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I like reading up on physics (duh), and before I had any physics classes I basically sent all my time selfstudying, which I wish I still had time/motivation for (alas!) So this is basically just a list of resources I have used, not necessarily accounting for quality (although I recommend the vast majority of these, I just don't know enought abt textbooks out there as a whole to compare.) Nearly all of these can be found online, through archive.org or zlib or libgen or even just search!
Actual Textbooks
- University Physics by Sears/Zemansky/Young, Seventh Edition - I'm being specific here because this was my dad's old physics textbook that I re-read throughout my childhood, one of my favorite books ever literally purely for this nostalgia, although it's also a very good physics textbook! In reading more books like these I find they're mostly interchangeable, but regardless, good introductory book.
- Griffiths, Introduction to EM/QM/Particles - I've read fully through the first two, still working through the last. Very good as an introduction into all of these subjects, good compromise comprehensiveness with comprehensibility (although many people do say in leans towards the latter a bit too much, but these ARE all titled as introductions for a reason).
- Peskin/Schroeder Intro to Quantum Field Theory - Only got through a couple first chapters/sections of this so nowhere NEAR qualified enough to review it but I liked what I saw, albeit I could only follow the math rather than actually apply in myself, and even then had to frequently reread as it has the downside of not explaining much. Probably something I'll reread with better skills
- Shankar - I've read Shankar's Classical Physics textbook when I was younger. but honestly have little to no memory of it
- Ahmad A. Kamal Problems in Classical Physics and Problems in Modern Physics - in my experience the questions don't neatly match with what I was doing selfstudying in other textbooks, leading to confusion on some problems, but on their own these are both good sets of practice problems.
- ...There's some statistical physics/thermo. pdf out there that I am forgetting, I will update when I find the name again (also maybe more books Im forgetting that Im forgetting as well).
Online Resources
- DrPhysicsA on Youtube - he has a very good breadth, and balances mathematical rigor with understandability incredibly well! Only downside I'd say is that the videos really are just derivation/explanation (literally just him talking and writing on paper) with no real problems as far as I remember.
- Khanacademy - need I say anything? Incedibly famous site for selfstudy, has good explanations and provides practice quizzes, although it's limited in what it can provide
- David Tong lectures - ALL high level stuff, but in terms of finding internet resources, this is a huge plus (not much goes this far!)
- Andrew Dotson made a tensor calculus series on Youtube at some point, very good math knowledge for getting into GR or QFT.