Reccomended books for further reading before Physics MSc?

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Agree on the last part, Banjo-Kazooie 3 just pipped a new string theory book for me this week, lol.

University Physics (Young and Freedman) is generally the 1st year bible in most undergraduate courses, so I'd say that should be near the top of the list. Its got 30 - 40 chapters on all different areas of physics from Newtonian/A level mechanics to special relativity, electromagnetism and quantum theory. But try and get a second hand copy off ebay etc because its about £50 in most book shops.

There are a series of books under the title "Demystified", these are usually cheap (around £10) and sort of get straight to the point rather than talking about history and what not. Whether these books would be helpful for you I'm not too sure; I pick them up to refresh myself on a particular area that I have previously learned like complex variables, relativity etc.

What's the complex variables one like? Tempted to get it to get a bit of a preview of next semester's course :p:

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teachercol

I relied on Schaum's Complex variables very heavily.

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As above, Schaums Complex Variables is a very good book at the price of it (probably about £5 off amazon). The Demystified CV book is pretty good, not fully looked through my copy yet (only received it about a week ago) but from what I have looked at it seems very good for the price, maybe a bit clearer than the Schaums version since these tend to look a bit dated nowadays but the maths is still the same, and the bonus of the Schaums version is that there are about 10^8 questions crammed into each one and the Schaums CV has a couple of formula's I've never seen anywhere else that tell you how to more easily calculate the residue of "a more involved" pole rather than doing it by the longhand methods that will be taught in the lectures.