Canonical 1st Year Physics Book

I think you could be right. The course I'm in is the "easier" version that doesn't use calculus. Kind of retarded I know, but bureaucratic shit made it so I couldn't get into the proper one. Actually I'm a math major, but I'm considering doing a physics minor because I'm interested in how the two relate. I took single/multivariable calculus for scientists so I thought it wouldn't be an issue for physics, just they weren't proof based so I'm starting with Spivak to get up to snuff before I continue with higher level math. We aren't tested on anything calc related so I've lazily been glossing over the calc parts. This likely resulted in a big gap in my knowledge. I'll check out Feynman's lecture books I've heard good things about them.

Also I was thinking about taking a semester off, or yeah taking humanities courses which would be a joke, and just catching up on my own time (mostly on math). Basically starting from scratch and building a solid foundation. You think this is a good idea?

Okay, so there are two options:
1. You either recently changed to the math major, after have started out as premed/bio, etc.
2. You're not telling the truth, or have the worst advisor/faculty known to college education.
3. I'm sorely confused, either you aren't in a full Euro/US uni, or something, idk.

How in the world are you a math major but have only taken linear algebra and calculus for scientists, and trig based physics? Generally speaking, no "calculus course" is proof based unless your at a top school, in which case even then it isn't comprehensive. That's not the point of calculus in the current curriculum setup.

Regardless of which one it is, you need an overhaul in perspective on all subject areas related to math/physics.

Some more questions because this is bewildering:

1. Am I correct in assuming you havent gotten past chapter 2 or 3 in spivak?
2. What maths did you have in high school?
3. If you are in a 4-year college, please either tell me which one, or give an outline of what math and science courses you are in, and which semester you took them in.

I dont mean to come across as affrontive or autist investigator, but either your advisor does not care about your education at all, you arent being completely honest, or you just so happen to be extremely misguided, either by unfortunate circumstances or by Veeky Forums.

Either way, you have quite the road ahead of you. I'm a senior math/physics double major at a meh-tier university, but I'm in good shape. I don't pretend to know everything, but something in your story is not adding up. You started this thread looking for a book, but based on your responses, you will more likely need a place to start and direction.

If I am just over analyzing, the short answer to the semester off/lazy semester question is it depends on whether you can afford it scholarship or personal funds wise.

>Is the situation similar in physics? In particular what's the gold standard text for 1st year physics?

Normies:
Young and Freedman - University Physics with Modern Physics
Resnick, Halliday, and Krane - Physics, Volume 1 & 2
(They're basically identical)

Honors:
Shankar - Fundamentals of Physics, I: Mechanics, Relativity, and Thermodynamics; II: Electromagnetism, Optics, and Quantum Mechanics
The 5 books here: Veeky Forums-science.wikia.com/wiki/Physics_Textbook_Recommendations#High_School

>So in math if you're reading Stewart's calc, you'll be told to pick up Spivak

John/Courant > Apostol > Spivak. And ever for normies: Simmons, Keisler, Lang, Hamming > Stewart

>If you want some abstract algebra better go to Lang or Dummit/Foote

No, you better go with Artin or Herstein.

I said there were two options and listed three, forgive me senpai. But in all seriousness, help me out a little bit to figure out what's going.

No worries man I really do appreciate it.

Option 2: I started out in chemistry and had some math courses under my belt; switched into the math major only to realize now that I took the wrong route and I don't have the prereqs for the vast majority of the proper rigorous courses.

Q1: I'm on chapter 4 atm, delta-epsilon proof of limits.

Q2: The minimum high school math, i.e. grade 11. I did a 3 month "precalculus" program that would give me the background to take university math.

Q3: I'm at U of T, we have a first year course that is pretty much intro analysis, and the courses you can take later depend heavily on this one and the rigorous "calc" II that comes after it. What you say is true usually calculus means computation, but here it's not the case.

In general I've so far I've taken calc I and II (all computational) linear algebra I (computation) and II (theoretical). I've also taken a basic number theory course, and now I'm doing a more advanced number theory course alongside group theory (both 3rd year courses).

