The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics 1st Edition by Leonard Susskind (PDF)

Description

A master teacher presents the ultimate introduction to classical mechanics for people who are serious about learning physics”Beautifully clear explanations of famously ‘difficult’ things,” — Wall Street JournalIf you ever regretted not taking physics in college — or simply want to know how to think like a physicist — this is the book for you. In this bestselling introduction to classical mechanics, physicist Leonard Susskind and hacker-scientist George Hrabovsky offer a first course in physics and associated math for the ardent amateur. Challenging, lucid, and concise, The Theoretical Minimum provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The “Theorical Minimum” was the name of the exam that applicants had to pass in order to enter the theoretical physics department of the Kharkov Physicotechnical Institute headed by Lev Davidovich Landau. L. D. Landau, along with A.I. Kitaigorodskii, is also known to have written a serie of four great popular science books presenting general physics to young people, “Physics for everyone” (which happens to be the name of Leonard Susskind’s blog too…). I’m wondering if “The Theoretical Minimum: what you need to know to start doing physics” couldn’t be the first book of a follow-up to “Physics for everyone”.I’ve studied physics in university but I’ve stopped before starting working on a PhD. That was more than ten years ago and I needed to earn a living but I still loved science especially physics. One day I’ve discovered the Leonard Susskind’s Theoretical Minimum courses on Youtube and Itunes and I was litterally astonished by them as they are exactly what I was looking for: not courses for advanced undergraduate students, not popular science presentations devoid of any technicity (theoretical physics without maths is an empty shell: theoretical physics is about creating mathematical models of the physical world) but courses for people like me who knew some maths and physics at one point of their life and that want to learn the concepts of theoretical physics. Each course is made of about ten lectures, each lectures lasting about two hours. Watching these is quite time consuming and time is sparse if you have a job and a family. Also the courses were sometimes a little sketchy or not quite well organized (especially the first run… the second run is a lot better). The material simply had to be reworked and layed out on paper. George Hrabovsky felt these were necessary too so he contacted Leonard Susskind and voila, we now have a book, the first of a whole serie, the one about classical mechanics.I knew about some of the material in the book. In the quantum mechanics (QM) courses I followed I learned about least-action principle, Lagrangians, Hamiltonians (fundamental in QM) and Poisson brackets (their siblings, commutators, are also fundamental in QM). The problem is that these notions and their purpose didn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t told or I didn’t have time to realize their conceptual power and that they could be used in classical mechanics: use of Lagrangian formalism to understand the double pendulum, use of Poisson brackets to determine the behavior of a charged rotor in a magnetic field. Also I wasn’t told about Noether’s theorem (relationship between symmetries and conserved quantities), Liouville’s theorem (well perhaps in statistical mechanics… I’m not sure) or the importance of gauge fields (vector potential field is one) but that may be because I wasn’t taught to be a theoricist. Here Leonard Susskind’s a guide who shows us the elegance of all these concepts and prepares us to a voyage to quantum physics and field theories.The book shows the coherence of these concepts, it structures the reader’s mind (if he makes the proper efforts by doing the exercises: doing exercises are necessary to learn and understand). George Hrabovsky brought us a great contribution by making the text more accessible (in the videos the student is assumed to know about calculus and general physics) and whipping out ambiguities. The book isn’t entirely self-contained though (for example total differentials or Taylor series are used without these notions being introduced… just search “Taylor series” and “total derivative” in Wikipedia) but George will provide some support to the reader in his web site.Theoretical Minimum – Classical Mechanics isn’t another popular science book. It’s a book that you’ll have to work through a bit but it’s a book that will structure your perception of our physical world. This book is the first of a serie that could become somehow the theoretical physics equivalent of Feynman’s Lectures. You won’t become a theorical physicist just by working through this book and the ones that will follow (have a look at a Quantum Field Theory textbook and you’ll see). However if you are interested in physics (not only theoretical) the book will tell you about the concepts used in physics, how physicists manipulate them, how physicists do math and what makes physicists tick.I really hope that this book will be translated in many languages.

