(Part 2) Top products from r/PhysicsStudents

The Physics AS/A Levels are a funny lot of modules; I believe they're designed to be doable without any A Level-equivalent Maths knowledge, so they're riddled with weird explanations that really try to avoid maths - which often just makes everything harder in the long run. (I did AQA Physics A, but all were pretty similar as far as I gathered.)

With that in mind, if you're looking to study Physics further on, I'd recommend supplementing your mathematics. If you're doing Further Maths, you probably needn't bother, as the first year of any university course will bore you to death repeating everything you learnt about calculus etc.; if you're doing single Maths, I'd recommend getting confident with C1-4, and maybe purchasing the Edexcel (Keith Pledger) FP1/FP2 books to get slightly ahead before uni. They're great books, so might be useful to have for Y1 of uni and reference thereafter regardless. I was quite put off by the attitude towards Y1 maths of the Further Maths people (about half the cohort), who kept moaning about having done it all already, so found focusing in lectures a tad harder; I wish I'd bothered to read just a little ahead.

The second thing I'd recommend would be reading fairly broadly in physics to understand what aspect in particular you enjoy the most. In my experience, the students who have even a rough idea of what they want to do in the future perform better, as they have motivation behind certain modules and know how to prioritise for a particular goal, e.g. summer placement at a company which will look for good laboratory work, or even as far as field of research.

To that end (and beginning to answer the post!), books that aren't overly pop-science, like Feynman's Six Easy Pieces/Six Not-so-Easy Pieces are good (being a selection of lectures from The Feynman Lectures). Marcus Chown does a similarly good job of not dumbing things down too much in Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and We Need to Talk About Kelvin, and he talks about a good variety of physical phenomena, which you can look up online if they interest you. I could recommend more, but it really depends how you want to expand your physics knowledge!

E - darn, just read you're not in the UK. Oops. Mostly still applies.

Ok, looked at this thing (PDF warning) and it looks like a modern physics course + intro mechanics.

If you're interested in more pop-sci stuff I would look into Dance Of The Photons by Zeilinger. It covers some more popular elements of quantum in a very accessible but not crank-y way. Zeilinger is a legit dude. Unfortunately I don't know much about pop-sci physics books because I tend to avoid them.

If you're more interested in textbook stuff, I would look into some of the classic undergraduate books depending on what you're interested in. So stuff like Taylor for mechanics, Griffiths for E&M, and so on.

Of course there's always the Feynman lectures as well which are online. I think all of these should be approachable to you. I'm not sure what your math background is, assuming you're comfortable with calculus and some differential equations. Probably linear algebra as well. If not, I would look into these as well, unfortunately I don't have any book recommendations for these subjects though.

Also did some googling and I found this list which might be handy to look at.

You might like Hassani 1 better (or more readable) compared to Boas (Boas has more problems though). Though I'm not suggesting it as a preparation for your test next week (although you never know; you might pick it up from the library tomorrow and find out it answered many of your questions). It's one of the books that you shouldn't rush through (a whole summer working through it, solving 70-80% of the problems, would be a good idea).

Bra Ket notation shouldn't be too difficult if you've taken 'linear algebra' already (again Hassani has a few chapters on LA, but I used Leon when I took LA class). Schmidt ortho is covered in an LA class (again also is in Hassani).

Other stuff you mentioned seem like special topics in Diff. Eq, save for Complex Fourier which should be under 'complex analysis' I guess.

I hope this helps FWIW.

A great introductory read would be "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David Griffiths"

Great Author and great textbook. Pretty much most intro QM courses use this text.

Amazon Link

As for modern physics texts any of these should be fine but I have only glanced at them: Thornton and Rex, Krane, Bernstein, Fishbane, and Gasiorowicz

I read through Taylor and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics and it is really good if you want a lot of conceptual discussion of special relativity, not as much mathematics involved but honestly the math doesn't get too gnarly in SR anyways so conceptual might be the better approach to the topic. Unfortunately it only goes over SR, and not any of the other modern topics.

Take Physics Thermodynamics, it'll open your eyes. We use Schroeder 20 miles north of you. I had a Nuclear Energy Conversion course that was essentially our Thermo from our department and finally had the chance to see all of the theoretical physics applied to real world (well, 1970s reactors ;D) applications.

I'm up at SPSU finishing a Physics BS and just completed our Nuclear Engineering minor. I liked the similarities in curriculum because I had seen it before, but there were some ME/EE majors that weren't too thrilled with Physics Thermodynamics showing up in a Nuclear course.

Is your advanced lab course Modern, Electronics, or Adv Measurements?

By classical physics do you mean something similar to Intermediate Mechanics?

You should be able to relate Optics to Nuclear pretty well comparing it to what you've studied with neutrons passing through matter and moderators.

Sorry about the wall of text, I don't get to talk about both subjects much in either department.

Read Carl Sagan's Cosmos. If you're truly interested in physics, it'll motivate you to learn as much as you physically can.

I really enjoyed this book. Granted I'm only in my second year, but this is interesting, easy to read, and only $12 including shipping used for hardcover. I've bought it twice and given one away to another student

EDIT: forgot to add the book, sorry about that

I'd suggest you buy your textbooks early and look them over before class starts. If you don't want do to that, you might want to try out Schaums Outline of Quantum Mechanics, and Schaums Outline of Optics. A Modern Physics course will generally cover some intro QM and some special relativity, so the QM outline should be helpful for both your Modern Physics and your QM class.

Edit: As a note, the Schaum's Outlines are generally for people currently taking the course or reviewing the material after having already taken the course. Its terse with little discussion of the physics going on, but a lot of example problems, and will hold your hand through math.

Join the military for job security, life experience, and because it's generally a big resume booster for potential employers/schools. 4 years and you're out, and likely with money for school. Study a physics text cover-to-cover along the way, with the aim of eventually taking the PGRE (if grad school is still your aim). Four years after a lackluster undergrad performance, with military exp and a killer PGRE score, you could very well be fine.

Conceptual Physics (12th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321909100/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_DJ.6CbT0NHCT6
This is what my University uses for it 1000 level physics course. When I TA'd the class the examples were very conceptual based. If you were looking for something with some math in it I would suggest a algebra based physics text. Like this one.

College Physics: A Strategic Approach (3rd Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321879724/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_1L.6CbZ7EKFZV

If you're not familiar with physics at all, then i'd try picking up a textbook that's devoted to the conceptual side of physics with a little algebra here and there. For example

Once you have a basic understanding of that and you're familiar with calculus, try a more rigorous college-level calculus based physics text. Example

Personally, i'd stick with textbooks since i see them as a very effective way of learning a subject, but i understand everyone learns differently. Whatever works for you.

Shankar's book teaches almost everything you need: calculus, vectors, series, complex variables, ODE, linear algebra in only ~300pag.
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Training-Mathematics-Fitness-Students/dp/0306450364


For more advanced topics check out Arfken.

I think Knight is the best intro textbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Scientists-Engineers-Strategic-Standalone/dp/0134092503

If you want the pure uncut shit, then read the Feynman Lectures.

http://www.amazon.com/Waves-Oscillations-Prelude-Quantum-Mechanics/dp/019539349X

We use Special Relativity by French.