Laymen's Physics Books

[darkmatter4brains]

Thought I would start a thread about physics books where people could recommend good ones that they have read recently. Hopefully, it sounds like an appealing topic to a few.

The last one's I read were Stephen Hawkings Brief History and Carl Sagan' Cosmos. Obviously, I'm outta the loop on these, so any good recommendations would be nice.

I also read and recommend Kip Thorne's Black Hole and Time Warps. Excellent book that covers a lot of history up to the disocvery of Black Holes.

Now that I think of it I did read another one somewhat recently. Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality. He discusses some QM at an advanced laymen's level, but mainly talks about the different interpretations of QM and the philisophical ramifications. Pretty good.

I may order Brian Green's book The Fabric of the Cosmos that somebody on here mentioned. The chapter titles look interesting.

Anyhow, post up some recommendations if you have any.

 

[MeteorWayne]

You should probably take a look at the thread pinned at the top of Space Science and Astronomy. There's quite an extensive list there.

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Thanks Wayne! I wasn't aware of that. Maybe this thread should be deleted then?

 

[MeteorWayne]

I don't think I'll delete it, unless I merge some posts form this one into the other thread. Let me ponder, like Pinky and The Brain.

 

[quantumnumber]

I just got done reading "Quantum; A Guide for the Perplexed" by Jim Al- Khalili
It is an excellent book with lots of pictures to help the reader to understand the material and it was very interesting.

 

[drwayne]

Don't overlook the Shaum's Outline series as a way to start actually looking at aspects
of physics from a standpoint of getting started with the math.

 

[aphh]

Don't overlook the Shaum's Outline series as a way to start actually looking at aspects
of physics from a standpoint of getting started with the math.

May I also recommend Randall D. Knight's book Physics for scientists and engineers - a strategic approach. It covers most subjects of basic physics from both philosophical and math aspects.

The basic math for basic and even modestly advanced physics is not very hard, and culminates in derivatives and integrals. Before those a good look at trigonometric functions and vectors helps one to get started. Solving basic equations is a must.