Supplementary books for undergraduate physics

AI Thread Summary
A student in their fifth semester of a physics bachelor's program expresses dissatisfaction with their current timetable, particularly finding solid-state physics unengaging. They seek recommendations for books that can enhance their understanding of the basics and spark interest in physics, mentioning familiarity with "A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations" and "Div, Grad, Curl, and All That." They inquire about similar resources for tensor algebra and any fun or niche physics textbooks. In response, some participants question the student's choice of major given their lack of enthusiasm, suggesting that they might consider changing majors. However, the student clarifies that changing majors is not a common practice in their German university system. They reiterate their desire for supplemental reading to make their current studies more engaging, with "Feynman's Lectures on Physics" recommended as a potential resource.
xiMy
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Hi guys.
I have reached 5.th semester of my bachelors degree and I am not too thrilled with my timetable. I already glimpsed into some solid-state physics introductions and find it beyond boring.
Advanced quantum theory will be ok I guess.
What I am looking for are either books that will help to get a better understanding of the basics
I already know of
A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations
and
Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus
-Is there something similar for tensor algebra too?


or sth that can arouse interest in physics in generel.

Do you know of any fun, unusual, niche physics textbooks?

Thank you very much for your help :)
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Well, if nobody else will ask, I will: why are you majoring in physics if you find it so boring? If you think it's boring when you are still in the stage where you are learning something new every day, how boring will it be when you are working full time on a single problem day in and day out? Do you really want to spend your life like that?

Anybody smart enough to get as far as you have in a physics curriculum can find the answer to your OP with ten minutes of searching this site, or with Google. The answer to your implied question is, change majors before it's too late to do so.
 
I am not quite sure what changing majors is suppossed to mean.
I am not studying in the US but in Germany. And here you have to apply for your subject in the undergraduate( bachelor) degree. Changing your subject doesn't really happen.
I just said that solid state physics appears quite boring to me and I am wondering if someone could recommend some "fun physics" or basics which could help to broaden my basic knowledge. I don't think that physics is too boring for me in general only that that semester seems quite dry.
Does that make sense?
 
Well then, the standard answer for students who want supplemental reading is "Feynman's Lectures on Physics." Everything else is a matter of taste; you might search Amazon.com for a subject you want to read about, and read the customer reviews to find one that seems to suit you.
 
The book is fascinating. If your education includes a typical math degree curriculum, with Lebesgue integration, functional analysis, etc, it teaches QFT with only a passing acquaintance of ordinary QM you would get at HS. However, I would read Lenny Susskind's book on QM first. Purchased a copy straight away, but it will not arrive until the end of December; however, Scribd has a PDF I am now studying. The first part introduces distribution theory (and other related concepts), which...
I've gone through the Standard turbulence textbooks such as Pope's Turbulent Flows and Wilcox' Turbulent modelling for CFD which mostly Covers RANS and the closure models. I want to jump more into DNS but most of the work i've been able to come across is too "practical" and not much explanation of the theory behind it. I wonder if there is a book that takes a theoretical approach to Turbulence starting from the full Navier Stokes Equations and developing from there, instead of jumping from...
Back
Top