Re: A few questions for you guys...


antonioetayo@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hello there, guys. I was wondering if you could answer a couple of
questions for me. First, a little background: I've always been
interested in physics but lets just say my highschool experience with
every teacher I ever had was less than stellar. So, like many folks out
there, I had a profound distaste for actual studying. I breezed through
it all figuring out the path of least resistance (High school physics
was ridiculously easy since it was all about pointless excercises that
were really all the same. Just apply the formula.) And math, well math
I just ignored completely. Ofcourse, now that I'm in college I see the
error of my ways. What I want is to go through all that highschool
material again to freshen up so I can start with college level stuff.
Both math and physics. I plan on taking physics as a second major
(Thats what you call them, right, majors? Sorry, not my native tongue)
Anyway, this is what I need:

Could you recommend some books that go through the entire material in a
more reasonable way than your regular highschool books? Physics and
mathematics. I dont need it to repeat stuff for me or take it slow like
they normally would. I do need them to go into detail so none of those
lite physics books with little math. This is important because I need
to familiarize myself with the proper vocabulary and symbology in the
english language mathematics (yes, its supposed to be universal but it
really isnt all that much) Recommend a few if you can because I might
not be able to find some.

Also, if you can point me to any valuable online resources on the
subject and communities dedicated to the learning of physics (besides
this one, ofcourse) it would be great.

Thanks a bunch

Okay, well, as far as mathematics goes, unless you are extremely gifted
in terms of your ability to pick up and retain concepts, you're almost
certainly going to have to sit down and do lots of problems like you
would at school. You'll be able to more or less set your own pace, at
least, but so far as I know for the vast majority of people, the only
way to learn and retain mathematics is practice. As far as mathematics
books goes, I'm not sure about any really good ones off the top of my
head, since I'm not quite sure what you've covered. If you want to do a
lot of physics (say for a major), then you're going to need to learn
calculus. For calculus, I used "Calculus, Early Transcendentals 6th Ed"
by Edwards and Penney and found it to be quite good. If you need to go
back and learn say functional notation or logs/exponents, trigonometry
etc (all very important for physics), then there are a number of texts
that are probably appropriate--just pick and choose the topics you
need. There's probably even sufficient material on the internet to
master those topics if you look hard enough. You could always call up a
local high school and ask what text they normally use for their senior
math courses, too.

For physics, I've found that the text "Physics for Scientists and
Engineers" by Serway gives a really good overview of pretty much all of
the introductory physics material you could ever want. Except modern
physics I guess, which Serway conveniently covers in his second book
(that one is not as good though in my opinion... better off getting
Shandar, Liboff or maybe Griffiths instead, despite that these are more
advanced). The problems are typically a little more advanced than the
"plug the numbers in the formula" type of situation, and there are
usually a handful in each chapter that are quite challenging, and while
the text does require some calculus, if you don't know it or are shaky
with it, it won't limit your learning in most topics. The Feymann
lectures are another excellent resource for physics, although it is
really a supplemental material since they aren't as mathematical or
detailed as you probably desire. Still, I highly recommend them.

Hope that helps,

A.

.

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