You hit the nail on the head that the underlying issue is that I made a mess of university so far and have found my direction very late. With group theory atm the book is terrible, and I was recommended Dummit and Foote which is a proper text... So I thought I would ask and maybe find something better to read for physics too so I can hold my own in later courses.

Whoops meant option 1, I am telling the truth lol. And also I just checked limits is actually ch 5.

>canonical
>physics

Okay so it turns out you are literally me two years ago, that's why I got it so accurately.

There are a couple of things that I think you should consider, some obvious, some less so. First meta, then specific.

1. Do you know what you want to do?
You're a math major, so do you want to do academia, industry, etc? Note that if you are in academia, you should be looking into post-doc options to see id you would enjoy them. If industry, generally a pretty cut and dry approach.

2. If you do know which you want to pursue, and already have a plan cut out for it, is theoretical math/physics included in those goals? If not, is it an extra curricular you have time for? Essentially are you doing it as a hobby or as a pursuit in its own right, or in conjunction to whatever it is you want to do? Are you going to do applied?

3. Assume you want to do theoretical math/ physics in conjunction or as a pursuit, are you good at it? Does it give you inspiration and drive to study it?

4. Have you read the horror stories about brainlets on reddit doing theoretical math/physics phds and crying about job oppurtunities? Have you thought about how demanding research can be if you want to settle down with a family?

5. Assume you get past all of these questions, what math/ physics interests you? Are you good at it, is there an area you should probably do instead of dank memetic string theories/IUT/algebraic geometries, or are you possesive of the phenotype ashkenazi women crave?

6. If you're fine just winging it because you love math and physics, are you using your time like a pleb or like a patrician?

(See next post for actual advice and considerations)

So you mentioned you only wanted to minor in physics. One thing I am confused about is if you want to minor, will your school require you to take calculus based physics before classical mech, EM, quantum, etc?

If you do have to take them, then instead of taking a slow or dropping a semester, I would take those cal based physics classes as opportunities to focus and brush up on both calc and basic physics.

If not, then do the slow/drop semester before jumping in.

Either way, if after redoubling your efforts with your current book you still dont get it, do get the feyman lectures or watch a bunch of videos on MIT/KA/yotube etc.

Then sign up for the specialized courses and do this or .
If that's all you want to do with physics then great. If not, speak up and I can go deeper.

For math, you may have your ducks in a better row, but is right about the math books. Focus on doing well on analysis, algebra, and topology is you want to do theory. Numerical methods, coding, statistics, PDEs, applied linear, etc. are your future for applied.

At this point if you dont know whether you want to do physics or not, Id reccomend browsing www.goodtheorist.science.

If you want to do math, check out terrance tao's blog, and for either route always be checking a bunch of grad school program outlines and requirements, ask professors what they did, how they did it, etc.

bump

Seriously, I was like how does this guy know me so well lol.

There's a fair bit of overlap in your questions so I'll just write it out in paragraphs. Pretty much I'd want to go into academia, but I don't know yet if I have what it takes. I wouldn't mind settling for industry, you recommend coding and taking stats classes which is something I've heard before. I think with a math degree + coding skills I'd have a pretty marketable resume. In the end I take math because I never get tired of it; it goes so deep and I can't get enough of it. The further I go the more I feel like I'm approaching some big revelation, I just have to get to the heart of it or at least close. I take math to have something to think about, I think I could be happy living away from society closer to nature and doing math in the evenings.

Basically I'd like to make a career of it by going into pure math academia, but honestly I'm not sure I have what it takes; I'll have to see. I get the material and don't move on until I can go over the chain of logic in my head that the author put forward in the chapter. I can't read anything that is not fully rigorous since it just bothers me and it's not really math if everything isn't formally justified, so I think at least I have a good perspective on the subject. I am using my time like a pleb though and haven't excelled grade wise in my courses thus far. I chalk it up to taking mostly computational classes so far and only being interested in theory and proofs. So I'm planning on starting over and taking fully rigorous courses and I'll see how I do. If I do well I might have a future outside of industry.

