Ask HN: How to Study Physics as an Adult?

Posted by keepamovin on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @05:14AM
from the ask-hn dept.

Any great video series or audio books? Exercise and math are important so I guess getting a good text book is solid advice for eventual mastery, but my immediate goal is just to understand a lot of the concepts and dynamics that have been discovered, and that folks who studied physics at undergrad level would be familiar with.

( 4 comments | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How to Study Physics as an Adult? by tcascais on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @06:14AM (#43088280)

Books are so poorly written that they are only useful because of the exercises, table of contents and as a consulting guide to see relevant equations and images. They could easily be 1/3 the size and have the same impact. For concepts, I only use AI.

And probably openstax.org is enough anyway, in terms of books. They do a better job for free that most publishers with lots of recommendations that charge hundreds. Then you have a lot of exercises provided by some american colleges that I assume will also be enough.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How to Study Physics as an Adult? by fabianholzer on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @06:46AM (#43088464)

Susan Rigetti has written a guide for autodidactical studies, that might be helpful for this aim: https://www.susanrigetti.com/physics

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How to Study Physics as an Adult? by keepamovin on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @07:23AM (#43088704)

Thank you!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How to Study Physics as an Adult? by zfg on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @08:24AM (#43089172)

These two books by Sean Carroll might be good starting points. They're more technical than the usual popular science books but they assume no prior knowledge beyond high school algebra:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/biggestideas/

[ Parent | on HN ]