Reddit reviews University Physics with Modern Physics (12th Edition)

Textbooks (calculus): Fundamentals of Physics: http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Physics-Extended-David-Halliday/dp/0470469080/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087387&sr=8-4&keywords=fundamentals+of+physics ,

Textbooks (calculus): University Physics with Modern Physics; http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-12th-Edition/dp/0321501217/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087411&sr=8-2&keywords=university+physics+with+modern+physics

Textbook (algebra): [This is a great one if you don't know anything and want a book to self study from, after you finish this you can begin a calculus physics book like those listed above]: http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Principles-Applications-7th-Edition/dp/0321625927/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087498&sr=8-1&keywords=physics+giancoli

If you want to be competitive at the international level, you definitely need calculus, at least the basics of it.
Here is a good book: http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Intuitive-Physical-Approach-Mathematics/dp/0486404536/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087834&sr=8-1&keywords=calculus+kline
It is quite cheap and easy to understand if you want to self teach yourself calculus.

Another option would be this book:http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-4th-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087878&sr=8-1&keywords=spivak
If you can finish self teaching that to yourself, you will be ready for anything that could face you in mathematics in university or the IPhO. (However it is a difficult book)

Problem books: Irodov; http://www.amazon.com/Problems-General-Physics-I-E-Irodov/dp/8183552153/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087565&sr=8-1&keywords=irodov ,

Problem Books: Krotov; http://www.amazon.com/Science-Everyone-Aptitude-Problems-Physics/dp/8123904886/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398087579&sr=8-1&keywords=krotov

You should look for problem sets online after you have finished your textbook, those are the best recourses. You can get past contests from the physics olympiad websites.

I agree completely. Textbooks like Landau Lifschitz are not great for introducing physics to the student.

For more general physics, if you haven't studied it at the uni level before, "American-style" standard physics textbooks are honestly going to give you the best introduction to many areas of physics. Ones I used extensively and can recommend are Young and Freedman

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321501217/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_-ws1Cb3SQ65YT

and Halliday and Resnick

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118230728/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_4Bs1CbBC9XGB6

They're far better pedagogically than older textbooks. If you're doing an undergraduate degree, they won't cover everything, but still a surprisingly large amount.

Here's mine

To understand life, I'd highly recommend this textbook that we used at university http://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-Edition-Jane-Reece/dp/0321558235/ That covers cell biology and basic biology, you'll understand how the cells in your body work, how nutrition works, how medicine works, how viruses work, where biotech is today, and every page will confront you with what we "don't yet" understand too with neat little excerpts of current science every chapter. It'll give you the foundation to start seeing how life is nothing special and just machinery (maybe you should do some basic chemistry/biology stuff on KhanAcademy first though to fully appreciate what you'll read).

For math I'd recommend doing KhanAcademy aswell https://www.khanacademy.org/ and maybe a good Algebra workbook like http://www.amazon.com/The-Humongous-Book-Algebra-Problems/dp/1592577229/ and after you're comfortable with Algebra/Trig then go for calc, I like this book http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Ron-Larson/dp/0547167024/ Don't forget the 2 workbooks so you can dig yourself out when you get stuck http://www.amazon.com/Student-Solutions-Chapters-Edwards-Calculus/dp/0547213093/ http://www.amazon.com/Student-Solutions-Chapters-Edwards-Calculus/dp/0547213107/ That covers calc1 calc2 and calc3.

Once you're getting into calc Physics is a must of course, Math can describe an infinite amount of universes but when you use it to describe our universe now you have Physics, http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-12th/dp/0321501217/ has workbooks too that you'll definitely need since you're learning on your own.

At this point you'll have your answers and a foundation to go into advanced topics in all technical fields, this is why every university student who does a technical degree must take courses in all those 3 disciplines.

If anything at least read that biology textbook, you really won't ever have a true appreciation for the living world and you can't believe how often you'll start noticing people around you spouting terrible science. If you could actually get through all the work I mentioned above, college would be a breeze for you.

I used University Physics. I like it. I thought the concepts were explained pretty clearly. You can buy a student solutions manual for it that has step-by-step solutions to the odd problems. And I don't have it, but you can also buy a study guide for it.

Get a textbook and read as much as you can over the summer. I used http://www.amazon.com/University-Physics-Modern-12th-Edition/dp/0321501217/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1RBCYB472H3734SN700S