Reddit reviews Classical Mechanics

Griffiths for Quantum Mechanics and E&M

Taylor's Classical Mechanics

Kittel & Kroemer for Statistical Thermodynamics

These are the only ones I can attest to personally, they're for undergraduate level understanding. Kittel&Kroemer can seem dense and difficult to understand at first, but once you work through problems and spend time on each chapter, it will become apparent how efficient the book is.

Classical Mechanics by John Taylor

I mean the classical mechanics of orbits described in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X

The body that is orbiting slows down and speeds up during elliptical orbit, so the total energy of the system or think of the point of maximum kinetic energy is in essence what keeps it from colliding with the main body. There are also cases where this does happen and cases where other things happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_equation

Barton Zwiebach's First Course in String Theory provides a good overview of quite a complex topic. Unfortunately, even though it is meant as an introductory textbook, it is likely to be entirely incomprehensible to the average reader.

 

To make it through this book, knowledge of quite a few preliminary topics is needed:

1. Previous knowledge of Quantum Mechanics is incredibly important. MIT OpenCourseware has some useful video lectures for the beginner, as well as textbook recommendations.
   
   
2. It is necessary to be fully comfortable with the principles of Special Relativity, as well as at least familiar with the mathematics of General Relativity. Unfortunately, since I learned relativity entirely from the homemade class notes of a professor at my university, I have no textbook recommendations.
   
   
3. Even though string theory is a theory of quantum gravity, some techniques and principles from classical physics are useful. In particular, ideas from the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics come up fairly often. John Taylor's book is useful here. Knowledge of Electricity and Magnetism is also useful; for that, I recommend Griffiths.
   
   
4. It doesn't come up quite as often in this particular book, but Group Theory and Lie Algebras are ubiquitous in string theory. I liked Gilmore's book on this subject.

You may want to try reading from a different book. I loved Taylor's Classical Mechanics. It looks like it covers most of the same topic. It does Special Relativity, but I don't think it does General Relativity.

John Taylor's Classical Mechanics and David Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics might be more your speed. They've been the texts for my Classical Mechanics and E&M courses.

The analogous book for me was Townsend's Quantum Physics: A Fundamental Approach to Modern Physics. It spends a good deal of time on introducing you to quantum mechanics, as it should, but there are also discussions of solid state, nuclear, and particle physics, in addition to relativity.

Honestly, if you are looking for an in-depth treatment of special relativity it might be worth finding a book on that specifically, because it's generally not treated in a lot of depth in classes, since such depth isn't needed (it's relatively simple, if potentially unintuitive at first). Chapter 15 of Taylor, for example, has a good treatment of special relativity, and it's regarded as one of the canonical texts for classical mechanics (edit: at the introductory/intermediate level, that is).

For Calculus:

Calculus Early Transcendentals by James Stewart

^ Link to Amazon

Khan Academy Calculus Youtube Playlist

For Physics:

Introductory Physics by Giancoli

^ Link to Amazon

Crash Course Physics Youtube Playlist

Here are additional reading materials when you're a bit farther along:

Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences by Mary Boas

Modern Physics by Randy Harris

Classical Mechanics by John Taylor

Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Griffiths

Introduction to Particle Physics by Griffiths

The Feynman Lectures

With most of these you will be able to find PDFs of the book and the solutions. Otherwise if you prefer hardcopies you can get them on Amazon. I used to be adigital guy but have switched to physical copies because they are easier to reference in my opinion. Let me know if this helps and if you need more.

It was my favorite book in undergrad and from what I remember it's really well written. I recall that if I was confused about a topic in lecture I could go to the relevant chapter and end up with a clear understanding.

Admittedly it's been a while since I last read it but hopefully there may be some more helpful reviews here https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X

Cheers!

I just want to point out one thing that everyone seems to be glossing over: when people say that you'll need to review classical mechanics, they aren't talking only about Newtonian Mechanics. The standard treatment of Quantum Mechanics draws heavily from an alternative formulation of classical mechanics known as Hamiltonian Mechanics that I'm willing to bet you didn't cover in your physics education. This field is a bit of a beast in its own right (one of those that can pretty much get as complicated/mathematically taxing as you let it) and it certainly isn't necessary to become an expert in order to understand quantum mechanics. I'm at a bit of a loss to recommend a good textbook for an introduction to this subject, though. I used Taylor in my first course on the subject, but I don't really like that book. Goldstein is a wonderful book and widely considered to be the bible of classical mechanics, but can be a bit of a struggle.

