
The Theoretical Minimum - kercker
http://theoreticalminimum.com/home
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Luc
These are great for beginner self study.

Ramamurti Shankar has recently written a couple of books that are also
excellent and very friendly (every derivation explained etc., lots of
background). Anything by R. Shankar is great, really (i.e. his quantum book
and the 'basic training in math' book).

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0300192207/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0300192207/)

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0PingWithJesus
I used Shankar's quantum mechanics book for my first course of quntum in
undergraduate. And his "Basic Training In Math" as a supplementary book in
another course. And I recall being very frustrated with the total lack of
explanation for many things. Often he would simply state the way things were
without attempting to guide the reader's intuition. So I couldn't disagree
more about the books being good for beginners. It's been a while since I've
looked at either book, so I can't cite anything specific. But I know for sure
that by the end of my undergrad I passionately disliked Shankar.

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daxfohl
Well this led me to look into Lev Landau, who coined the phrase, and turned up
a few gems.

As an engineer with greater dreams, I bought the English translation of his
books off Amazon based on recommendations, then promptly gave up my pursuit of
theoretical physics.

Curious if anyone else has tried to self study the Landau series. (If so,
please say you were as unsuccessful as I was.)

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astrodev
These are graduate level textbooks. There is little point in attempting them
without a solid undergraduate background in physics, which is necessary both
to understand and to appreciate Landau's presentation.

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messe
That depends on your university, I'm not in the US so all of my modules are
focused on what would be called my "major" (which is Theoretical Physics, at
least that's the name of the course).

"Mechanics" is a second year undergraduate textbook here. We only used it
during the first semester, and didn't have a set textbook for the second.
Goldstein and Arnol'd were favourites.

"The Classical Theory of Fields", "Quantum Mechanics" and "Statistical
Physics" are all recommended reading in third year, but they're not the main
textbooks for their modules.

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astrodev
That's quite impressive. Where are you from? I think even Cambridge, which is
an outlier as far as the course level is concerned, only uses "Mechanics" as a
recommended textbook in the third year.

~~~
messe
Apologies in advance for the long post, but it's been a lazy Friday and I've
nothing better to do.

I'm in Ireland, in Trinity College Dublin. The way the course (Theoretical
Physics) as a whole is taught is rather odd compared to other universities.
For various historical reasons, the theorists are staff of the mathematics
department rather than the physics department. For other historical reasons,
the Theoretical Physics (TP) course is separate to the Physics course and its
teaching is split evenly between the Mathematics and Physics department.

Due to the way the TP course is structured, we take a lot of rigorous and
proof based maths in the first two years. Single- and Multi-variable Real
Analysis, Calculus on Manifolds, Complex Analysis, Group Theory, and of course
Linear Algebra are all covered rigorously. Fourier Analysis and ODEs are
covered also, but less rigorously and more focused on applications. All of
these modules are shared with the pure mathematics students.

The Physics students on the other hand, are required to take another subject
during their first two years. Most choose chemistry. Because of the additional
subject they only take non-rigorous equivalents of _some_ the above.
Multivariable/Vector Calculus instead of Analysis, no Calculus on Manifolds at
all, I'm not sure about complex analysis, no group theory, mostly computation
based linear algebra. Their Fourier Analysis and ODE course are much the same
as ours.

So over the course of the first two years, the mathematical maturities of the
TP students and physics students diverge significantly simply due to the
topics that are studied.

This, and the fact that theorists are in the maths department, has resulted in
a lot of modules that would traditionally be the realm of the Physics
department alone, being duplicated. The physics department teaches the physics
students a certain topic, while the maths department teaches the TP (and pure
maths) students the same topic, usually more in depth as there is less need to
delve into the mathematical machinery behind it when the students are often
already familiar with it.

For example, next year the modules I'll be taking in the _maths_ department
are "Classical Field Theory", "Electrodynamics", "Quantum Mechanics" I & II,
and "Statistical Physics" I & II. The Mechanics modules I mentioned earlier
were also taken in the maths department.

In 4th year, the gap widens further, as there is no way at all for physics
students to take GR or QFT (as far as I can recall). These are _only_ taught
by the maths department, which also offers to TP students, depending on the
year, modules on Algebraic Geometry, Group Representations, Lie Groups &
Algebras, Differential Geometry (a prerequisite to GR here) and others.

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keldaris
Those are immense differences. The TP course seems pretty solid, but the
ordinary Physics program seems to have significant gaps, even granting that
not every undergrad might need much differential geometry.

~~~
messe
I was (slightly) incorrect, there appears to be _some_ QFT in a course on High
Energy Physics.

And I don't disagree with you. I think the split between the theorists in the
maths department, and the experimentalists in the physics department (and, in
turn the split between TP and Physics; not to mention outside pressures) has
resulted in a course that's perhaps a bit too focused on experimental topics.

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cyphar
I have a hard copy of both the Classical and Quantum books. I highly recommend
them as an introduction to concepts assuming you have a bit of background
knowledge in maths and a willingness to learn (though the notation in the
Quantum book is arguably not the best notation to use -- I've not seen wide
usage of |u> and |d> as base spin eigenstates).

In particular I found the Boolean logic -> Quantum state vectors progression
quite interesting, and the emphasis on the history and how you can build
formalisms was particularly interesting. Also, it gives you problems (like a
"real" textbook) but they are written in such a way that the text is more like
a story but you learn the required maths to solve the problems.

I loved reading these books while I was in high school, bored with the math-
less "physics" we were being taught.

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ryan-allen
The point of this link is the courses, I think.

> A number of years ago I became aware of the large number of physics
> enthusiasts out there who have no venue to learn modern physics and
> cosmology. Fat advanced textbooks are not suitable to people who have no
> teacher to ask questions of, and the popular literature does not go deeply
> enough to satisfy these curious people. So I started a series of courses on
> modern physics at Stanford University where I am a professor of physics. The
> courses are specifically aimed at people who know, or once knew, a bit of
> algebra and calculus, but are more or less beginners.

[http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses](http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses)

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diegoperini
A good recommendation for the quantum computing enthusiast:
[https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computer-Science-David-
Mermin...](https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computer-Science-David-
Mermin/dp/0521876583?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-
ffab-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0521876583)

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fivestar
Total garbage. The ideologues just...need...to...stop. Your "settled science"
and all the rest of it? Guess what? It's all up for debate because debate is
healthy. Why can't these academics ever get out of their own ego rut and
realize that they are what is wrong? Just because someone is smart does not
make them smart at everything. I saw this with Chomsky--he really has
destroyed his cachet by taking on issues he had no business even bringing up.
Bitching about Trump endlessly just makes them look like sore losers.

The concern trolling, the backhanded smug attitudes, maybe police your own
houses first--I'm looking at you higher education. You've become something so
unrecognizable and just so incredibly rotten.