With physics I'm not sure how I feel about it. I haven't taken much so I think with more exposure to higher level stuff I could get more into it. Even if I don't end up minoring I would use all the resources given in the thread to educate myself. I feel physics and math are so intertwined and they have a lot to offer each other. Anyways anyone with intellectual curiosity should want to know how the world works and should dive into the key areas; before all the specialization the great minds were all polymaths.

My school would let me continue with any upper physics courses without first taking a calc based physics course, but for my own benefit I should really learn the calc stuff before moving on. It's like the same situation as in math, I got into a mess by not seriously working on my foundations early and have to play all this catch up now.

Interesting about the math texts as well I have heard of those but thought there wasn't a big difference between them and the ones I'm reading.

Yeah it got late and I wasn't parsing out my thoughts as well.

Well, if it makes you feel better, you've reached a place that even most people in math/physics don't reach, or at least don't know they've reached in in the scope you realize you have.

You have to see if you have a limit in two senses: an ability to know and an ability to solve once you do. If you can do either of these well, you could at least do applied, like you mentioned you know you could. If you can do both you get to stay a theorist. You have reached maturity. I nor anybody else could do anything else to give you perspective as to what you need, you're done.

However, where other people can help is in the following areas: giving you all the relationships between ideas as CLEARLY as possible, and giving you appropriate difficulty problems to train your solving.

This is where the courses, books, semester question, etc. comes in.

You should in my personal opinion take a slack semester, minimum hours with the easiest possible courses. Full drop is for those that have already trained for decent study habits, which you seem to maybe lack, like myself two years ago.

What you should do is incremental increase your study time over the semester. Start with just an hour a day, out laptop/phone away while you do this. Slowly increase the time based on your ability to stick with it.

As for the actual material, the first issue of CLEAR relationships between ideas is huge. There are different levels of books, even among the best few, each author is different in their minutia, even if both are elite. For example, dummit and foote is probably better than 80% of first semester abstract algebra books out there, but artin or herstein are both better. Why? The indivual chapters may contain similar material (protip they dont), but even if they did, even the topics covered and in what order are different. The direction and scope of the content in a book is a dealbreaker.

maybe I'm a brainlet but I find Marion/Thornton totally disorganized and confusing

I could give you more examples or parse out how to evaluate them, but there would be too many down the line at different difficult bits of material, the rules are purposefully difficult to pick up, so as to keep people from just rote learning the whole deal, only to have them find out they are too dumb to actually contribute.

You're #1 focus outside of learning material should be where to get it and comparing it to others once you see it. You asked Veeky Forums, which is okay, but really, you should be browsing graduate program course listings that list books, going to math conferences where educators and researchers are, and where they will be most open to answering these kinds of questions.

That's because you need to read up on the table of contents before you dive into it. Unless your math maturity greatly outweighs your physics maturity, you won't get to see the big picture because you'll be fighting to understand the concepts as you read them.

Essentiall, the book rehashes the math you'll need for the Newton interpretation of mechanics, then gives you newton. Then it spends a few chapters on the applications. Then it gives you hamilton/Lagrange, which is a big boy interpretation of all the stuff newton figured out. And then it gives you some applications. And at the very end it gives you special relativity to understand the limits and problems surrounding what the theory concludes.

Once you understand the limits and problems in classical mechanics with these formulations, you can see the how physicists answered them: quantum mechanics and general relativity. (Protip theres an ocean liner full of math to learn before you can jump the gap from classical/ low level quantum to high level quantum and GR)

Ta-dah. Hope that gave you perspective.

>Essentially
see the thing is the only reason you're fighting to understand the concepts is because they're so poorly explained. hamiltonian mechanics in marion/thornton I actually did okay, it's everything else that was hopelessly fucked. even they way they explain change of coordinates is obtuse. but like I said, maybe I'm just slow.

Gotcha, yeah I think it depends on how much exposure to different maths youve had. At least for me, the concepts dont have to be spelled out super well, usually the math perspective fills in the gaps that the English explanation loses in translation. Idk, i didnt really spend as much time reading marion, so I could just be full of it and the book was garbage, but when I went through it, the arrangement and math was enough.

