Introduction to Elementary Particles

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1. colechristensenJul 2026
   These are books to train physicists, accessable-ish to a math heavy engineering undergraduate degree holder. The insights above are my own and extractable from this material but not necessarily stated out loud (unless I'm unconsciously plagiarizing which is entirely possible)

   * David Griffiths - Introduction to Elementary Particles

   * Chris Quigg - Gauge Theories of the Strong, Weak, and Electromagnetic Interactions

   And the wonderful Richard Behiel's videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iu74b5iCuQ

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2. photon_linesJul 2025
   Energy and momentum are always conserved in EVERY physical process. We can distinguish three types of collisions: “sticky” ones, in which the kinetic energy decreases (typically, it is converted into heat); “explosive” ones, where the kinetic energy increases; and elastic ones, in which the kinetic energy is conserved. Since the total energy (rest plus kinetic) is always conserved, it follows that rest energy (and hence also mass) increases in a sticky collision, decreases in an explosive collision, and is unchanged in an elastic collision. The resulting black hole in other words would have way more of a mass than 2M since you're talking about a 'sticky' collision in the above instance. You can see an example of why this is in Griffiths' text (Introduction to Elementary Particles (which I highly recommend)) -- page 101 contains a great example of what happens to the mass of particles in 'sticky' collisions: https://www.hlevkin.com/hlevkin/90MathPhysBioBooks/Physics/Q...
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3. photon_linesJun 2024
   Sure - like I said, it's hard for me to say what my favorite is without naming a category, but since we're on the topic of Electromagnetism I'll stick to physics and recommend 1) Introduction to Elementary Particles by Griffiths (best into to standard model in particle physics) and 2) QED by Richard Feynman. QED btw is very well done and literally shows you the 'algorithm' behind standard particle physics and does so in a clear and unambiguous manner - really an amazing work by Feynman.
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4. photon_linesMay 2022
   Great introductory books along with videos:

     - Mathematics and Its History (John Stillwell)
     - Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics (William Dunham)
     - Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking (Roger B. Nelsen)
     - The Mathematical Universe: An Alphabetical Journey Through the Great Proofs, Problems, and Personalities (William Dunham)
     - Odds & Ends: Introducing Probability & Decision with a Visual Emphasis (Jonathan Weisberg)
     - Introduction to Probability (Joseph K. Blitzstein, Jessica Hwang)
     - The Secret Life of Equations: The 50 Greatest Equations and How They Work (Richard Cochrane)
     - Euler's Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology (David S. Richeson)
     - 3Blue1Brown Essence of Linear Algebra: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab 
     - 3Blue1Brown Differential Equations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNPOjrT6KVlfJuKtYTftqH6 
     - Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior (Ralph Abraham, Christopher Shaw)
     - Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (Rudolf Rucker)
     - 3Blue1Brown Essence of Calculus: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDMsr9K-rj53DwVRMYO3t5Yr 
     - Calculus for the Practical Man (J.E. Thompson)
     - Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus (Harry M. Schey)
     - Who Is Fourier? a Mathematical Adventure
     - Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone (John C. Baez, Mike Stay)
     - An Illustrated Guide to Relativity (Tatsu Takeuchi)
     - The Mathematics Of Quantum Mechanics (Martin Laforest)
     - A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations (Daniel Fleisch) or if you're also interested in a visual guide, I wrote one as well: https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Guide-to-Maxwells-Equations 
     - Introduction to Elementary Particles (David J. Griffiths)
     - An Invitation to Applied Category Theory: Seven Sketches in Compositionality (Brendan Fong, David I Spivak)
     - Solving Mathematical Problems: A Personal Perspective (Terence Tao)

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5. jrptApr 2022
   Quantum physics is a separate (but related) branch from particle physics so using the slash "quantum/particle" is mixing up two different things - which one do you really want?

   Theoretical Concepts in Physics by Malcolm Longair is a mix of history and physics, by explaining how physicists came to discover their theories. I actually don't think it says much about modern particle physics though. It includes quantum mechanics.

   Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths if you just want particle physics. Griffiths also has an intro book on quantum mechanics.

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6. martincmartinApr 2021
   Quantum Mechanics and the three generations of matter are slightly different. Quantum Mechanics is like Newton's laws at small scales, in that if you know what things are like at time t, and you know all the potentials (forces), it tells you how they evolve. It also tells you what states are physically allowed (e.g. only certain energies for electrons orbiting an atom). You can study QM for years without any real look at the standard model, which is where the three generations come from.

   If you want an undergraduate class in QM, edX has MIT's classes on line:

   https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:MITx+8.04.1x+3T201...

   If you want a textbook, Griffth's "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" is the standard answer. It's very much a "shut up and calculate" book, you'll learn how to compute expected values of commutators without much intuition for what they mean.

   Update: Others point out Griffth's "Introduction to Elementary Particles", read their recommendations, sounds like the way to go.

   If don't want to spend 12 hours a week for 3 months and still not have learned much about the 3 generations, then ... I don't know, maybe QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter? I don't know if it has the 3 generations, but it only assumes high school math, yet gets into the quantum version of electricity and magnetism.

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