⭐I was a biology major as an undergraduate and was required to take general physics with lab. Upon graduation I enrolled in a Masters program in physiology and was shocked at the math and physics details of some of the topics! It was necessary to relearn and integrate topics of chemistry, mathematics, and physics; a very humbling endeavor! I had to do this mostly on my own! With much persistence I successfully completed the Masters program. The Masters program cast me into an unexpected world of integrated topics where mathematics, chemistry, and physics were interacting with each other in ways that were not apparent, to me, as an undergraduate.At this point I decided to pursue the Doctorate in the area of Molecular Biology and landed in a Chemistry Department in which my thesis advisor was a Physical Chemist during research on the solution conformations of protein molecules! The demands of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and their interrelationships reached a peak! I was panic-stricken but persisted by accepting the theories and their applications by mostly cobbling together the literature and relying on careful experimentation and data analysis! During this time it was possible for me to look at much of the classic work that had been done involving different formulations and the interrelationships of the chemistry, mathematics, and physics as applied in the world of macromolecules! Again I was successful in completing the program and received the degree; but there was always something missing!The thing that was missing, for me, is found in the book The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics by Leonard Susskind. Unfortunately for me, this is years after struggling with the more general formulations of Physic mostly on my own.The reason that this book is appealing is that it introduces material that is found in treatises written at a more advanced level in the space of a few pages and includes tractable exercises. However, one should not assume that no effort is required! The book will require some familiarity with math and physics which the author introduces throughout the book. The reward at the end of the book is an appreciation of the more general formulations of classical physics which are invaluable to physical scientists in general. You end up being in a better position to interpret later, the atomic and/or molecular nature of current physical science research and the associated technology.Yes there are errors in the original publication; many of which would not be easily recognized. However, there is an errata which can be downloaded. I made the indicated corrections which fall in both the major and minor categories.After reading and doing some of the more challenging exercises in this relatively brief book, I thumbed through some of the books that use the methods found in Susskind’s book. The time spent reading Susskind’s book is worth the effort!The criticism can be made that the book doesn’t include the modern Quantum Physics that followed Classical Physics! This point should not be dismissed. However, one should not forget that the formulation of Quantum Physics is couched in the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formulations of Classical Physics. The Hamiltonian formulation of Classical Physics is key to the formulation of the modern Quantum Physics and should not be taken lightly. The book by Susskind gives one a head start in absorbing the more abstract concepts of Quantum Physics!If you are interested in the classical concepts of energy and their formulations in the Quantum World, this book is worth considering!Additional good news: A Quantum Mechanics Volume, by the author, is in the works and scheduled to be released in early 2014.

⭐I have better than 20:20 vision in both eyes but cannot, without an annoying level of effort, read most of the labels on the diagrams (figures) nor the terms or operators of the equations. Scaling up the text size using the Kindle makes no difference. Further (at least on the iPhone and iPad) the figures and equations are not embedded as images which can be opened separately. There is, therefore, no way of increasing their size. Given the fundamental importance to understanding what is said in the book of being able to read the equations and understand the diagrams, this greatly reduces the point of purchasing this book on Kindle.

⭐If you’ve tried to watch Leonard Susskind’s on-line lectures you will know its really difficult to follow along without his notes. Of course it all makes sense as he says it. But he writes on a succession of boards and then refers back. At that point, without the notes you can become lost.I thought this book would be a proxy for the notes but one that can be read independently. And it is, and it has the material. The problem to watch out for is that an issue is laid out and the foundations prepared then an equation will appear which is supposed to explain everything but it doesn’t. It’s a step too far. It’s like there’s a missing link. So in this sense it is frustrating because then its necessary to go to another book or web site to find the connection.It also presents problems but the solutions are not in the book. They are on-line in a PDF which you have to download and print out separately. Why?This could be a great book. After some revisions it may well be but not at the moment. It’s written by someone who is good at Physics, for whom this all makes sense. I think George is not able to see when the leaps he makes, which are just common sense to him, are a challenge for the person trying to gain that sense.

⭐This is a book that will appeal to anyone who has never studied physics beyond GCSE. The text is refreshingly clear and takes the reader on trip through the basics of classical mechanics in a very readable style. Susskind tackles the mathematics of calculus in a practical way cutting out the rigour and unecessarybaggage found in more formal texts. Having covered Newtonian mechanics he very quickly introduces the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian view, with just enough math to grasp the essentials. The overall aim is to provide the reader with insight to his other book, Quantum Mechanics a Theoretical Minimum. If you have a passing interest in the subject and do not want to plough through a two year math course then this book fulfills the purpose. Examples and exercises are provided throughout which can be tackled by anyone with basic high school math skills.

⭐As a non-physicist, non-mathematician with a strong interest in both disciplines, I have tried to get to grips with quantum mechanics for years. I can get my head around the subject qualitatively, but have come to the realization that I am lacking the math to understand it quantitatively, so at the ripe old age of 69 I decided to try to get into the required math. This book is a godsend – it starts at a level I am familiar with from my college years, and goes on to explain the fundamentals of classical mechanics in a way that I was never taught, at a level within my capabilities. The videos of Susskind’s accompanying lectures on YouTube are great. I am looking forward to reading the Quantum Mechanics version of the book with great eagerness.

⭐A PhD in Applied mathematics and a distinction in my chemistry degree for my quantum mechanics paper did not enable me to follow clearly the derivation of the least action principle, why it was relevant (other than an assertion that it was) and how Lagrange’s equation was derived. Even knowing how to do it myself did not enable me to follow the reasoning employed on pages 112 and 113. A simple series of steps, explaining the underlying mathematics aids reasoning and insight like nothing else. Give it a try guys, your book sales will go stellar.This last aspect (of Lagrangian mechanics) is crucial for understanding how Newtonian mechanics works and the derivation of the equation jumps in first and starts. I would not recommend this book for the novice to Lagrangian mechanics (which really is quite simple if well explained).

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