I'm glad to hear from someone further along that my head is at least in the right place with respect to how I see math. This is good advice as well I think I don't really take full advantage of the resources at my uni; I mostly only read the book and if the lecturer isn't just rehashing the book I take notes. I had thought about talking to my prof about what he thinks the big idea in the course is and how we're working towards it. In general I find usually a math course culminates in a big result and everything before was just build up; like Jordan form in my linear algebra course.

With study habits I spend too much time at the library and do way too little. I think it's a good idea to just cut down the time by a lot, but focus 100% while I'm studying. Also yeah it would be brutal if I took a whole semester off and just ended up dicking around, it's something to consider.

It makes sense now why people say to read several books on a subject, and to read the canon. I'm a bit hesitant to switch over from Dummit and Foote though since I'm quite far along, maybe I should just read them as a second look at the material when I'm done. But this would be quite far off, I can't see myself reading two books on the same topic back to back.

>Shankar - Fundamentals of Physics
But the professor Ramamurti Shankar is a Pajeet / P** in L**.

So when I said that it was a dealbreaker, that was in terms of choosing a resource, not necessarilly in being able to utilize it. As long as you are very intelligent, then at the end of the day it won't matter. I simply over-emphasize it as you have so much ground to catch up on, that speed is everything in this stage.

Newton and Einstein would have still done great things, and variances in texts would have mattered little. I bring it up because there should be a healthy middle ground between being too autistic about book choices, but also knowing how and why different texts are more and less valuable.

>ctrl+f Landau and Lifshitz
>no results
Do you niggers even meme?

Ahh yes, because someone who has strictly stated that he does not even have a solid grasp on calculus should be reading the GOAT

If he wanted good advice, he could've gone to /adv/. Anyway, his struggles will make me feel better about writing too slowly.

I'm going to take a classical mechanics course for the next year and I want to prepare for it. It's newtonian mechanics but it relies pretty heavily on calculus and vectors. Young and Freedman is a good book but it not really works out the calculus side of mechanics.

Any help with a book recommendation? I don't want to get into analytical mechanics, yet, at least, they seem autistic as fuck for me (and they're for the classical mechanics II course)

>Apostol > Spivak
Yeah, have fun learning integrals before even learning derivatives. Besides that you're right on the other stuff.

>he cant appreciate learning how mathematicians studied calculus

...

can u learn physics if ur a brainlet

thoughts?

Might be a decent introductory text or good with explanations, but doesnt mention hamiltonians or lagrangians at all so probably meh/10

Whats a good book if you want a very mathematical and dense take on mechanics?

I've only taken physics 1 but wanna study out of a hard assed book, think L&L but I'm a bit intimidated

arnold and/or abraham

In the user above thinking about L&L. I got halfway through Resnik and Halliday or whatever and thought it was ok.

You're one of the good ones user

topkek

>Arnold
Ohh I remember hearing about that one awhile back, thanks for the rec. do you think Arnold is good book given my background above?

>If you want some abstract algebra better go to Lang or Dummit/Foote.

Fake and gay. Gallian and Hungerford are both better.

ayy U of T Math, McGill Math here, always found it a bit odd that you guys started with an analysis course.

If you need a good group theory textbook I'd recommend Abstract Algebra by Thomas Judson. Very easy to read. Doesn't cover a tonne though so you might need to supplement it with other textbooks but it'll ground you nicely.

What to do if unsure between academia and industry? Macadamia sounds tasty but I doubt I'd qualify.

>doing math

>canonical
20/18 tier bait absolutely sensational

My situation is very similar to yours op, good thread

Mainly it's a desire of the heart thing. What do you want to do everyday before you die? Be pissed at students/colleagues or be pissed at coworkers/bosses?

If you are better at teaching/researching and have a tendency to be lost in thought about muh universe, go academia, if you are better at team based problem solving, like having a paycheck and muh benefits, go industry.

There is menial labor and political stupidoty on both sides, the question is which can you put up with better or in the optimal situation, be so enamoured with your work that you can just look past the negatives?

