Is it possible to self teach physics

It's therefore essential people are in the right social environment. So my answer would be to find the right social environment to make things easier for yourself, such as studying part time at night school, joining a physics club, forum--as you've done here. I really do think people underestimate the importance of the correct social environment when studying physics because of the support it provides and the warding off of depression from social isolation.

I would recommend starting with calculus and maybe linear algebra. A basic understanding of the properties of functions, derivatives, integrals and especially differential equations is vital.

Vectors, matrices, tensors, different coordinate systems and their metrics, vector calculus are equally important. I would also take up a book on general classical physics, a good reference for that is Physics for scientists and engineers by Randall D. It's a big book, but it starts from the very basics and it goes all the way up to Special Relativity and QM although you'll probably want to study those topics more in-depth in other, more specialized books.

From then on, analytical mechanics would probably be a good choice of topic. Learning about the lagrangian, Hamilton formalism, That should give you a nice idea of the beauty in theoretical physics as well.

And from then on I think you can go pretty much any way you want. But you're not there yet, the maths comes before the physics. Good luck! First and the most important thing to do is to study calculus. I recommend the 2 textbooks by Apostol. Then, study classical mechanics Taylor is good and electrodynamics Griffith. They are basically calculus.

If you understand linear algebra, read Griffith book in Quantum mechanics You don't need anything outside calculus and linear algebra to read this book Classical mechanics ,Electrodynamics and Quantum mechanics constitute the foundation of physics. After that , you can learn whatever you want in physics or math. Be sure ,to solve all the problems contained in the textbooks you read. First and the most important thing to do is: don't get Apostol's Calculus.

Unless you want to go into math as well, I don't see the purpose of getting that book when you want to self-study physics.

Second, I am shocked that the previous commenter said that you only need calculus and linear algebra for Griffiths' QM when he said in his book's preface that you also need to be familiar with the complex variables and fourier series.

You need more math than just calculus and linear algebra. If you want to make something practical or experiment then don't agonize over the math or you'll end up learning math alone and you won't understand the whole point of doing physics. Learn math on an as-needed basis and stick to the basic undergraduate physics literature.

Don't be scared. Solving problems as opposed to just reading stuff will greatly quicken the learning process. I've begun a self-study schedule on my own. I began with a review of algebra and geometry and have now begun calculus. I'm basically trying to follow a typical college physics curriculum. I think most of the above comments are on target.

I want to get the math down first, then on to classical physics Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? These are things that are very well complemented by building numerical models and I think it would be tough to build those models without that understanding of concepts like that in the first place , but it's important to recognize that it's very difficult to skip directly to the numerical models stage.

As I said, I think the parent covered that, but just wanted to try to make it a little more explicit. I've been taking a similar approach and pursuing this topic by getting into Computational Fluid Dynamics and understanding physics in code first, then trying to bridge the code to the more rigorous mathematical representation. This is after I tried reading a bunch of physics books and, while interesting, I couldn't really get my head around "Ok, so how would I program something like that?

But there's a big market behind CFD too, so you could do worse in picking something with some directly practical application. This sounds interesting!

Could you talk a bit more about what sources you used to find problems and learn from that translated well to this approach? The Applications chapter in the "Introduction to High Performance Scientific Computing" book [0] it's freely available as a PDF has some chapters dedicated to relevant computational physics problems, i.

Math for Game Programmers - Jorge Rodriguez. There is a playlist on youtube. Game engine implements only a tiny slice of physics science, and even that in very distorted smoke-and-mirrors way in order to make it run in realtime.

You learn more about computational optimizations, numerical methods and linear algebra, while physics is mostly elementary level. For example, all of optics is stuffed into highly optimized and simplified rendering pipeline and "physically based rendering" is anything but. Personally, I would look into the trying to watch the lectures from Walter Lewin--Walter is a fantastic orator and has a really great mad-scientist persona that is really captivating.

I found this material to be the most helpful out there. I'll also point out that I emailed the professors Lewin, and others and was pleased to receive a warm and helpful response on several occasions.

I hope these are as helpful for your learning as they were for mine. Once, you are able to complete the video lectures here, OCW has a massive amount of content for some of the more advanced courses that aren't in video format. In my experience, going through these video lectures and some of the mathematics lectures should set you up well to be able to comprehend even the most advanced content across field theory and string theory.

