I have my eye on John Dirk Walecka's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dirk_Walecka) books which seem pretty good particularly the ones published by World Scientific Publishing. Three vols on Introduction, Advanced, Topics on Modern Physics and Introduction vols on Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics, Electricity & Magnetism, General Relativity. - https://www.worldscientific.com/author/Walecka%2C+John+Dirk?...
Dover has Robert Sproull's Modern Physics which seems a bit old. - https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486783260
Springer has S.H.Patil's Elements of Modern Physics which seems up to date. - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-70143-7
Does anybody have experience with these books both studying and teaching from? I would appreciate it if the knowledgeable folks here can shed some light on this.
What other books provide similar overview of the domain?
Also suggestions on books which provide the needed background Mathematics.
PS: I am finding the the old Soviet era book Fundamentals of Physics by Ivanov quite useful to get an overview - https://mirtitles.org/2018/04/21/fundamentals-of-physics-iva...
- University Physics by Young and Freedman
- Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker
- Modern Physics by Krane
You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics.
For a nonrigorous introduction/overview:
- The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose
If you want to actually learn almost all of physics at a high level:
- Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau
Note that Landau is extremely difficult.
If you want to learn the math needed for modern physics (topology) in the context of physics, nonrigorously:
- Geometry, Topology, and Physics by Nakahara
I strongly recommend this textbook. I used in college, and it's really good. There are a lot of problems for each chapter, I suggest doing them as they help a lot.
More like “many specific topics and areas covered in a set of books under same authors”.
Also Landau was one of the last (probably the last) polymath physicists who covered a wide range of fields.
I doubt it is even technically possible to cover even 30% of all modern theoretical physics in a single course with depth comparable to Landau books.
The Nakahara book is new to me; Thanks for the pointer.
The mathematical prerequisites are essentially algebra, precalculus and basic calculus, all of which are excellently covered by the OpenStax series of free textbooks published by Rice University.
Have you looked at Walecka's books? They seem to have sufficient detail/depth but am not sure as to their mathematical rigour. Maybe too much for undergrad level?
If you can commit to the two fields of study in parallel Walecka should be perfectly suitable but if not then there may be eventual problems with keeping up.
Have you looked at the Sproull/Patil books?
The print copy however seems prohibitively expensive :-(
I have decided to get all (the seven i have listed in my post above) of John Dirk Walecka's books since low-price editions are available and they seem quite rigorous with enough depth to boot. Pairing it with some other easier text (perhaps Young & Freedman) would cover my bases nicely.
Thanks for the pointer.
There are more advanced Physics books on that site which are also worth looking into.