3 Books You Must Read As a Physics Enthusiast
Books that will help you understand physics better
A lot of people ask me about my reading list. They want to know the sort of books that read during my school, high school, and my undergrad years. I’ve published plenty of articles and stories about science book recommendations — some recommendations specifically associated with particular disciplines, quantum mechanics for instance, and some recommendations related to science in general. If you are reading this, you must also be familiar with the fact that I’ve posted several threads on Twitter about the same, and y’all have shown so much love and support for them.
I’ve read hundreds of books throughout my career as a science communicator and blogger, and to read is an integral part of it. I prefer collecting and reading stuff from books than searching articles online. Of course sometimes one needs to refer to multiple online publications and journals for information that isn’t found on hard copies but the pleasure of reading books is something else.
Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.
— John Green
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
“This is the world described by quantum mechanics and particle theory. We have arrived very far from the mechanical world of Newton, where minute, cold stones eternally wandered on long, precise trajectories in geometrically immutable space. Quantum mechanics and experiments with particles have taught us that the world is a continuous, restless swarming of things, a continuous coming to light and disappearance of ephemeral entities.”
Carlo Rovelli is one of the most prolific theoretical physicists and science writers today. His book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics was first published in 2014. The book has been a treat for anyone interested in physics. He explains various important blocks of modern physics like quantum mechanics, the mysteries of space and time, laws of thermodynamics, and many more. He poetically described the role of human minds in wondering and experimenting and understanding the world and the universe. Rovelli himself is an iconic modern thinker, and I’ve always been fascinated by his works in loop quantum gravity.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is fascinated by the wonders of the universe and wants to understand how it functions all the way from the quantum world to the large-scale structures of the universe.
The book is elegant and simple for anyone to understand for Prof. Rovelli has done a fine job is crafting the explanations on several deep concepts in physics. He also describes certain philosophical ideas in the book. Ideas like human consciousness have also been explored so beautifully. Must read.
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
“I think, however, that there isn’t any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher — — a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things.”
I’d read this book as a first-year undergrad student. I don’t think I need to explain anything about Professor Feynman and his writings. I mean I have dedicated an entire Twitter account on his behalf. The book Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman, Matthew Sands, and Ralph Leighton is another masterpiece that I recommend to everyone. The 176 pages long book explains everything from atomic physics to the theory of gravitation.
The book has been extracted from Feynman’s lectures at Caltech that he delivered during 1961–1963. It doesn’t incorporate all the lectured though. Feynman charismatically presents the most important ideas in physics with such clarity, and brilliance and it keeps anyone hooked. His expressive character and perfect way of explaining complicated concepts are very much evident from this masterpiece. I wish Feynman were alive today. I’m always curious to know his perspective about modern-day topics.
The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind
“If a system is chaotic (most are), then it implies that however good the resolving power may be, the time over which the system is predictable is limited. Perfect predictability is not achievable, simply because we are limited in our resolving power.”
Leonard Susskind is famously known as the ‘bad boy of physics.’ The Theoretical Minimum is a series of books written by physicist Leonard Susskind and co-authored by Art Friedman and George Hrabovsky. The series primarily consists of three main courses: Quantum Mechanics, Classical Mechanics and, Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory.
For any physics enthusiast, these courses are absolute gems. They come in handy and comprise a wide range of physics topics that are so elegantly explained by the Stanford physicist. He has covered the most fundamental topics in theoretical physics and backed them up amazingly with mathematics. In order for you to understand the course contents, you need to have some basic knowledge of physics and the fundamentals of mathematics. Nonetheless, I highly recommend these books for anyone who is starting his/her academic career in physics or is already pursuing physics.
Along with the books, I highly suggest y’all watch his Stanford Lectures which are freely available on YouTube.
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