I here present a list of textbooks for the physics student. It is a compilation of books usually considered as being the “standard” or “classic” texts in physics. With this list, the motivated student can then confidently begin a self-study of undergraduate level physics or get started for an upcoming course. Now that I graduated, I want to share my experience with those students and I intend to write a series of hubs on some aspects that I sometimes found to be either misleading or difficult to grasp. I hope that with my help you’ll avoid the occasional pitfalls that I myself sometimes encountered.

The basic topics in physics are easy to list : I have done it below. But the specific order in which your courses are to be taken is not so straightforward. If I may give this advice: do not blindly follow in order the suggested curriculum of your institution.

I often found that many students struggled with their physics homework not because they did not understand the physics, but because they could not do the maths. Mathematics is the ”tool kit” that physicists use in describing and analyzing physical phenomena. One just never knows what tools will be needed for a given job. This means that a physics major must have a wide ranging knowledge of different areas of mathematics, from differential equations, linear algebra and vector calculus to integral transforms, special functions, etc. These are the mathematics a physics major will encounter in courses in classical mechanics, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics.

Unfortunately, what typically happens is that students learn the mathematics at the same time they are learning the physics. This is an unfortunate way to learn the material, because more often than not, the mathematics gets in the way of understanding the physics. It is hard enough to learn the physics, but having to also learn the mathematics simultaneously makes the problem rather daunting. As an example, my Advanced Calculus (vector analysis) class was given after Electromagnetism, where it is although much needed. So I had to learn the basics of vector analysis (the use of the grad, div & curl operators) in my EM class. And I'm glad I took Applied Analysis (Fourier transforms, etc.) before I had my first quantum mechanics course, even though it was a class usually given toward the end of the curriculum. The physical concepts to be learned in QM are already hard enough to grasp as they stand, without having to struggle to learn new mathematical concepts on top of that. (For those who might know what I'm talking about, let's say that wave packets became intuitive, and Fourier transforms made the swap between x-, p-representations easy to understand.)

So, as a rule, when I could do so, I tried to do my math courses first.

But one often cannot take those, either because the structure of the program makes it hardly possible, or because the student does not have the necessary prerequisites yet. If it's your case, hang on : the math you’ll learn in your physics classes should give you an edge (better grades) in the math classes that will follow. Still, a considerable amount of time can be spent on those mathematical matters that otherwise could’ve been spent on the physics. In the coming weeks, it is my intention to post short math summaries/tutorials/primers that can be conveniently studied as the need arise and will allow students to focus more on physics.

Here's a list of the basic topics in physics, with the books I recommend. These books are most probably offered at your institution. I agree, they are expensive. But (by clicking on the titles below) you can get them from amazon.com, where they are often cheaper (as a result of the high volume of books they order and sell).

It's been 8 months since I published this article/hub. I'm now editing it to include a list of College physics textbooks. This list is taken from the American Institute of Physics (AIP) website.

I list them here for your conveniance, sorted in the usual calculus-based / algebra-trigo-based / conceptual categories.

[Note: English is not my native language. I welcome comments regarding my writing; if you find that an idea is unclear, that I should rephrase a sentence, or that I mispelled a word, please feel free to leave me a (constructive) comment to this effect. I would really appreciate it.]