zealand
So I got a little photo with him
One of my other favorite like pop science writers that I read in high school was this book The Edge of Physics
by the author Anil Ananthaswamy
something like that
I'll put a picture of it
- but it was all about - I have heard of the guy I know he's good
I haven't read this one but I know the guy's good.
Well The Edge of Physics was all about
introducing you to things like these big neutrino telescopes which they have an
Antarctica as well as like in old abandoned gold mines it's like science experiments but on the edge of science like really awesome
setups and things you're like wow I didn't know that existed
sounds good I want to read that one.
What else so we've got basically Richard Feynman
so
Richard Feynman for those of you don't know him he's generally regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all time
he's probably in every physicists top five top ten list yeah
He's famous for being able to explain
physics concepts and very difficult physics concepts in very accessible ways and
So he's got several books there's qed by Richard Feynman which is about quantum
Electrodynamics which is his field that he won the nobel prize for
But the famous thing is the Feynman lectures on physics now there's?
the final lectures on physics are a bit funny they are in some regards some of the best lectures on physics ever and
In some regards some of the worst
because
Feynman had always
previously taught postgraduate physicists and he was asked to give first and second year lectures and
it turned out that more post grads and more professors turned out to these lectures
Than the actual undergraduates he was meant to be lecturing and he even says in the introduction to these lectures in the published version
That he realizes he didn't quite hit the mark with these that if you're trying to pass an exam
these are not good
lectures
but if you just want if you just want to learn about the physics learn about the concepts they are very good i think Feynman
is a really good
communicator so whilst i've never used the Feynman lectures to study for something i have read them out of interest and they're actually what i
would now go to
to
Understand deeply a concept yeah not just to be able to do the equations on the exams i don't think there's a lot of?
math really in these prime electors it's very conceptual and yeah he was one of those guys that can just write on the whiteboard
And and take you on a journey through the ideas yeah so a lot of my lecturers based their lectures on the Feynman?
lectures but then
Did it in a different way so they would use fineman to work out what
concepts and what
Important things you need to get across but then they would do it a different way so that i could learn the maths and pass
the exam so for people who are looking, to get into this as a
first step so reading for recreation or you're a high school student wondering what's
what what our future holds in physics if you continue studying physics fineman's really really good and even an undergraduate level
because these deficiencies and the Feynman lectures have been
Recognised you can get course readers to go along with the Feynman lectures so you can read the lecture and then go
Problem sets and so overall i think that balances out i don't remember if we said but like the Feynman lectures are all available online
as well as like yeah but i think Caltech put them all online in in written form there's also like
Like you said some companion arenas online but yeah you can you can find links to those ones yeah?
Feynman also has like other books as well like surely you're joking mr
Feynman and he has a few books on like problem solving those are not
necessarily to learn physics but you might find them interesting they're great stories but there's not a lot of physics in surely you're joking
you, wanted to mention Michio Kaku now i haven't read any Michio Kaku I've seen his tv stuff yeah well to be honest I've seen
More of
Michio like
TV stuff then I have his books but I remember one of the books I had in high school of his was Parallel Worlds and
again I don't think you're really learning physics from this but it's like a really awesome
overview of like
cosmology in the future of the universe in a way it's quite a grand scale it was an interesting book.
Now let's talk about this nice stack of textbooks we have
Our faves from undergrad.
Now the fun stuff, so
for undergraduate, my textbook in undergraduate was fundamentals of physics by Halliday Resnick and Walker
what was yours?
My first year physics textbook was by Serway and Jewett and it was
physics for scientists and engineers. Now,
I think it was an ok book it was for like engineers as well it was quite applied but it took you through
everything you needed to know to pass first year physics I thought it was fine I
went back to my first year one in later years
The Halliday, Resnick, Walker one was written really well it's on its
millionth edition my mum used it back when she was
Studying at university so it's gone through it's been used again and again and again updated year after year I think it's very very good
the explanations and the maths and the worked problems in it but
so many of so many of these are good there's Giancoli as well.
