Griffiths & University Physics by Young & Freedman

[bigmike94]

I apologise if this has been answered before.

I am about half way through the mechanics chapters in the classic University Physics

I am wondering when I get to the chapters on electromagnetism is it worth reading them if I’m going to be reading Griffiths anyway?

Would it be best just to get stuck in with Griffiths as I believe it delves much deeper into the subject (600+ pages) compared to a couple hundred pages if that in University Physics.

Also would one be able to start classical mechanics if they have completed Newtonian mechanics, differential equations, calculus 3 and some linear algebra?

 

[vela]

I am wondering when I get to the chapters on electromagnetism is it worth reading them if I’m going to be reading Griffiths anyway?

Would it be best just to get stuck in with Griffiths as I believe it delves much deeper into the subject (600+ pages) compared to a couple hundred pages if that in University Physics.

Griffiths assumes you know the basics of electromagnetism, the stuff that's covered in Young and Freedman. If you know the basic concepts well, you can concentrate more on the mathematical techniques introduced in Griffiths.

 

[hutchphd]

The physics in these very good different books are not disparate subjects. If you want to try Griffiths then give it a try. It will certainly assume a higher level of sophistication with vectors and calculus in three dimensions. If it seems too difficult pick up U Phys and see what it can tech you.. There is no particular reason to rigidly limit your approach. Of course if you have mastered Griffiths the stuff in Sears Zemansky and Young should be easy. There is no reason to segregate one from the other.

 

[Orodruin]

I find that it is a common mistake that many students make to think that just because something is covered in one textbook they can focus on that one only. Even if textbooks cover the same topic at more or less the same level (which, as mentioned, is not the case here) they are different textbooks. What is difficult to understand in one may be easier in the other because the treatment is not exactly the same. Even if you are going for one main textbook there is value in also having others for alternative reading when you get stuck and as reference material.

 

[bigmike94]

I find that it is a common mistake that many students make to think that just because something is covered in one textbook they van focus on that one only. Even if textbooks cover the same topic at more or less the same level (which, as mentioned, is not the case here) they are different textbooks. What is difficult to understand in one may be easier in the other because the treatment is not exactly the same. Even if you are going for one main textbook there is value in also having others for alternative reading when you get stuck and as reference material.

I fully agree with this, but in place of having multiple textbooks I tend to focus on one good one and then use YouTube to really solidify the concepts. To be honest I learn a hell of a lot more from YouTube than textbooks but it’s nice to have a good textbook as a starting point and for the end of chapter problems.

I should have worded he question as “which textbook will supplement videos better” or something like that.

For every difficult concept in a textbook there’s probably hundreds of videos on YouTube to guide you. I particularly like Michel Van biezen

 

[vela]

To be honest I learn a hell of a lot more from YouTube than textbooks but it’s nice to have a good textbook as a starting point and for the end of chapter problems.

How much time to you spend watching these videos? How much would you learn if you spent the same amount of time on reading and comprehending a textbook? I think one reason students feel videos are easier to learn from is that the information is much less dense than in a textbook. Videos can be easier to digest, but you have to spend more time watching them.

That's not to say you shouldn't watch (good) videos. They're definitely better suited to illustrate some points which are hard to convey in text, and if they work for you, that's all that really matters in the end.

That said, being able to read and learn from a textbook is a very important skill to develop. Eventually, you'll get into advanced topics where you're just not going to be able to find many alternatives to learn from. Also, when you get good at getting information by reading, it can be much more time efficient.

 

[Mondayman]

I personally would want to be comfortable solving most, if not all, end of chapter problems from Young or Serway, before moving onto a more advanced textbook such as Griffiths.

That's just me. From my experience, most struggles my classmates and I had was due to gaps in our prerequisites.

 

[hutchphd]

I should have worded he question as “which textbook will supplement videos better” or something like that.

One does not learn to play piano by watching people play piano. Technique can be refined, but watching and hearing thousands of hours of piano playing will not make you competent. Knowledgeable but not competent
So which do you desire?

/

 

[bigmike94]

How much time to you spend watching these videos? How much would you learn if you spent the same amount of time on reading and comprehending a textbook? I think one reason students feel videos are easier to learn from is that the information is much less dense than in a textbook. Videos can be easier to digest, but you have to spend more time watching them.

