senorcrab's comments

On: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

[senorcrab]

Road to Reality is good to get a general overview of *everything* but I dont think you can actually learn the things he talks about. For example, the jump from calculus in R^2 to Riemannian surfaces is insane and leaves a ton out

[QuadmasterXLII → senorcrab]

It’s very plausible that it’s in the same category as Wikipedia where it’s only useful if you’ve already learned it once and forgotten it

On: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

[senorcrab]

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are:

- University Physics by Young and Freedman

- Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker

- Modern Physics by Krane

You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics.

For a nonrigorous introduction/overview:

- The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose

If you want to actually learn almost all of physics at a high level:

- Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau

Note that Landau is extremely difficult.

If you want to learn the math needed for modern physics (topology) in the context of physics, nonrigorously:

- Geometry, Topology, and Physics by Nakahara

[rramadass → senorcrab]

Nice list. I had known of most of the books here; studied Resnick & Halliday (decades ago in bachelors) and have also perused Penrose's book. Landau/Lifshitz is of course well known.

The Nakahara book is new to me; Thanks for the pointer.

[codinhood → senorcrab]

> Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker

I strongly recommend this textbook. I used in college, and it's really good. There are a lot of problems for each chapter, I suggest doing them as they help a lot.

[aristofun → senorcrab]

Landau was Einstein+ level genius and the course was a soviet theoretical physics bible many years ago. But it’s not a good educational resource by modern standards and pretty dated.

[senorcrab → aristofun]

True it is pretty dated. OP was requesting resources that cover *all* of physics and Landau popped into mind. Is there a modern series of textbooks that offers such a broad coverage?

[aristofun → senorcrab]

Landau these days doesn’t look like a “broad coverage” at all.

More like “many specific topics and areas covered in a set of books under same authors”.

Also Landau was one of the last (probably the last) polymath physicists who covered a wide range of fields.

I doubt it is even technically possible to cover even 30% of all modern theoretical physics in a single course with depth comparable to Landau books.

[vittore → senorcrab]

Landau! my soviet physics teacher would say the same thing!