I really think that any
introductory or first-year uni textbook on calculus or physics
it's gonna be pretty much the same there's only so many ways you can talk about the fundamental physics concepts like
mechanics a little bit of modern physics thermodynamics there's only so many ways you can
Introduce those topics so i think just pick up any first-year textbook you should be fine i think actually my
Serway and Jewett textbook was the only one I actually bought in the university I was like oh i'm at uni i need to buy
The textbooks I bought it for the first semester and
Then after that I would download the pdf we'll just get it out from the library so it's not necessary to
To buy all these textbooks there's other ways to get them okay so I'm moving on beyond first year second year third year you're learning
special relativity quantum mechanics more complex atomic physics
for me this was my bible this is modern physics by Tippler and Llewellyn
there are lots of books called modern physics
Everything that you can find books called modern physics from a hundred years ago it's not the best title but
for some reason they persist with it but this was really really good it covers all those sorts of things from
relativity to
cosmology wave-like properties of particles
Schrodinger equation
quantum mechanics, molecular structure
I think anything that's not Newton mechanics is classed modern physics
- is that right? - yeah yeah pretty much
there's like postmodern sort of thing there's anything what things that 1920s first of all
the worked examples in this really really good so even if you are actually a
Recreational reader and you want to learn how how to calculate that e equals mc-squared or you want to
understand the Schrodinger equation on a some mathematical level this is actually pretty good it leads you
Slowly and methodically through those calculations and so I would come back to this book year after year
to relearn the stuff I'd forgotten or get the first bits even later courses like in honors I
would go to this to get the first bits of the course and then build from there so I highly recommend this book it was
wonderful it got me through my undergrad
alright thanks for that one I can see the next one on this list because one of my ones
this is Charles Kittel and this is introduction to solid state physics now
Kittel also has a book
which is I think an introduction to thermal physics and both of those I found really good
Now in a way I think when you're at university the best textbook
To be getting and reading is the one that you think your lecturer is reading and taking the problems from for the exam in which
Case from most exams on solid state physics i've ever done the cushions have come from this book Kittel
So I just found it to be really easy to understand to read
the problems were easy to do and the problems often showed up in assignments in exams so i would recommend anything by cattell i
Haven't read it all but it sounds good
right
Now we're on to David Griffiths so Toby and I are both fans of David Griffiths
we both have heard from other people who really don't like David Griffiths but Toby and I did our degrees in different
countries we're both huge fans of David Griffiths I had David Griffiths books assigned as course readers in undergrad
Most of the people I went through physics with really really liking there are some people who don't I think they're crazy because
David Griffiths is a really really good writer of textbooks so we've got a couple of his here
So the one on top just happens to be
introduction to elementary particles so
quarks and gluons and things and all that subatomic physics
it's D. J. Griffiths he's a really really good writer
my undergraduate courses were basically built around these books I
learnt a lot they're very very clear you can follow through the exercises and the maths
Very very easily I think D. J. Griffiths is really really good so here we've got introduction to elementary
particles we've also got, his introduction to electrodynamics
I think it's considered one of the greatest
physics textbooks of all time
We're going to talk about this one later this is like a post-grad
electrodynamics book when i was doing this course i had to check out that book as well just
To decipher what was in here so that one saved me a few times yeah
my favorite griffiths book is his introduction to quantum
mechanics it's just the cutest book it's got this cover with a cat alive on one side and dead on the back yep and I
would just always want to have that book checked out with me because it was just
If i had a problem with quantum mechanics I don't know I thought that that book could answer for me at least in the undergrad
sense like I've heard the criticism of that particular intro to quantum that
it doesn't cover anything you know higher level or post grad level quantum but you don't need that you're doing undergrad so
That was fine yeah so for quantum mechanics
electrodynamics and
Subatomic physics particle physics ddraig griffith books we highly recommend he's also got another book which is called where have i written at
Revolutions in 20th century physics no i haven't read that one but i've had a quick flip through it and it seems to be very?
