Advice On Self Study Choices for Physics

[MiloBoots]

Hi everyone,

I am currently a physics and applied maths major in Australia. I am studying part time as I am also an athlete and spend a lot of my time traveling and training. Because I am studying part time, I have been self studying alongside my subjects and on the semester breaks and while I travel in order to keep up with whatever interests me at the time. I have a current dilemma where I need to choose a topic of self study, but I have a few options to choose from and I'm not sure which order I should start. My options are:

• Classical Mechanics - John R. Taylor
• Introduction to Electrodynamics - David Griffiths
• Quantum Mechanics Volumes 1 & 2 - Cohen Tannoudji & Diu Laloe
• Principles of Quantum Mechanics - R. Shankar

I have done subjects at university that cover all of these topics, but I want to go through them in more depth to get a better foundation in my understanding. My opinion would be to go through them in the order that I listed above, but I'm taking my opinion with a grain of salt as I'm not too wise in having this type of foresight in what to do. Aside from my courses, the only other text I have been through somewhat thoroughly is the quantum physics book by Eisberg and Resnik.

I look forward to reading your advice!

 

[Daniel Gallimore]

Hi everyone,

I am currently a physics and applied maths major in Australia. I am studying part time as I am also an athlete and spend a lot of my time traveling and training. Because I am studying part time, I have been self studying alongside my subjects and on the semester breaks and while I travel in order to keep up with whatever interests me at the time. I have a current dilemma where I need to choose a topic of self study, but I have a few options to choose from and I'm not sure which order I should start. My options are:

• Classical Mechanics - John R. Taylor
• Introduction to Electrodynamics - David Griffiths
• Quantum Mechanics Volumes 1 & 2 - Cohen Tannoudji & Diu Laloe
• Principles of Quantum Mechanics - R. Shankar

I have done subjects at university that cover all of these topics, but I want to go through them in more depth to get a better foundation in my understanding. My opinion would be to go through them in the order that I listed above, but I'm taking my opinion with a grain of salt as I'm not too wise in having this type of foresight in what to do. Aside from my courses, the only other text I have been through somewhat thoroughly is the quantum physics book by Eisberg and Resnik.

I look forward to reading your advice!

Personally, I would read Griffiths before Taylor. It is fun to see how quantum mechanics takes the familiar electrodynamics and turns it on its head, but I think it is more useful to come into quantum mechanics immediately after having read a detailed analysis of angular momentum and the Hamiltonian, which you would get from a classical mechanics text.