That's not to say you shouldn't watch (good) videos. They're definitely better suited to illustrate some points which are hard to convey in text, and if they work for you, that's all that really matters in the end.

That said, being able to read and learn from a textbook is a very important skill to develop. Eventually, you'll get into advanced topics where you're just not going to be able to find many alternatives to learn from. Also, when you get good at getting information by reading, it can be much more time efficient.

I spend a good few hours before tackling the textbook chapter, there’s no written rule that things have to be learned from a book, books were just invented long before YouTube that’s all.

for example I have a watched a good few hours on the theory behind work and kinetic energy along with tonnes of worked examples, right now I’m reading the textbook and it makes it so much more comprehensible having learned the subject beforehand, I can focus on enjoying the book and not worrying about getting lost. All I’m saying is it’s really helped me solidify my understanding of what’s going on and since I’m a self learner I genuinely want to have a deep understanding of physics not just be able to score well on a test.

But I agree with you on the latter part, the further you get into physics the less videos there will be to help, but for now it’s fine. Test it for yourself, YouTube any undergraduate topic and most of the time you’ll find a vast wealth of videos.

 

[bigmike94]

One does not learn to play piano by watching people play piano. Technique can be refined, but watching and hearing thousands of hours of piano playing will not make you competent. Knowledgeable but not competent
So which do you desire?

/

You have only part quoted me, you missed the part where I stated I do the end of chapter problems. I spend hours watching worked examples and learning the theory via videos, then I read the textbook chapter. Then I attempt the end of chapter problems. I can assure you I learn a lot more than somebody who just read the chapter and does the problems, cos they’re probably just looking at the end of chapter summary for the formulas. I average about 6/7 hours more comprehensible learning hours per chapter than most students. Which is a lot.

Remember you can’t play the piano (well) without learning the rules first

 

[bigmike94]

I personally would want to be comfortable solving most, if not all, end of chapter problems from Young or Serway, before moving onto a more advanced textbook such as Griffiths.

That's just me. From my experience, most struggles my classmates and I had was due to gaps in our prerequisites.

Thank you for the sensible reply without grilling me regarding my learning method

 

[bigmike94]

I apologise if this has been answered before.

I am about half way through the mechanics chapters in the classic University Physics

I am wondering when I get to the chapters on electromagnetism is it worth reading them if I’m going to be reading Griffiths anyway?

Would it be best just to get stuck in with Griffiths as I believe it delves much deeper into the subject (600+ pages) compared to a couple hundred pages if that in University Physics.

Also would one be able to start classical mechanics if they have completed Newtonian mechanics, differential equations, calculus 3 and some linear algebra?

Just a response to those not too keen on using YouTube as an extra resource. Check out profesor Leonards comments. He helps thousands of students. Just because something is on YouTube doesn’t make it poor quality. Sorry if this is over kill but we should open our mind to more things. Isn’t that the nature of a physicist?

 

[hutchphd]

I have no problem whatever with youtube per se and I very much enjoy Veritasium and others (Prof. Walter Lewin certainly comes to mind). But I have also taught many students and am aware that only the rarest do not succumb to destructively thinking that knowledge of a slick analogue implies really understanding.
If you truly do understand the difference then you will rely on many sources, and length of a book is not always a reliable estimate of its depth. But if you can swing it always have a variety of books at your command and you will have them for life.
The folks who are "grilling you" about your learning methods have seen many folks crash and burn and so it might be good to hear them. Its your call.

 

[bigmike94]

I have no problem whatever with youtube per se and I very much enjoy Veritasium and others (Prof. Walter Lewin certainly comes to mind). But I have also taught many students and am aware that only the rarest do not succumb to destructively thinking that knowledge of a slick analogue implies really understanding.
If you truly do understand the difference then you will rely on many sources, and length of a book is not always a reliable estimate of its depth. But if you can swing it always have a variety of books at your command and you will have them for life.
The folks who are "grilling you" about your learning methods have seen many folks crash and burn and so it might be good to hear them. Its your call.

