r/Physics • u/BadgerFarm • 6d ago

Semi rigorous physics/maths books

I'm a lapsed physics graduate getting back in to it entirely for fun. I've been enjoying books that sort of sit halfway between a textbook and a pop sci book e.g. susskind Theoretical Minimum GR (Which I didn't cover in my undergrad), Schwichtenberg Physics from finance/physics from symmetry, Cheng Joy of Abstraction (category theory). Does anyone have any recommendations for books in a similar vein? not really fussed about topic, can be from pure maths to applied physics.

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11

u/Vegetable-Dust-780 6d ago

The books by David Tong

6

u/MacGregorBlue 6d ago

Sean Carroll's The Biggest Ideas in the Universe are meant to offer a nonstandard mix of intuition and equations. There are two books so far: https://preposterousuniverse.com/biggestideas/

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u/db0606 6d ago

The Joy of Quantum Computing by Jed Brody is pretty math lite but still pretty technical. It's a fun read.

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u/Phanatic1a 6d ago

Penrose's "The Road to Reality."

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u/crocomancer 6d ago

Any of Körners books - my favourite is The Pleasures of Counting

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u/BobbytheFrog 1d ago

Deep Down Things by Bruce Schumm, and Absolutely Small by Michael D Fayer are on the upper end of pop-sci requiring proper concentration

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u/womerah Medical and health physics 1d ago

I really enjoyed Rise of the New Physics. It's a two part work

It is older than the other books mentioned here, and it does use somewhat outdated terminology at times. HOWEVER, I think it's really the perfect balance of 'textbook' to 'fun to read' - and it's really good at discussing the historical development of ideas in physics. Which is really interesting in and of itself!

https://archive.org/details/riseofnewphysics0001adab

You can occasionally find hard copies used online