Also, your math education may stand you in better stead than you think. Quantum mechanics done (IMHO) right is a very algebraic beast with all the nasty integrals saved for the end. You're certainly better off than someone with a background only in calculus. If you know calculus in 3 dimensions along with linear algebra, I'd say find a place to get a feel for Hamiltonian mechanics and dive right in to Griffiths or Shankar. (I've never read Shankar, so I can't speak to its quality directly, but I've heard only good things. Griffiths is quite understandable, though, and not at all terse.) If you find that you want a bit more detail on some of the topics in math that are glossed over in those treatments (like properties of Hilbert Space) I'd recommend asking r/math for a recommendation for a functional analysis textbook. (Warning:functional analysis is a bit of a mindfuck. I'd recommend taking these results on faith unless you're really curious.) You might also look into Eisberg and Resnick if you want a more historical/experimentally motivated treatment.

All in all, I think its doable. It is my firm belief that anyone can understand quantum mechanics (at least to the extent that anyone understands quantum mechanics) provided they put in the effort. It will be a fair amount of effort though. Above all, DO THE PROBLEMS! You can't actually learn physics without applying it. Also, you should be warned that no matter how deep you delve into the subject, there's always farther to go. That's the wonderful thing about physics: you can never know it all. There just comes a point where the questions you ask are current research questions.

Good Luck!

Yes, this book is a good introduction to general mechanics with applied integrale/differential calculus : http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X

That's perfect then, don't let me stop you :). When you're ready for the real stuff, the standard books on quantum mechanics are (in roughly increasing order of sophistication)

• Griffiths (the standard first course, and maybe the best one)
  
• Cohen-Tannoudji (another good one, similar to Griffiths and a bit more thorough)
  
• Shankar (sometimes used as a first course, sometimes used as graduate text; unless you are really good at linear algebra, you'd get more out of starting with the first two books instead of Shankar)
  
  By the time you get to Shankar, you'll also need some classical mechanics. The best text, especially for self-learning, is [Taylor's Classical Mechanics.] (http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372650839&sr=1-1&keywords=classical+mechanics)
  
  
  Those books will technically have all the math you need to solve the end-of-chapter problems, but a proper source will make your life easier and your understanding better. It's enough to use any one of
  
  
• Paul's Free Online Notes (the stuff after calculus, but without some of the specialized ways physicists use the material)
  
• Boas (the standard, focuses on problem-solving recipes)
  
• Nearing (very similar to Boas, but free and online!)
  
• Little Hassani (Boas done right, with all the recipes plus real explanations of the math behind them; after my math methods class taught from Boas, I immediately sold Boas and bought this with no regrets)
  
  When you have a good handle on that, and you really want to learn the language used by researchers like Dr. Greene, check out
  
  
• Sakurai (the standard graduate QM book; any of the other three QM texts will prepare you for this one, and this one will prepare you for your PhD qualifying exams)
  
• Big Hassani(this isn't just the tools used in theoretical physics, it's the content of mathematical physics. This is one of two math-for-physics books that I keep at my desk when I do my research, and the other is Little Hassani)
  
• Peskin and Schroeder (the standard book on quantum field theory, the relativistic quantum theory of particles and fields; either Sakurai or Shankar will prepare you for this)
  
  Aside from the above, the most relevant free online sources at this level are
  
  
• Khan Academy
  
• Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics lectures
  
• MIT's Open CourseWare

For math you're going to need to know calculus, differential equations (partial and ordinary), and linear algebra.

For calculus, you're going to start with learning about differentiating and limits and whatnot. Then you're going to learn about integrating and series. Series is going to seem a little useless at first, but make sure you don't just skim it, because it becomes very important for physics. Once you learn integration, and integration techniques, you're going to want to go learn multi-variable calculus and vector calculus. Personally, this was the hardest thing for me to learn and I still have problems with it.

While you're learning calculus you can do some lower level physics. I personally liked Halliday, Resnik, and Walker, but I've also heard Giancoli is good. These will give you the basic, idealized world physics understandings, and not too much calculus is involved. You will go through mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and "modern physics". You're going to go through these subjects again, but don't skip this part of the process, as you will need the grounding for later.

So, now you have the first two years of a physics degree done, it's time for the big boy stuff (that is the thing that separates the physicists from the engineers). You could get a differential equations and linear algebra books, and I highly suggest you do, but you could skip that and learn it from a physics reference book. Boaz will teach you the linear and the diffe q's you will need to know, along with almost every other post-calculus class math concept you will need for physics. I've also heard that Arfken, Weber, and Harris is a good reference book, but I have personally never used it, and I dont' know if it teaches linear and diffe q's. These are pretty much must-haves though, as they go through things like fourier series and calculus of variations (and a lot of other techniques), which are extremely important to know for what is about to come to you in the next paragraph.

Now that you have a solid mathematical basis, you can get deeper into what you learned in Halliday, Resnik, and Walker, or Giancoli, or whatever you used to get you basis down. You're going to do mechanics, E&M, Thermodynamis/Statistical Analysis, and quantum mechanics again! (yippee). These books will go way deeper into theses subjects, and need a lot more rigorous math. They take that you already know the lower-division stuff for granted, so they don't really teach those all that much. They're tough, very tough. Obvioulsy there are other texts you can go to, but these are the one I am most familiar with.

A few notes. These are just the core classes, anybody going through a physics program will also do labs, research, programming, astro, chemistry, biology, engineering, advanced math, and/or a variety of different things to supplement their degree. There a very few physicists that I know who took the exact same route/class.

These books all have practice problems. Do them. You don't learn physics by reading, you learn by doing. You don't have to do every problem, but you should do a fair amount. This means the theory questions and the math heavy questions. Your theory means nothing without the math to back it up.

Lastly, physics is very demanding. In my experience, most physics students have to pretty much dedicate almost all their time to the craft. This is with instructors, ta's, and tutors helping us along the way. When I say all their time, I mean up until at least midnight (often later) studying/doing work. I commend you on wanting to self-teach yourself, but if you want to learn physics, get into a classroom at your local junior college and start there (I think you'll need a half year of calculus though before you can start doing physics). Some of the concepts are hard (very hard) to understand properly, and the internet stops being very useful very quickly. Having an expert to guide you helps a lot.

Good luck on your journey!

If you're feeling ambitious I'd go with https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X and https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Electrodynamics-David-J-Griffiths/dp/1108420419/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520528734&sr=1-1&keywords=griffiths+electrodynamics

I agree, however for a first year physics student a bit more depth is required too. Something like Classical Mechanics by Taylor would work well as a supplement, especially to introduce and to familiarize the student with the mathematical side.

As with most things you gotta know the basics. Start with classical mechanics. The best book is Landau's Mechanics, but it's quite advanced. The undergraduate text I used at university was Thornton and Marion. If that's still too much I've heard Taylor's book is even gentler.

Also, make sure you know your calculus.

The books others have suggested here are all great, but if you've never seen physics with calculus before, you may want to begin with something more accessible. Taylor and Goldstein are aimed at advanced undergraduates and spend almost no time on the elementary formulation of Newtonian mechanics. They're designed to teach you about more advanced methods of mechanics, primarily the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations.

Therefore, I suggest you start with a book that's designed to be introductory. I don't have a particular favorite, but you may enjoy Serway & Jewett or Halliday & Resnick.

Many of us learned out of K&K, as it's been something of a standard in honors intro courses since the seventies. (Oh my god, a new edition? Why?!) However, most of its readers these days have already seen physics with calculus once before, and many of them still find it a difficult read. You may want to see if your school's library has a copy so you can try before you buy.

If you do enjoy the level of K&K, then I strongly encourage you to find a copy of Purcell when you get to studying electricity and magnetism. If you are confident with the math, it is far and away the best book for introductory E&M—there's no substitute! (And personally, I'd strongly suggest you get the original or the second edition used. The third edition made the switch to SI units, which are not well-suited to electromagnetic theory.)

By the way: if you don't care what edition you're getting, and you're okay with international editions, you can get these books really cheaply. For instance: Goldstein, S&J, K&K, Purcell.

Finally, if you go looking for other books or asking other people, you should be aware that "analytical mechanics" often means those more advanced methods you learn in a second course on mechanics. If you just say "mechanics with calculus", people will get the idea of what you're looking for.

Im currently in a mechanics physics course and this is the main text book we use

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X

I'd say it's pretty good and an easy read as well

We have also been using a math text book to complement some of the material

https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physical-Sciences-Mary/dp/0471198269

Hope this helps

Taylor's Classical Mechanics book has a (visual pun)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_pun] on it.

This is what my university uses for first year:
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,4096,0805386858,00.html

And this is second year:
http://www.amazon.ca/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X

Both are great. Very conversational style.

Maybe Taylor? https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-John-R-Taylor/dp/189138922X

My reason is because I've been teaching myself linear algebra during the summer and thought it might be a good idea to practice my new skills in physics.

Edit: I hadn't thought about re examining classical mechanics from a more advanced perspective. To confirm the textbooks you're talking about is this Morin and this Taylor?

I have no experience with Young's books, but if you want to look into alternatives a very popular text book for physics is Physics for Scientists & Engineers by Giancoli, perfect for introductionary courses into classical mechanics. For a more advanced text book about classical mechanics you might want to look into Classical Mechanics by John R. Taylor.

My introduction to both General and Special Relativity was from John Taylor's Classical Mechanics, in free pdf form or in a dead trees format. The General Relativity section is lumped toward the end of the 'Special Relativity' chapter. It would be a great place to start.