Can't do any better than that. It's even worthwhile going back to re-read for the fourth or fifth time.

You won't get a bunch of textbook problems to work, but the Feynman Lectures are basically the best single set of books not only on a broad range of physics topics but on how to think like a physicist. By all means go through the standard texts, but if you want to do it right read Feynman!

Looked at the boxed set on Amazon and it was rated 5 stars by everyone except by one rater and his problem was about printing quality, not content.

Plus it's always nice to have stuff by Feynman.

A rater on Amazon suggested that you could get round the lack of exercises by buying a book with solved/unsolved problems e.g Schaum's. I can live with that.

worked under Feynman before receiving his Ph.D. My professor was a wise man, but nowhere near the intellect of Feynman.

Courses are in alphabetical order so you'll have to scroll a bit to get to Physics.

I've done their art history and history courses so far and they've been OK. I understand their math courses are outstanding, maybe I'll do those next--just for fun, not because somebody told me I had to.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Last edited Tue Mar 20, 2012, 09:46 AM - Edit history (1)

couldn't get any of the vids to load-temp. problem?----------------nevermind,I just had to use Google chrome browser to get them to work.

Only a few videos (all maths) and they were wonderful.

Looks fantastic. And not just to me - some of the comments are along the lines of "Why couldn't someone do this years ago".

I'm an old fart too but still love maths. I'd looked around recently for books on pure maths for some timely reminders and was appalled at the prices. That site looks very handy.

I've had good luck with these -- your mileage may of course vary. Good luck!


General Physics: Halliday & Resnick, _Fundamentals of Physics_, very standard freshman physics text
Modern Physics: Beiser, _Modern Physics_, or Tipler & Llewellyn, _Modern Physics_.
Mechanics: Taylor, _Classical Mechanics_. Incredibly well-written for a physics text.
Optics: Hecht.
Electromagnetism: Griffiths, _Introduction to Electrodynamics_.

All of these assume a basic knowledge of calculus and that you can handle straightforward linear differential equations ( if you can separate variables, you're good! )

These books also do a pretty good job of teaching you the math as you need it -- bits of linear algebra, vector calculus, etc. The statistics & probability background will really help you with modern physics, when you start getting introduced to pilot waves, and definitely with thermodynamics. The Taylor book is really, really good -- the author did his undergrad work at the Cambridge tripos, he does a great job of illuminating the mathematical underpinnings of mechanics. If you run across a thermodynamics book that you like, please let me know ...

Feynman's books are good but I got a lot more out of them when I read them the second time, after a couple of years of study.

Another book that's very interesting, in a way that positively *will* hurt your brain, I guarantee it, is Penrose's _Road to Reality_, which is about 1,000 pages long and the physics starts around page 400, after a long and scenic tour through some very deep math. I am very much stuck around page 120, and have been for about four years

For what it's worth, I'm a software guy about to cross to the wrong side of fifty, and I'm working the same sort of program you are -- that is, interested in physics, 25 years away from my last calculus course. PM me if you'd like to exchange email addresses. Maybe we can help each other get unstuck from time to time.


Regards & good luck,

J.

Still consult it occasionally. I'm sure many over 50 nerds also do that.

"A Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos" by Isaac Asimov and "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene.

I've ordered a copy of Halliday and Resnick (and Walker). That should be sufficient for my purposes.

I've also made a deal with my wife. If she buys me Feynman for Xmas, I'll take her to Paris in autumn. Now that's what I call a win/win.

Again, thanks for your input.