Advice is to introspect and maybe shadow people from both sectors, but at the end of the day, there is something to be said about finding meaning in your work.

Well the truth is any mathematical and dense takes are going to be about as intimidating as L&L. As some posters have popped into the thread to make fun of, there isn't really a canon because if the author writing the book isn't a brainlet, they will for the most part write the same things, barring scientific philosophy or cutting edge phenomenal interpretation (particle physics, string theory, etc.)
If for whatever reason LL scares you, the goats are here .

>Griffiths is standard
No wonder there's so many anti-Coppenhagen idiots around these days. Griffiths is ok if you're slightly retarded. If you're serious about learning QM at undergrad level, get Sakurai.

>if you're serious about learning QM at undergrad level, get Sakurai.

I thought that was a grad level book?

Grad level is Landau, we used Sakurai for our introductory qm in fourth semester.

Interesting. How much better do you find Sakurai compared to griffiths for undergrad?

GALLIAN MY SIDES

Feynman lectures are fun, read the first book only.

Avoid Serway at all cost

How's the program there? I know mac is especially good for medsci stuff. Imo it's a good idea to have it this way. They take the first exposure to uni math, which is always calculus, and use it as an opportunity to introduce people to real math, i.e. rigour, right away. Prove it before you can use it mentality and a bunch of rudimentary number theory is built in which is super useful for any course one would take after. I think Spivak says he wrote the book this way in the foreword.

lol misread and thought you said mcmaster, mcgill is a legit school you guys have a nice campus too I always wander through when I'm in montreal.

About 8.3.75.
The difference between them is huge. Griffiths really is like "QM for retards" in comparison. Sakurai assumes you are somewhat familiar with the math and that you've heard about QM before opening the book (nothing that you wouldn't know after 2 years on uni). The excercises, compared to Griffiths, are meaningful and teach you something (mostly intuition).
If you're not a retard, but Sakurai seems too hard for you (absolutely justifiable, it's hard to start with), get Shankar which is baby-tier QM but actually good for self-studying if you care about understanding QM. Griffiths is useless mainly due to treating the reader as incompetent idiot.

>LL
You'd say Arnold or Abraham are on the same difficulty level as L&L? At any rate I'll be reading some table of contents and comparing chapters today, thanks for the advice.

No, but all three are relatively mire difficult than any other. I'd say LL expects more and goes deeper, but at the end of the day, the bridge from either Abook is far shorter to LL than any others.

There are canonical books in physics, in the sense that everyone knows them, but not at that level. The basic mechanics and electrostatics are the same in every book. I learned them from Serway+Jewett in high school, which I liked. Other books that are probably good but I haven't looked at are Freedman+Young and the first Feynman lecture.
Here are the standard books as far as I'm aware and confident in, along with some opinions.
For classical mechanics, the standards are Landau+Lifshitz or Goldstein. I used Goldstein, which is nice because the relevant material for quantum is contained in chapters 1,2,8. But Goldstein is pretty bad so I'd use LL instead. An unknown book that's very good is Calkin, but its perspective might be too high at this stage.
For electricity and magnetism, the standard undergrad book is Griffiths, the standard graduate book is Jackson. They are both good. Though I haven't really needed much of Jackson.
For special relativity there is no standard but I highly recommend Schutz's general relativity book. Great discussion of both special relativity and tensors and how physicists use them.
For quantum mechanics the standard undergrad book is Griffiths, the graduate book is Sakurai. Both are bad in different ways. Griffiths is too basic and Sakurai died before actually writing the book(this shows). I recommend using Shankar and Cohen-Tannoudji instead. Although pieces of Sakurai are good but just not as a whole.
For quantum field theory the standard book for particle physics is Peskin+Schroeder to start, and Weinberg for a full treatment. They are good. Some other books are Srednicki, Zee(mostly bad), Lahiri/Pal(easy), Tong(notes, easy), Mandl/Shaw(old), Ryder(bad). I don't know much about condensed matter so I'm not sure if Zinn-Justin is standard but it is very good.
For general relativity the standard is MTW or Wald. They are both good, my preference is Wald.