Contents
This page contains a list of resources that I have used or I am currently using to learn about physics. It includes a list of textbooks that have supplemented my university courses and personal readings. It also includes a list of highly useful videos and lecture series made by physicists, teachers, and content creators.
Textbooks
Here is a list of textbooks that may be helpful to you for your learning. Some of these textbooks were used for the various physics courses that I took at the University of Toronto have used for my courses and personal readings. I studied some of these textbooks as part of physics courses that I took at the University of Toronto hence they have the course code PHY-XXX written under them to give you an idea of their level of difficulty. The rest of the textbooks were used for my own personal readings outside of university.
Classical Mechanics
- J. Taylor, Classical Mechanics
- PHY254 (main textbook)
- D. Morin, Introduction to Classical Mechanics: With Problems and Solutions
- PHY254 and PHY354 (supplemental textbook)
- I really like this book because it has tons and tons of problems and solutions
- L. Landau and E. Lifshitz, Mechanics
- PHY354 (main textbook)
- Landau and Lifshitz published many renowned textbooks in physics, but they are quite dense for beginners
Quantum Mechanics
- R. Shankar, Principles of Quantum Mechanics
- PHY356 (main textbook)
- D. Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
- PHY356 (supplemental textbook)
- I personally love Griffith’s textbooks as they do a great job of being conversational and accessible to beginners while still conveying the important details
Electromagnetism
- D. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics
- PHY250 and PHY350 (main textbook), and PHY450 (supplemental textbook)
- Like his quantum mechanics textbook, I love Griffith’s electrodynamics textbook but it does not contain a detailed discussion of tensors (important for relativistic electrodynamics)
- L. Landau and E. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields
- PHY450 (main textbook)
Special & General Relativity
- S. Carroll, An Introduction to General Relativity: Spacetime and Geometry
- PHY483 (supplemental textbook)
- I highly recommend this book, as Carroll does an amazing job teaching the incredibly intricate subject of general relativity.
Statistical Mechanics
- M. Kardar, Statistical Physics of Particles
- PHY452 (main textbook)
- J. Sethna, Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity
- PHY452 (supplemental textbook)
Quantum Field Theory
- M. Schwartz, Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model
Inspirational physicists
Besides being highly knowledgeable about a subject, I find that amazing teachers embody two additional important qualities: passion and empathy.
The first quality is to be passionate about the subject that is being taught. Physics is often perceived as dry and rigid from the outside. A passionate teacher can make all the difference by revealing the true elegance and beauty in physics, thus inspiring the same sort of passion within their students.
The second quality is to be empathetic. Physics is difficult, there is no question about that. This fact makes a lot of students stray away from the subject when they would otherwise love it if they had put in the effort. A teacher who is empathetic and compassionate towards the struggles faced by beginners can empower their students to become confident and motivated.
For me, there are three physicists in the public sphere who demonstrate these qualities as amazing teachers and who clearly love making physics accessible to anyone who is interested. These three physicists are Richard Feynman, Leonard Susskind, and Sean Carroll.
These three physicists have been a source of inspiration for me, and I highly encourage anyone who is interested in physics to explore the books, lectures, and interviews created by Feynman, Susskind and Carroll.
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was a theoretical physicist who won the Nobel prize in 1965 for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory in general. His passion for teaching and his remarkable ability to explain difficult things in understandable ways made him a household name for every physics student (and every scientist for that matter).
Here is a one-hour interview with Feynman uploaded by BBC on youtube. You can clearly witness the passion radiate out of him!
You can also access the legendary Feynman Lectures published by Caltech here at The Feynman Lectures on Physics. These notes are based on Feynman’s original writings and lectures.
Leonard Susskind
Leonard Susskind is a theoretical physicist at Stanford who laid down many important contributions in string theory. Susskind’s passion for teaching led him to create a huge series of lectures on theoretical physics that are available on Stanford’s youtube channel. I personally love these lecture series and I continue to watch them even after my undergraduate days. The amazing thing about these lectures is that Susskind is able to deliver thorough and detailed explanations to an audience that is primarily composed of people who are not physicists. Here is an example of his series on general relativity:
The topics that Susskind created a series for are:
- Classical mechanics
- Quantum mechanics
- Special relativity & Electromagnetism
- General relativity
- Statistical mechanics
- Particle physics
- String theory
- Cosmology
Each series is composed of up to 12 individual lectures, with each lecture being 1 to 2 hours long! This is a gold mine for those who are interested in learning about physics on their spare time from a world-renowned expert.
Sean Carroll
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech and has a huge presence in public outreach for physics. Like Feynman and Susskind, Carroll also has an amazing ability to explain complex ideas to a lay audience. In the summer of 2020, Carroll began a youtube series that he calls The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The goal of his video series is to explore the most important ideas in physics and mathematics while also explaining all the difficult equations that are involved. Most of the videos are 1 to 2 hours long and are each followed up with their own Q&A (question and answer) video where he answers questions made by his viewers on the previous video. This video series differs from lectures from Feynman and Susskind in that there is no live audience, giving it a much more personal feel. This is yet another gold mine for anyone aspiring to learn physics.
Here is Carroll’s introduction episode of the series:
Carroll’s series on the biggest ideas of the universe has over 20 episodes! Topics covered include conservation laws, spacetime, quantum mechanics, field theories, geometry and topology, symmetries, gauge theories, gravity, matter, probability, entropy, and more!