Conceptual physics

What Hacker News says

1. akasakahakadaJan 2024
   Hi I am Textbook Master. There are 2 books that fit your desire. You can just read from first page to the back without doing any exercise and appreciate the physical world. Which none of (literally) other books can provide the same experience.

   1. Conceptual Physics

   High school level. Talk about physics concepts and their manifestation in daily life/the world around us.

   2. Matter and Interaction

   Non standard college level physics that fuse contemporary advancement on theory into old school classical physics. There is no rough transition from classical to modern physics in this book since authors successfully merged both in the same narration.

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2. mardiyahApr 2023
   Without knowing what is your current level it is very difficult to suggest any book.

   If you are talking about textbooks, it really depends on what topic you want to learn (Algebra, Calculus, Mechanics, Electromagnetism…).

   If you want a generalist one, many colleges' choice has proven it's:

   Physics for Scientists and Engineers

   (the latest Edition is better of course) by Paul A. Tipler (Author), Gene Mosca

   Conceptual Physics by Hewitt

   http://www.conceptualphysics.com/

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3. gunnardeMay 2018
   I fell in love with physics by reading this guy: Paul G. Hewitt https://www.amazon.com/Conceptual-Physics-High-School-Progra...
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4. minthdApr 2015
   For textbooks, conceptual physics is really great, intuitive physics book, without the math:

   http://www.amazon.com/Conceptual-Physics-9th-Paul-Hewitt/dp/...

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5. thebiglebrewskiMar 2020
   I was interested in this too as someone who's worked in web apps the last 8-10 years and was super inspired by the SpaceX Falcon Heavy landing (science fiction is now science fact!) I looked into graduate programs, especially those online, and found the JHU Space Systems Engineering program. The prerequisites for THAT program are a year of college Calculus and a year of college Physics. I'm currently taking that, "year", which is really just Physics I and II and Calculus I and II at Thomas Edison State University. They've been doing distance learning for decades.

   The courses aren't super cheap, they're around $2,000 each, but having classmates, a mentor, deadlines, and a legit program to structure my learning around has been so helpful. Not to mention that my grades are legit for pre-reqs if I do want to go the full grad school route. I'm almost done with the I level courses and started the II level courses 2/3 of the way through the I.

   I think a lot of people on here might say my approach is kind of basic (I see people recommending working differential equations or something to start), but I've found it really enlightening to start from the very beginning and things are starting to get challenging as I get into the second level, especially with Calculus. Maybe if you just looked up Physics I and II and Calc I and II curriculums, and got the textbooks (Conceptual Physics by Paul G Hewitt and Calculus: Early Transcendentals by Robert Smith) you could do a lot of the same exercises.

   Hope that's helpful!

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