Comments on: What books or courses will help me learn science?

Question: What books or courses will help me learn science?

dylan20 — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:35:24 -0800

What books or online courses will best help me learn science and engineering? I'm especially interested in physics, astronomy, general electronics, and computer science. I've got what I think is a pretty good basic aptitude for science -- I did very well in it in high school -- but avoided taking science or engineering classes, or for that matter any math, through college. Now, 15 years after graduating, I feel that I may have missed my calling.

I'm interested in substantive introductory treatments of the topics -- not just "A Brief History of the Universe" glosses on the big picture, but books or courses that will help me understand what's really going on, from a basic level and building on up. Mind you, I'm not trying to turn myself into a physicist, I just want an understanding that goes beyond the vague fuzzy hand-waving stage.

I've started reteaching myself calculus using Silvanus P. Thompson's Calculus Made Easy, which is fun, and challenging. So I'm not afraid of math, as long as it's explained, or as long as I can figure out where to get an explanation.

By: svolix

svolix — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:38:17 -0800

MIT's course material is online.

More links for autodidacts.

By: futility closet

futility closet — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:46:49 -0800

Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality is essentially a thousand-page primer in mathematical physics written for the layman. He doesn't shy away from the math, as many physics popularizers do, but he presents it as clearly as possible, starting from Euclid and explaining every step. Remarkably well done.

By: neuron

neuron — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:51:21 -0800

"The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is 3 slender volumes. Also available in audio, in part or in whole. Start with a set of excerpts called "Six Easy Pieces."

By: springload

springload — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:56:49 -0800

It may be hard to know what pieces of math are important and which are not, so let me give my opinion. The shortest shortcut to physics includes algebraic manipulation, differentiation and integration, and being fluent in these. Had I known how much I'd use these techniques during my education, I would have spent more time practicing them from the very start. Once you understand the principles, do lots of simple exercises, as you did with multiplication.

You'll need more math than that, but as you're not training to be a physicist it may be no use to get great at multi-variable integration and unusual coordinate systems as long as you can get it if you think about it for a while. I think you'll benefit from learning to use these particular techniques without effort though. Whatever physics you read will become much more transparent to you, and I think the same goes for the electrical and mechanical engineering disciplines. Computer science may require a little less calculus but more discrete math.

By: you're a kitty!

you're a kitty! — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:21:25 -0800

If you're willing to consider textbooks, there are a few standards that are really exceptional, and written at a sophomore level (i.e. you're expected to have an introductory-level grasp of physics, but not much more). If you're just looking to read through them and not solve any problems, I think they might be quite interesting. I'd say they are:

modern physics: Taylor
electricity and magnetism: Purcell
quantum mechanics: Griffiths

They should probably be tackled in that order.

By: _Mona_

_Mona_ — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:37:54 -0800

Get a great foundation of the general science on which everything else builds -- and just a plain damn fine read -- from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:21:34 -0800

The New Physics For the Twenty-First Century (2006 edition of The New Physics [1992])

Physics for Future Presidents

Feynman's Tips on Physics

By: Lucie

Lucie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:34:59 -0800