Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

27 pointsrramadass25 comments

What are some good books which give an overview of all of Modern Physics (or even better, all of Physics)? Mathematical rigour is fine as long as they are clear and starting from undergrad level. Books for each of the quadrants mentioned here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_physics

I have my eye on John Dirk Walecka's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dirk_Walecka) books which seem pretty good particularly the ones published by World Scientific Publishing. Three vols on Introduction, Advanced, Topics on Modern Physics and Introduction vols on Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics, Electricity & Magnetism, General Relativity. - https://www.worldscientific.com/author/Walecka%2C+John+Dirk?...

Dover has Robert Sproull's Modern Physics which seems a bit old. - https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486783260

Springer has S.H.Patil's Elements of Modern Physics which seems up to date. - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-70143-7

Does anybody have experience with these books both studying and teaching from? I would appreciate it if the knowledgeable folks here can shed some light on this.

What other books provide similar overview of the domain?

Also suggestions on books which provide the needed background Mathematics.

PS: I am finding the the old Soviet era book Fundamentals of Physics by Ivanov quite useful to get an overview - https://mirtitles.org/2018/04/21/fundamentals-of-physics-iva...

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are:

- University Physics by Young and Freedman

- Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker

- Modern Physics by Krane

You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics.

For a nonrigorous introduction/overview:

- The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose

If you want to actually learn almost all of physics at a high level:

- Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau

Note that Landau is extremely difficult.

If you want to learn the math needed for modern physics (topology) in the context of physics, nonrigorously:

- Geometry, Topology, and Physics by Nakahara

Landau! my soviet physics teacher would say the same thing!

Landau was Einstein+ level genius and the course was a soviet theoretical physics bible many years ago. But it’s not a good educational resource by modern standards and pretty dated.

True it is pretty dated. OP was requesting resources that cover *all* of physics and Landau popped into mind. Is there a modern series of textbooks that offers such a broad coverage?

Landau these days doesn’t look like a “broad coverage” at all.

More like “many specific topics and areas covered in a set of books under same authors”.

Also Landau was one of the last (probably the last) polymath physicists who covered a wide range of fields.

I doubt it is even technically possible to cover even 30% of all modern theoretical physics in a single course with depth comparable to Landau books.

> Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker

I strongly recommend this textbook. I used in college, and it's really good. There are a lot of problems for each chapter, I suggest doing them as they help a lot.

Nice list. I had known of most of the books here; studied Resnick & Halliday (decades ago in bachelors) and have also perused Penrose's book. Landau/Lifshitz is of course well known.

The Nakahara book is new to me; Thanks for the pointer.

Most topics develop into advanced rabbitholes that takes years of learning in just that one topic to assume proficiency, but for somebody looking to get a detailed overview Young and Freedman's University Physics with Modern Physics is the best introduction to a little bit of everything.

The mathematical prerequisites are essentially algebra, precalculus and basic calculus, all of which are excellently covered by the OpenStax series of free textbooks published by Rice University.

I have heard good things about this book but it seems its coverage of Modern Physics might be a bit too short? What do you think?

Have you looked at Walecka's books? They seem to have sufficient detail/depth but am not sure as to their mathematical rigour. Maybe too much for undergrad level?

I've skimmed Walecka's Topics and it seems like an excellent resource on intermediate modern physics for somebody who is separately studying undergraduate mathematics, particularly the undergraduate content of real analysis, linear algebra, differential equations and group theory, but tough for somebody who is taking much less mathematics than physics.

If you can commit to the two fields of study in parallel Walecka should be perfectly suitable but if not then there may be eventual problems with keeping up.

Yeah, Walecka's books seem to be more mathematically rigorous than most others. Because of that it also seems to be more succinct. That is something i am looking for so maybe i need to get that while boning up on the requisite mathematics.

Have you looked at the Sproull/Patil books?

Felder & Felder's Modern Physics is pretty good (https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/physic...). I also second OgsyedIE's suggestion og Young & Freedman.

The Felder & Felder book looks really good and doesn't seem as mathematical as Walecka i.e. more expository. Looking at the ToC/Sample the chapters have a good progression and are nicely setup.

The print copy however seems prohibitively expensive :-(

The print copy of Felder and Felder looks to be cheaper than Young and Freedman at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon?

I am based in India, so Amazon.in has a low-price Indian edition of Young & Freedman while Felder & Felder is the original US edition which is quite expensive.

I have decided to get all (the seven i have listed in my post above) of John Dirk Walecka's books since low-price editions are available and they seem quite rigorous with enough depth to boot. Pairing it with some other easier text (perhaps Young & Freedman) would cover my bases nicely.

Leonard Susskind's "The Theoretical Minimum" series is a great start. His corresponding Stanford lectures are on youtube as well and are a nice supplement.

Roger Penrose’s (Yes that Penrose) Road to Reality is excellent. Be warned the first 382 pages are just building the mathematical foundation he needs for the second half. But if you don’t do this, you can’t really write a book about modern physics targeting undergrad math.

Road to Reality is good to get a general overview of *everything* but I dont think you can actually learn the things he talks about. For example, the jump from calculus in R^2 to Riemannian surfaces is insane and leaves a ton out

It’s very plausible that it’s in the same category as Wikipedia where it’s only useful if you’ve already learned it once and forgotten it

David Tong's textbooks which are based on lecture notes he made public: https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/books.html

Ah yes, and they are very readable indeed.

These seem pretty good; had not known of these.

Thanks for the pointer.

Understanding Time and Space by Steven E Landsburg (subtitle: An Invitation to the Theory of Relativity for Anyone Who is Now, or Has Ever Been, an Inquisitive High School Student)

I think I used this exact Ivanov book (but in Russian) in school and quite liked it.

It is not meant to be the primary textbook but an adjunct to one. It succinctly covers a lot within 500 pages.

There are more advanced Physics books on that site which are also worth looking into.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com