Physics/Astronomy people: I need a new book!

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
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I've advanced beyond the typical "Physics for idiots" and "Physics for laypeople" books. I need a more indepth book. Maybe one about QLG, The Holographic Principle, or String Theory. It needs to be more technical than something like "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity" or "Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything" but not as technical as something like "A Finite Unified Quantum Field Theory of the Elementary Particle Standard Model and Quantum Gravity: Based on New Quantum Dimensions & a New Paradigm" (which I bought...)

Am I stuck? Am I going to have to put more study time into math in order to deepen my understanding of physics? How high should I go?

So many questions.
 

Heisenberg

Lifer
Dec 21, 2001
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IMHO you really need a good math background to ever really understand physics beyond just qualitative concepts. I'd say at least up through diff eq and linear algebra. Most of those type of books leave out a lot of the math, which to me is essential for seeing what is really happening.
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
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Originally posted by: Heisenberg
IMHO you really need a good math background to ever really understand physics beyond just qualitative concepts. I'd say at least up through diff eq and linear algebra.
See, that's it.

I feel like all of my physics knowledge is superficial. After reading "Fabric of the Cosmos" I realized that none of these books are telling me anything new. Partice/Wave duality, Calabi-Yau shaped space, general relativity, M-theory, twistors, it's all the same stuff over and over again.

 

Heisenberg

Lifer
Dec 21, 2001
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To be honest, I haven't read a lot of physics books outside of my textbooks. I don't see a lot of point to most of those "pop-culture" physics books because they leave out all the math as they're geared toward "normal" people. My view is that if you're going to learn this stuff, you might as well do it right and have the math to go along with the concepts, otherwise you're really only understanding about half of what is going on. But then again, that may just be me.
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
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Originally posted by: Heisenberg
To be honest, I haven't read a lot of physics books outside of my textbooks. I don't see a lot of point to most of those "pop-culture" physics books because they leave out all the math as they're geared toward "normal" people. My view is that if you're going to learn this stuff, you might as well do it right and have the math to go along with the concepts, otherwise you're really only understanding about half of what is going on. But then again, that may just be me.

They just interest me. I'm just now able to afford college, and learning higher math without application seems unfulfilling. If I can get someway to *apply* the math, I'll go for it. I suppose that's the point I'm at now.
 

LordMorpheus

Diamond Member
Aug 14, 2002
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you could try elegant universe, but its probably way below your level by now.

I'd recomend it to any beginners, tho.
 

Descartes

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
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I believe Heisenberg to be with certainty in this case, because I am far more familiar with the qualitative than quantitative. I read a lot of the books that you've mentioned Chaotic, and as you said they all say the same damn thing. Many of them try to romanticize the ideas (Greene in particular) to convey almost a novelistic approach, but this is an encumbrance when what you really want is to truly understand the ideas. Then you have Smolin who speaks drier than a week old glass of pinot noir through more analogies than parents discussing sex in front of children; it just became exhausting for me.

Have you read Feynman's Lectures? That's an approachable text with an appreciable balance between qualitative and quantitative, imo. I took calculus in school, but after reading some of the more abstruse physics texts I realize how superficial that education was. I taught myself more "advanced" calculus, so I at least have some understanding of the more quantitative approach. Everytime I go to the bookstore (often) I realize the largest hole in my understanding is that of advanced math, and so that is why I am going back to school. Einstein may have thought pictorially, but he was still able to build a quantitative foundation for those pictures :)
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
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Descartes, you seem to be in the same boat I am. I'm going back for Mathematics.

I agree that Greene tries to romanticize a bit too much. I didn't find Smolin's book to be that bad though. ;)

I guess I'm going to have to hit the calc books hard again. I'll do that right after I finish the book I bought this afternoon, Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements.