Physics textbook recommendation for young gifted child

[Merlin3189]

Thanks to both Mark and Vela, but I'm not trying to hijack this thread about books.
I was probably wrong to branch by commenting on someone's response to GMax's obiter dictum remark about work.
I think his point was not that he (or I) wanted an explanation of why work is <what you said in nice Latex>, rather that this is the sort of question that arises for curious people, and "tie physics to observations" might be a useful thing to do. I just wanted to support his view, because I'm such a person for whom squiggles on paper mean little unless I can relate them to practical experiences.

 

[berkeman]

In other words, none of us knows whether this child even exists.

So I think our best advice should be:

"Have the child read this PF thread, and then do an Amazon search with "Look Inside" to find books that they like. If they are bright enough that's the best strategy for multiple reasons.

 

[pointlessgomboc]

They've gone through calculus (Essential Calculus by Stewart) but haven't had a formal physics class yet (but a lot of pop-physics reading). I recommended Thinking Physics followed by Conceptual Physics by Hewitt, followed by a meaty calc-based book like Krane or YF, but I wonder if an easy calculus-based book like Knight would be more appropriate instead of conceptual physics. What do you think?

Personally, I find young and freedman a great textbook for beginners to calculus, whereas if you have a strong foundation in calculus you can try morin; there are 2 books published by David Morin I believe, the easier one is referred to as 'baby morin' usually, which mainly covers classical mechanics, whereas the more advanced one goes into deeper topics is often referred to as 'daddy morin', either one is great for people who want to do more practice questions on physics, but disclaimer: they are not meant as textbooks, but rather almost pure practices booklets with detailed explained solutions, so I would recommend using it with a textbook like young and freedman for reference.

Additionally, there are lots of awesome physics courses available online, and the ones I would recommend are those on the MIT opencourseware website, such as courses 8.01 (Classical mechanics), 8.02 (Electricity and magnetism), and 8.03 (Vibrations and waves), and if you want, 18.01 for single variable calculus to a relatively deep level. Hopefully this is of help :)

MITOCW website: https://ocw.mit.edu/