Formal & Natural Sciences

Physics

The search for the smallest set of rules that accounts for everything that happens.

11 fields · 102 topics · 13 curated works

Fields within Physics

Motion, force and energy at human scale — still the template for how physics is done.

Newtonian Mechanics · Lagrangian Mechanics · Hamiltonian Mechanics · Rigid Body Dynamics · Celestial Mechanics

Charge, current, field and light, unified into four equations.

Electrostatics · Magnetostatics · Maxwell's Equations · Electrodynamics · Classical Optics

How macroscopic order emerges from microscopic chaos — and why time has a direction.

Laws of Thermodynamics · Entropy & the Arrow of Time · Kinetic Theory of Gases · Statistical Ensembles · Phase Transitions

The rules that govern matter at small scales, and the century-long argument about what they mean.

Wave Mechanics & the Schrödinger Equation · Hilbert Space Formalism · Spin & Angular Momentum · Perturbation Theory · Scattering Theory

The catalogue of fundamental constituents and the field theories that describe them.

Quantum Electrodynamics · Quantum Chromodynamics · Electroweak Theory · The Standard Model · Renormalisation

Spacetime as a dynamic object, and the unfinished attempt to quantise it.

Special Relativity · General Relativity · Black Holes · Gravitational Waves · Cosmological Solutions

The physics of the solid and liquid world — and the largest branch of the field by headcount.

Crystallography & Lattices · Band Theory · Semiconductor Physics · Superconductivity · Superfluidity

Light and matter interacting at the scale of individual atoms.

Atomic Structure · Molecular Spectroscopy · Laser Physics · Quantum Optics · Cold Atoms & Bose-Einstein Condensates

The structure of the nucleus and the energy locked inside it.

Nuclear Structure · Radioactive Decay · Nuclear Fission · Nuclear Fusion · Nuclear Reactions & Cross Sections

How physics is actually done — instruments, simulation and error.

Numerical Simulation · Monte Carlo Methods · Lattice Field Theory · Experimental Design in Physics · Error Analysis & Uncertainty

How the picture changed, and the arguments that changed it.

The Scientific Revolution · The Copenhagen Debates · The Einstein-Bohr Debate · The Manhattan Project · Scientific Realism

No prior grounding assumed.

Cargo Cult ScienceRichard Feynman, 1974· ≈4,000 words
Scientific integrity means bending over backwards to show how you might be wrong — everything else is imitation.
Talk
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and MatterRichard Feynman, 1985
Explains quantum electrodynamics with arrows and no mathematics, and is honest that the theory is absurd and also exactly right.
Book
The Character of Physical LawRichard Feynman, 1965· 7 lectures
Seven lectures on what physical laws have in common: symmetry, conservation, and an unreasonable mathematical character.
Lecture

Assumes you know the vocabulary.

The Feynman Lectures on PhysicsRichard Feynman, 1964· 3 volumes· Free
A full undergraduate physics course rebuilt around physical intuition rather than problem-set mechanics.
Lecture
More Is DifferentPhilip W. Anderson, 1972· 4 pages
Reductionism does not imply constructionism: each level of complexity has laws that cannot be read off the level below.
Essay
Introduction to ElectrodynamicsDavid J. Griffiths, 1981
Teaches the field concept by making you compute with it, and is the reason most physicists' intuition for electromagnetism sounds the same.
Book
Numerical RecipesPress, Teukolsky, Vetterling & Flannery, 1986
Explains why each numerical method fails before giving you the code, which is the part most libraries leave out.
Book

Primary sources and full treatments.

On the Electrodynamics of Moving BodiesAlbert Einstein, 1905· 31 pages
Special relativity derived from two postulates, dissolving absolute time without introducing a single new force.
Paper
The Principles of Quantum MechanicsP. A. M. Dirac, 1930
The formulation that gave quantum mechanics its modern algebraic language, written by the person who worked most of it out.
Book
Classical MechanicsHerbert Goldstein, 1950
The standard graduate treatment of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, and where most physicists first meet mechanics as geometry.
Book
Principles of OpticsMax Born & Emil Wolf, 1959
The reference on classical optics — interference, diffraction and coherence treated as one electromagnetic subject.
Book
Thermodynamics and an Introduction to ThermostatisticsHerbert Callen, 1960
Rebuilds thermodynamics from a small set of postulates about equilibrium, which turns a pile of empirical laws into a deductive structure.
Book
Introductory Nuclear PhysicsKenneth S. Krane, 1987
The standard course text: nuclear structure and decay presented through the experiments that established them.
Book