This is the thing, the YouTube videos I watch are usually just as in-depth as the textbook, as they follow the chapters in the textbook in order. I think we need to remember I also read the textbook and do the end of chapter problems, I love doing problems I think it’s very rewarding and it tests your understanding, I think lectures from Walter lewin and other universities tend to go abit fast, it’s more like a show, I prefer Michel Van biezen sort of videos. He walks you through some tricky textbook problems

 

[hutchphd]

I do understand what you are saying. But for me a good portion of my learning time was spent wrestling with difficult (to me) problems and figuring out how to obtain a solution. The process is somewhat personal and very often not entirely pleasurable along the way. I will say I was happy to be in a university with a cohort of smart fellow travelers who usually could help get to the solution. But I am suspicious of avoiding the struggle, because that was important to learn also..

 

[Falgun]

What I personally do is find a lecture series on the topic and watch it at 2x and absorb as much as I can. Then when I read the textbook I can assimilate more quickly. Then I try to re-derive everything on paper from first principles and try to write as if an idiot (future me) will read them. Finally I solve (or try to) every single end of chapter problem.

Anyway that's what works for me.

 

[Orodruin]

What I personally do is find a lecture series on the topic and watch it at 2x and absorb as much as I can.

The problem is that many people would stop after this step …

It was a problem already when I was a student that people would just go to lectures at 1x and not at all optimised for speed and think they had absorbed the material. It is when you work with the material that you actually learn it. A lecture will just show you the path, particularly one in which you cannot ask questions and interact with the lecturer.

 

[vela]

What I personally do is find a lecture series on the topic and watch it at 2x and absorb as much as I can. Then when I read the textbook I can assimilate more quickly. Then I try to re-derive everything on paper from first principles and try to write as if an idiot (future me) will read them. Finally I solve (or try to) every single end of chapter problem.

Try doing a cursory read of the textbook before listening to the lecture. The goal isn't to fully digest the material in the book with this first pass but to at least have an idea of the concepts and perhaps have some questions you'd like answered. Then when you listen to the lecture, you're not starting from zero, and it can change how you hear what the lecturer is saying.

 

[Joshy]

I really like University Physics and it's my go to book even during my early career and more advanced (graduate level) classes.

The book does a great job seeding fundamentals and has a lot of examples. I started to take a class that follows Jackson's book. Jackson's book is totally a classic, but it was really hard for me to follow. Griffith's book was a little bit more suited for me in comparison to Jackson's, but it's not much easier than Jackson's book. These books... they didn't seem like they had the intention of introducing EM for the first time, and I don't feel that by going through it first... it's not going to give you a better understanding of EM; it might even risk some knowledge gaps or an unintuitive understanding of concepts. While I was lost in my graduate level course I often referenced back to University Physics to get a better grasp of things or rough expectation of what the solutions should look like, and I believed that extra intuition helped me ace my class.

An example comparison is in University Physics you might learn how to apply Gauss law to an infinitely long charged cylinder to get its fields. The same/similar problem in Jackson's or Griffith's book would be a charged cylinder that is half held at a voltage V and the other half -V, and the cylinder is near a grounded plane. Griffith's book is pretty much going to tell you to setup some boundary conditions and do some really nasty integral using Legendre polynomial or spherical harmonics.. if you get the problem right on the first spin it'll probably take you about 3-4 hours to solve it and 5-8 pages (or at least that's what it took me), but most often I couldn't get it right on the first go and found all sorts of sign errors or misplaced scalars in my algebra. The results would be some really big unintuitive equation that would satisfy the boundary conditions, and it didn't feel like I understood EM any better than before... just had a good recipe for solving those tricky problems.

I think if I were learning the material the first time and now that I can reflect back between the books I would definitely opt for the intuitive approach first by following University Physics.

 

[MidgetDwarf]

I fully agree with this, but in place of having multiple textbooks I tend to focus on one good one and then use YouTube to really solidify the concepts. To be honest I learn a hell of a lot more from YouTube than textbooks but it’s nice to have a good textbook as a starting point and for the end of chapter problems.

I should have worded he question as “which textbook will supplement videos better” or something like that.

For every difficult concept in a textbook there’s probably hundreds of videos on YouTube to guide you. I particularly like Michel Van biezen

You learn more from YouTube because the information is digested for you. By reading a textbook, you have to digest the information yourself. This takes more time on average, and gets exponentially faster, the more books you work through. An important skill needed for future and higher coursework/job work. When you finally get a job using your degree, how are you going to tackle the work problem at hand? No videos will be available.

