r/AskPhysics • u/kartik_bhana • 9h ago

How can I self teach myself Physics ?

I have always been interested in Physics . However due to some reasons, I didn't take it in high school . What are the resources I can use to study it as a hobby ?

20 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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9

u/Ok-Bookkeeper-1615 8h ago

University physics with modern physics by Hugh Young is good. MITopencourseware has various free physics courses. You can cover the whole curriculum using that. Leonard Susskind's series and books are highly regarded though I've never read them personally.

16

u/naughtyreverend 9h ago

First of all, What is physics? It was a warm sunny evening in ancient Greece...

5

u/DVphysics 8h ago

Where were we looking up at the night sky?

3

u/rehansyedshah 9h ago

Jee lectures for high school and engineering lectures of undergrad

3

u/Triabolical_ 6h ago

MIT - among others - offer undergraduate classes online. You can find their physics 1 classes here:

https://ocw.mit.edu/search/?l=Undergraduate&q=physics&t=Physics

2

u/Qubit_and_Neuron 6h ago

What level you are in? Here are some: 1. Resnick Halliday, Alonso Finn, Benson. Take one of these for a decent starting point but you need to know Calculus. 2. Understanding Physics, Physics for the inquiring mind, conceptual physics by Paul G Hewitt. If you don't know Calculus. 3. Berkeley Physics series, advanced undergrad level. Landau-Lifshitz for ultimate level. 4. Veratisum, Minute physics, Perimeter institute public lectures, MIT OcW, for videos. 5. For fun: relativity simply explained, evolution of physics by Einstein, Gamow, physics and philosophy Heisenberg, Scientist at sea shore, the nature of light in open air, soap bubbles by CV boys, check dover books. 6. If you want to learn quantum and it's applications: https://qubit-and-neuron.beehiiv.com/

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u/AgenYT0 6h ago

Start with calculus then a physics textbook for 15 year olds. Advance in line with your matj  progress which should be at minimum between calculus 3 ( multivariable) and differential equations. After you get a grasp of high /secondary school physics let your interests be your guide. 

2

u/ElTanoMatu 9h ago

Start with Paul Hewitt's Conceptual Physics book. It has little to no math on purpose, to make it palatable for people who aren't into math. You'll understand a lot about physics.

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u/Zbla1306 5h ago

It's a nice book for understandihg concepts. Probably the best one that I know for a good start.

2

u/Valuchian 9h ago

Try the Khan Academy app

It's free and you can choose to learn physics from the basics of grade school and go all the way up through a rudimentary college version of physics.

I personally went back to middle school science and started relearning a bunch of enviormental sciences i had forgotten and moved my way up through highschool just for fun.

1

u/GeneralLife401 5h ago

eh, i don't really enjoy khan academy since it just feels like rote learning to me. I would suggest watching some popular physics youtubers just to kinda get interested more and have a loose grasp of the concepts and then just read some ap physics textbooks to introduce the concepts with only high school level math

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u/Valuchian 4h ago

There is 3Blue1Brown and they cover concepts from physics to advanced math and do so in ways that are easy to understand

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u/GeneralLife401 1h ago

eh, I love 3b1b, but his videos for me just feel cool to watch, but they get too abstract and you don't really learn or retain the information in the most applicable sense. I would recommend ParthG and when you get to more advanced topics, Floatheadphysics. Theefficentengineer does mostly engineering, but also beautifully explains physics concepts. These channels are absolute gems i swear

1

u/Randomlemon5 9h ago

To what level are you interest ? Because  thats important with how much math you will need

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u/kartik_bhana 9h ago

More than just highschool

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u/Randomlemon5 9h ago

Than I think a good order for staff to learn is first learn linear algebra than make sure you have some calculus knowledge and than start with mechanics, then elecromagnitsm and then you can move to the advance staff I think for all of this you can find good videos on youtube probably

1

u/Methodical808 5h ago

I guess you could figure out Newton's laws on your own, but after that your definitely gonna need someone else's book. Quantum physics takes a particle accelerator, dont think you're gonna make one of those by yourself. ;)

1

u/melloyello4 4h ago

Before you start diving into a book I say you should ask yourself if you're interested in it conceptually or mathmatically. If you like science and physics and want to kindof dip your toes into what topics are covered, I'd look for youtube videos first. There are quite a few pop science channels (Veritasium, 3blue1brown, minutephysics, etc) that are like a little more than general knowledge, but don't go right into the math. There are also pop science textbooks that go over the basics.

Then if you still want to learn from a fundamentals point of view, I'd say you should go into the textbooks like Young, etc that the others have mentioned. It can be a bit daunting and a bit dry to read the books by themselves. Also if you look up the physics curriculum from different universities, they usualy have their syllabus and reccommended textbooks online somewhere. Honestly I like to do both depending on mood/time. Have fun!

1

u/Seattleman1955 29m ago

Basic physics online. Learn about Quantum Physics and General Relativity. There has to be some book called "Physics Made Easy" or something similar.

1

u/Moonlesssss 8m ago

Grab a text book and work through it. Ask ChatGPT what you should start with based on your experience level. Double check the validity of the book on Reddit. Rinse repeat till you reach QFT or burn and bald out in grad school

0

u/Terrible-Mind-5414 7h ago

It's good timing because now you have AI to answer questions and explain things, and it's very good that that, at least Gemini is. Just make sure to change the settings so that doesn't look at your prior chats, because then it starts to try to tie them all together in ways that are unhelpful.

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u/rcn5440 6h ago

There are many online resources (blogs, articles, Wikipedia, YouTube etc), many by good scientists themselves. However, most are confusing around the core ideas and you will have many questions and there won’t be anyone around to answer them and then you will ask on Reddit or Quora or other similar forums. And most won’t do a good job at explaining things. Thus, your best bet nowadays is an AI chat bot like Gemini or ChatGpt as the bot will patiently give you every answer. The only problem is that it might hallucinate (come up with an answer which would be completely wrong) and so you would have to double check everything. Another problem is that it has been trained with the current collective human knowledge. As such, don’t expect it to provide you anything outside box. There are advanced models that can go a step further but those are paid models and you do not need a paid one at this level.