It's better in quality than what you would get at almost all universities, including MIT itself! Going through the series 8. I assume you already know all the relevant math background. If you prefer lecture notes, I imagine the best thing is to go through David Tong's lecture notes [0] from start to finish, as these cover almost the entire Cambridge undergraduate curriculum very clearly. If you want textbooks, at least in America, the books one uses for these courses are pretty standardized, and Fowler's blog post lays out these standard choices.

For more advanced books, I have a pretty extensive bibliography in the front matter of my personal lecture notes [1]. Unfortunately most of the books I could suggest are Hungarian, but there are some resources in English for hard physics problems. KoMaL [1] is a high school competition, students have one month to solve five physics problems they can solve more, but only the five best is counted each month.

Unfortunately older archives are only in Hungarian, but this is an endless resource, you can come back for new problems each month. Ortvay [2] is a yearly take-home, one week long problem solving competition for University students. The problems have varying difficulty, but they are clearly marked in this regard. There are separate hints and full solutions.

Areading on March 26, prev next [—]. Physics is hard! Sometimes it takes a few days of thinking to solve a problem. Make sure you fully understand each step and don't let yourself skim. It's perhaps worth being aware that when Feynman initially gave his course at Caltech, most of the students either did extremely well or completely bombed the exam. The middle ground kinda disappeared. So if you read the Feynman lectures and struggle to understand his perspective from the first few chapters, it may be best to give up sooner than later and move onto other sources.

Fantastic material! That being said I'd recommend to have several alternative textbooks for every subject at hand. Whenever stuck - one should switch to another and try a different take. I second Feynman lectures! It is a delightful introduction to physics. The Feynman lextures are must if someone wants to develop intuitions in physics. Volume 3 quantum mechanics is a bit difficult for new learners or undergraduates, but I absolutely recommend reading vol.

Myrmornis on March 26, prev next [—]. I've also been self-studying physics recently. Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics is so cool - I highly recommend it, especially to someone with a programming background. It's one of the main reasons I switched from CS to physics in college. JabavuAdams on March 26, prev next [—]. It doesn't get lost in math, but also doesn't oversimplify. I've read a lot of Classical Mechanics books, and this is my favourite for a solid foundation for university-level physics.

The first half volume is Mechanics, and the second volume is on electricity and magnetism. So, that's a typical first-year two term course in physics. Don't listen to this! Just learn the math as you go along -- it's much more efficient. The have to learn X first puts up unnecessary roadblocks and chances to get discouraged.

You can always circle back for more elegant treatments once you math up. It becomes obvious. Koshkin on March 26, parent next [—]. JabavuAdams on March 26, parent prev next [—]. Did you have basic physics in undergrad? Foundation can mean a lot of things. It can mean having a really solid grasp of how Newtonian mechanics is put together. It can mean having a solid grasp of doing experimental physics on classical systems. It can mean having a mathematical understanding of symplectic manifolds and quantization.

It can mean replacing your naive physical model of motion in your hind brain with a learned, Newtonian model. If you've never done any lab work, actually getting a stopwatch and conducting experiments with balls rolling down inclined planes and the like can be You will need problems to work, otherwise anything you do is superficial.

The Russians were great about building this kind of collection. If you can give some more detail, it will help us direct you better. You might try Feynman's Lectures on Physics. They're available free online [0] or you can get a nicely bound boxed set. I was interested in this too as someone who's worked in web apps the last years and was super inspired by the SpaceX Falcon Heavy landing science fiction is now science fact! They've been doing distance learning for decades.

Not to mention that my grades are legit for pre-reqs if I do want to go the full grad school route. I think a lot of people on here might say my approach is kind of basic I see people recommending working differential equations or something to start , but I've found it really enlightening to start from the very beginning and things are starting to get challenging as I get into the second level, especially with Calculus.

Hope that's helpful! I'm a current PhD student in physics. Here's a bit of an oddball idea, that might be complementary. The remainder is just about constraining the math to reflect the possibilities that seem to be actually realizable in nature. Of course there's a lot more to physics than is described here, and you'll want to study the particular phenomena that emerge -- that's the whole point.

