Exoplanet said:
Hello everyone; hopefully the title was sufficiently descriptive. Essentially, I'm trying to learn physics. I've been looking through various college physics textbooks, and while some of the problems make sense to me, most of them don't, and I believe it is because I lack the foundation in the math.
I would advise that you learn to appreciate first Physics but not to learn it with math straight ahead. Learn the concepts and admire the beauty of Physics. Take quantum physics for example, isn't it beautiful and so interesting that electrons can be at different places at once or pop out randomly from nowhere. You don't have to understand the math right away, but in knowing the beauty of its concept, one can appreciate it strongly than a person who jump straight ahead into math. As you can remember, and it is I think far more simpler than the modern scientific method, guessing is first, prior to calculating the consequences, then after those consequences the guess must agree with the environment, that is called experiment. Now, a brilliant scientist does not jump into a cliff of incomprehension, rather he approach it with a lot of contemplation and appreciation to the problem. This is exactly why I feel at contempt to schools, for inducing that science is about memorization rather than understanding first the concepts at hand.
Exoplanet said:
In fact, I often lack the foundation even in the algebra. I had a pretty poor math education throughout high school, which doesn't help matters.
Then we are on the same boat. I hate high school so much because it only presents the concepts that I need to memorize and then grade me for not memorizing it. I don't care about memorizing the slope intercept form or the quadratic formula, instead present it to me why is it important? How does it apply to the natural world? Or even the most important question of all, What is mathematics? Then after that comprehension then the concepts of mathematics becomes intrinsic to our way of thinking because we understand it and appreciate it.
Now with my advice, I am actually doing it right now, and I want to share it to my common fellows who experience the same thing. If you can't grasp algebra, study about arithmetic. If you can't grasp trigonometry, learn about algebra and geometry. If you can't grasp calculus, study algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. Know also that mathematics is not the same thing as physics, but what they do is to help one another. Know that mathematics, is a symbolic representation of the universe. It explains the universe through symbols as we call as numbers to quantify it or make exact measurements.
Finally with the books, I advice old algebra books instead of modern ones since modern algebra books tend to be verbose while not explaining the importance of it. I would advise the series of books namely: Arithmetic for the practical man, Algebra for the practical man, Trigonometry for the practical man, Calculus for the practical man, all written by James Thompson, they are all available on the internet so just google them. I would advice learning arithmetic first and please do not tell me that you absolutely master it, cause I am willing to bet, and I maybe more likely to be false, that you don't know why arithmetic is important to algebra and that they are really just the same thing. So when learning I would advice is to be humble to yourself and learn the basics. Secondly, I would advise reading Euclid's Elements by Euclid to which is the Green Lion press edition.
Other than that, cheers and good luck to us both!
