Recommended reading for Physics & Astronomy

I'm looking to study Physics + Astronomy at Uni and I'm not sure what to read other than the obvious 'Brief History of Time' kinda books, is there anything anyone recommends?

Reply 1

Sinnoh

Brief History of Time might ruin your chances because it is such a cliche. "Hyperspace" might be a good one, I want to read it but it's very theoretical and I've heard it's a bit of a mindf*ck.

Reply 2

Kotsiozz

you could read "The theoretical minimum" series.
It has books on Relativity, field theory, Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics.
It is (for me) ideal since its not as wishy-washy as the normal popular science books but also less rigorous and more enjoyable than textbooks.There isnt a book on astronomy but anyways astronomy is just a mixture of all the other branches of physics( QM,GR,Thermo. etc)
These are the books i listed on my personal statement, along with " Godel Escher Bach" which is a book about the philosophy of maths and physics and formal logic .

Reply 3

Sinnoh

Michio Kaku is the author of Hyperspace, but check out some of his other works. I think I'm about to buy "Physics of the future"

Reply 4

Haviland-Tuf

Just watch the movie Contact. Jodie Foster will have you set for the next 3/4 years. :wink:

lol
[video="youtube;scBY3cVyeyA"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scBY3cVyeyA&t=37s[/video]

Reply 5

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Feynman Lectures on Physics. They're pretty readable, and have a lot to offer in terms of developing physical intuition; not sure I'd suggest them as actual material to learn the subject from though. It is, however, not really "pop science" and does contend with actual physics (and correspondingly, mathematics - you will see matrices and complex numbers!), which is nice.

GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid is a common favourite among physicists and similar, although it's actually on cognition and the philosophy of mind through the lens of logic, language, and physics as I can tell. I've not read it so can't comment personally on the quality, although my flatmate (who was then doing his PhD in Physics) had a very well worn copy. The Leibniz-Clarke Correpsondence is the first year set text for PhysPhil students at Oxford, on the philosophical side, if it's of any interest or relevance. There are various copies available on the internet (both original and in translation), but translations and condensed versions may vary; how interesting you find Leibniz may also vary.

But I'd suggest Feynman - he has a good writing style (from what I've read anyway), it's actually relevant, and it's written to be accessible to school leavers with a good background in calculus, matrices, and complex numbers (which you should have from Maths and FM - you can probably get along with the first two books with just Maths I think, but the quantum volume presents it from the matrix formulation, which requires FM although is interesting in of itself). He did write a more "pop-science"-y book I think (QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter) but I've not looked at it so not sure how far it falls in which direction, or if his characteristic wit is as evident in that as in the Lectures (at least I thought it was evident in Lectures...).

That said most unis will be unlikely to expect any specific wider reading, except maybe PhysPhil at Oxford (or similar joint honours courses elsewhere), that you may want/need to demonstrate some wider reading on the philosophical side at least.