But I think that given your background, setting this perspective will allow you to ask the right questions when you approach a new topic, and allow you to go out of the normal order. Reasonably complicated systems described in the language of some theory are generally intractable to analyze exactly, or to draw general conclusions from, so you need to throw something away to make progress. Figuring out the right limit is the same as figuring out what details you can throw away while preserving the core phenomenon you're interested in.

I think the guide is ok, but I actually believe some of the things that are in the graduate section should be in the undergraduate section. One thing that is important: Everything starts with classical mechanics. Newtownian phsyics is the base for everything and you will never advance without knowing this really well. That said, in my undergrad mechanics class in my first term as a physics student, we started out with classical Newtonian mechanics and then quickly moved on to the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics.

I don't see why that should be something reserved for graduate classes. Further, since you're not a math or physics student, I assume you will quickly reach the limits of your math education. Things that are required for properly understanding the theoretical foundations even just mechanics are: - n-dimensional calculus think Tensors, Gradients, divergences, Laplacians, etc.

Actually solving the problem in whatever resources you're using will, though. They take much, much longer than just reading a book, however. I discovered the post by Susan Fowler a few years ago and really liked it. I studied physics and teach physics and math at a high school and am working through the list of proposed books and others [1] again, just to stay up-to-date : Other ressources: brilliant. Leonard Susskind's "The theoretical minimum" series.

Hasz on March 26, prev next [—]. I would like to add one of my favorite mathematical "cookbooks" -- "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" by Mary Boas. Bad Integrals? Tensor Analysis? Fancy functions and special polynomials? PDE tricks? Boas has solutions!

Methods are practically explained and succinct. It's my favorite book to brush up on a old technique or learn some new methods. Wolfram's Mathworld is also a good reference, but not as much of a learning tool. This is the book we started to use in my Mathematical Methods in Physics course.

Might pull it back out and do that. For a 'strong foundation', you'll want to look at a first-year textbook and make sure your math skills are up to it. Use something with an eraser on it. Old joke from Anonymous: "Theoretical physicists aren't very expensive -- they only need a blackboard and an eraser.

Compare that to a philosopher -- much the same but without the eraser. The other comments are great! Great resources and points. I think what is crucially important is to have someone to talk to. To engage with another human being in a discussion, at every step of the learning curve. I studied physics in Germany , an then did my PhD In hindsight, I must conclude that being forced to discuss things with other people at every step was what taught me the most, was long-term the most rewarding.

About my own level of understanding, about judging my abilities, about how to actually solve problems. Examples from my time studying: - discussion among two people: trying to grasp and crack the same exercise - discussion in the larger study group 5 people : when helping each other out, having to admit not having understood a certain thing, and specifically trying to address the "wait, I don't get this yet"s everyone has.

I mean it! After all, physics is science, and in science you can only contribute in a meaningful way when you understand the mental model of your fellow scientists reasonably well, when you "speak the same language". I understand that this might be in conflict with "self-studying physics". If it is then it's important to be aware of it, possibly to try really hard to compensate for it to find someone to do this together with, maybe!

If you can find Walter Lewin's courses online, they can get you through the first years of physics. The main way to learn physics though, on your own or in a program, is by doing problems and labs. You can start by doing the coursework you find for an established class. Another is by working through problems in a text book.

As for labs, hacking together what you can is both valuable and rewarding. A few examples are estimating absolute zero, measuring the coefficient of friction, exploring momentum with ball bearings. A few other things that I have found work for me. First, work towards a goal. Whether that be to calculate the orbit of a planet, understand quantum tunneling, or estimate a dynamic process. The second is to take the time follow thoughts as far as you can, using the social communities and resources available on the web quora, reddit, etc.

I see a lot of people recommending Halliday and Resnick, but I used Serway- Physics for Scientists and Engineers in college and that textbook was one of the best I felt I ever read. Its been quite some time since I was in college though, maybe its fallen out of favor? No, Serway's totally fine! But Halliday, Resnick, and Krane was written for honors freshman physics courses, so it's just kicked up a notch relative to the other intro books.

There are some general concepts that make frequent appearances, it's worth looking out for them because they can help form connections between different areas. Some examples: 1. Wave-like phenomena and the wave equation.