Similar to my modern physics by Tipler and Llewellyn so it covers
relativity and atomic physics and
Wave particle duality and things like that at a slightly lower level so again it's probably good if you're looking to first get
into those sort of sciences or if you're looking for a bible will get you through your undergrad it seems like
Griffiths revolutions in 20th century physics is a very good book yeah good author so we agree on that one?
I've had it recommended to me by others but i haven't read that one specifically
So were there any more undergrad books that you had on your little list
Nope so we've gone through all the undergrad ones now we're on to the post okay I mentioned this on earlier this was um
my number one most hated book but I
See I did a course this was during my honours year in physics and we did like
Electromag and it was just I found this particular book quite hard to understand we use it as part of the course
our assignment questions were questions from here
But I personally found this book really hard to read. I don't know what your thoughts are
I had that same book assigned as well
if talking to other physicists looking around online it is generally considered the best
postgraduate electrodynamics textbook
it's
Like the most advanced I think than the other textbooks and that's why it has that reputation because it's like
It's a lot more advanced than the other electric like you I needed to go back to
- Griffiths to then springboard me into that so I can do that. - This is a companion for this book
and again to help you with that there are course readers and worked problems and all sorts of other
- resources you can get for this. - Oh yeah, there are lots of worked problems
online, which is helpful when you're doing
- assignments. - So in terms of passing
exams, we highly recommend this book. In terms of wanting to read it
- Definitely not a beginner's book - I never want to touch it ever again
okay right so the weird stuff things like quantum gravity string theory I
have for quantum gravity i'm not sure about recommending this this is quantum gravity by Carlo Rovelli
Carlo Rovelli is a theorist who specializes in loop quantum gravity he writes beautifully
his maths and his
language is really easy to follow he writes absolutely beautifully
he even throws in sort of bits of other art and culture he's a very wide read guy so
They'll be references to Hamlet and other things in this book
it really is fantastic
the problem with recommending Carlo Rovelli is talking to I'm not a theorist I'm an
Experimentalist so talking to the theorists I know they're not, so big fans of his because he is loop quantum gravity and
When I was doing my undergrad I thought loop quantum gravity was sort of not really taken seriously anymore that it was
started dying about 20 years ago
Rovelli's still working in that field if you read his stuff then
You start coming around to the loop quantum gravity way of thinking and you start to think this is a serious contender
this is really really good there's a lot of potential here while the theorists I talked to back at my old
institution would say no.
so
quantum gravity this is brilliantly written easy to follow
whether it will take you further than post graduate not sure
okay
And string theory is when we had a problem with I guess I didn't have a good
I didn't have a good book, to recommend for this one either I
asked friends for recommendations who knew more about string theory than I did and the
recommendation was that there is no good textbook for string theory I
Was told there's one good one but you need to go and get a separate
differential geometry
textbook in order to be able to go to the differential geometry one learn from that and then come back to
so basically if you're looking at string theory at the postgraduate level you don't need our help
yes please yes I guess those are some of the
Textbooks those are what we think are good and what have helped us get to where we are I would say like as
We're wrapping up if you are like trying to learn some physics teach yourself physics
Go to books but
Also don't discount online resources whether you're starting at something like Khan Academy to just get the first skills all the way up to like
there are Feynman lectures online like
recordings there are all sorts of things on youtube as well that you can actually learn a lot of good physics from yeah
MIT and Caltech and a lot of other universities put their courses online
There's a theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft who has put a started compiling online a list of free online
resources for people who want to get into physics he's put it out in special relativity, general
relativity, string theory things like that the list isn't complete yet some of it like you click on
string theory and supergravity and it's just three dots it's just empty
Because he hasn't finished compiling it yet but they're all online free resources that he recommends for you to go and learn about these things
So there are more than buying expensive books.
and also I think with this advice if you want to learn more physics just
read the books and consume the content that you actually enjoy
reading and learning about don't force yourself to sit through a textbook you find
really really awful unless you need to for a course just like yeah
Do any sort of learning that you enjoy.
Alright I think that's all our advice. Thanks David
- Thanks for having me. - Thanks for watching.