This comes up in all kinds of mechanical and em systems, plus the schroedinger equation itself. Decomposition of functions into orthogonal sets of other functions, its not just a mathematical trick, but a powerful way of reconceptualizing things. Approximations and expansions are everywhere. Always keep in mind what it is youre solving for and look at its sensitivity to other properties of the system.

Is a great starting point. There are also free online courses for that. Jun8 on March 26, prev next [—]. For me, it was understanding precisely how nuclear weapons work so I have to run many geometrical and hydrodynamic calculations.

For you it might be something else. Physics is fractal. Best of luck! I have a list of resources [1] I found to be helpful when I was doing my physics undergrad. I can highly recommend MIT's courses. Learning physics can be tough at times if you're doing it alone as it's common to get stuck on a hard problem and need to talk it through with someone else. If you ever want to discuss any problems feel free to reach out to me see the contact page on my website.

This is amazing, thank you! I will most definitely take you up on your offer! After decades of successful and unsuccessful self study, the thing I have found for myself is that I have to have an end goal in mind of what I want to do with the knowledge. Then it's usually pretty obvious how to work backwards and figure out how to get there.

I've been tremendously unsuccessful when trying to learn just with the goal of learning. It's much harder then to quantify what is good enough, and just end up with a very surface level understanding even after putting in a lot of work. That is a good list. I also suggest looking into Newton's Principa, there is so much cleaverness in that book. This is an extremely good site especially the physics part. I go back to this page quite often, whenever I want to start learning something new.

Here is a guide by G. Looks incredibly comprehensive. Has anyone done similar work for other topics? FuckButtons on March 26, prev next [—]. From that you can get into Hamiltonian mechanics and from there you can start to really grapple with quantum mechanics.

Jugurtha on March 26, prev next [—]. The most difficult thing will be getting your math up to speed so you really need to dual track the physics and math. The Landau books are good but assume probably more math than typical college text in mechanics, em, qm, etc. Probably a bit down the road for you if following typical curriculums perhaps not others the MIT 80X series by Zwiebach were good.

I highly recommend Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. Takes you all the way from classical through modern physics, and introduces all the necessary math. Penrose's is a terrible book for a beginner to try to learn from.

It's a weird mix of relatively simple stuff and one you can't possibly appreciate if you do not have a degree in math or physics. It has a tendency to dwell on simple and familiar things and then rush through rather involved topics that are no doubt something a beginner would not have a chance to be prepared for. I don't know of anybody who's ever learned new stuff from that book. It literally zooms from addition and subtraction to fiber bundles in a few hundred pages. That's simply not enough to pick up anything but the bare intuition, and certainly not enough to do any nontrivial calculations.

The only people I know who enjoyed the book at all were those who already knew the stuff in it, but in that case the book was pointless!

In general I think actual textbooks or course materials the OP mentioned MIT Open Courseware, which I think is a good set of course materials--full disclosure: I'm an MIT alum are better for learning physics, or any scientific field, than pop science books, however high quality.

That said, if you are going to read pop science books, I don't think Michio Kaku is a good choice. He is much too prone to treat way-out speculations as though they were established physics.

New Moon Just Dro Mystery Meat. Yesterday on futurism. Keep up. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to keep in touch with the subjects shaping our future. Because they must fulfill a much more important democratic mandate, to ensure that every citizen is equal, and to not let anybody be any more equal than anybody else.

In these conditions, how hard should they make it for people to be recognized as qualified scientists? Should it be easy for everybody, or hard for everybody? In order to be fair and democratic, the condition needs to fit the majority of people. But how hard is it for the majority of people to become qualified scientists?

For most people, such a goal would be very ambitious indeed. It clearly requires a huge lot of work, training and exercise.

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But then, the minority of young people having the natural quality for being the best future scientists, are also obliged to go through this, no matter if it does more harm than good to their real potential as future scientists. Because becoming official scientists must also be a very ambitious goal for their life too. So young geniuses will be kindly advised to sacrifice their youth, to submit themselves many years of their life as mental slaves to the system, waking up early every morning, arriving always on time at the lesson, spending most of their days in that training of trying to win the race of writing speed against their teacher, and so on.

And for which future privilege should the future best thinkers of the country, the most talented and intellectually creative people, see it worth to go through all these sacrifices?