Videos tend to be very basic. The exemption is an actual video course (usually). Moreover, it is extremely rare, that a person gathers all the information a book holds going through it once. I find new things, insights, and things I thought I knew correctly, rereading books I have worked through.

To the OP or anyone posting a similar thread. Do what ever works for you. Do not post threads asking for validation...

"You have only part quoted me, you missed the part where I stated I do the end of chapter problems. I spend hours watching worked examples and learning the theory via videos, then I read the textbook chapter. Then I attempt the end of chapter problems. I can assure you I learn a lot more than somebody who just read the chapter and does the problems, cos they’re probably just looking at the end of chapter summary for the formulas. I average about 6/7 hours more comprehensible learning hours per chapter than most students. Which is a lot.

Remember you can’t play the piano (well) without learning the rules first "

This is a very arrogant response. I will leave it at that.

To answer the original question. If you need to watch video lectures to understand intro mechanics, then you are not ready for an easy EM book such as Griffiths. Buy an older edition. See if its doable. If not, you have your intro physics book on hand.

 

[bigmike94]

The problem is that many people would stop after this step …

It was a problem already when I was a student that people would just go to lectures at 1x and not at all optimised for speed and think they had absorbed the material. It is when you work with the material that you actually learn it. A lecture will just show you the path, particularly one in which you cannot ask questions and interact with the lecturer.

I fully agree with this. Once you put pen to paper you’ll notice your weak points right away. And learn from them

 

[bigmike94]

I really like University Physics and it's my go to book even during my early career and more advanced (graduate level) classes.

The book does a great job seeding fundamentals and has a lot of examples. I started to take a class that follows Jackson's book. Jackson's book is totally a classic, but it was really hard for me to follow. Griffith's book was a little bit more suited for me in comparison to Jackson's, but it's not much easier than Jackson's book. These books... they didn't seem like they had the intention of introducing EM for the first time, and I don't feel that by going through it first... it's not going to give you a better understanding of EM; it might even risk some knowledge gaps or an unintuitive understanding of concepts. While I was lost in my graduate level course I often referenced back to University Physics to get a better grasp of things or rough expectation of what the solutions should look like, and I believed that extra intuition helped me ace my class.

An example comparison is in University Physics you might learn how to apply Gauss law to an infinitely long charged cylinder to get its fields. The same/similar problem in Jackson's or Griffith's book would be a charged cylinder that is half held at a voltage V and the other half -V, and the cylinder is near a grounded plane. Griffith's book is pretty much going to tell you to setup some boundary conditions and do some really nasty integral using Legendre polynomial or spherical harmonics.. if you get the problem right on the first spin it'll probably take you about 3-4 hours to solve it and 5-8 pages (or at least that's what it took me), but most often I couldn't get it right on the first go and found all sorts of sign errors or misplaced scalars in my algebra. The results would be some really big unintuitive equation that would satisfy the boundary conditions, and it didn't feel like I understood EM any better than before... just had a good recipe for solving those tricky problems.

I think if I were learning the material the first time and now that I can reflect back between the books I would definitely opt for the intuitive approach first by following University Physics.

Thank you for the response this is the reason I’m spending so much time on intro mechanics, 7/8 months in and I’m still on chapter 6. I really feel like I am building a solid foundation. On the other hand I do feel like mathematically I could handle Taylor’s classical mechanics so I do want to get Newtonian mechones finished.

 

[bigmike94]

You learn more from YouTube because the information is digested for you. By reading a textbook, you have to digest the information yourself. This takes more time on average, and gets exponentially faster, the more books you work through. An important skill needed for future and higher coursework/job work. When you finally get a job using your degree, how are you going to tackle the work problem at hand? No videos will be available.

Videos tend to be very basic. The exemption is an actual video course (usually). Moreover, it is extremely rare, that a person gathers all the information a book holds going through it once. I find new things, insights, and things I thought I knew correctly, rereading books I have worked through.

To the OP or anyone posting a similar thread. Do what ever works for you. Do not post threads asking for validation...

"You have only part quoted me, you missed the part where I stated I do the end of chapter problems. I spend hours watching worked examples and learning the theory via videos, then I read the textbook chapter. Then I attempt the end of chapter problems. I can assure you I learn a lot more than somebody who just read the chapter and does the problems, cos they’re probably just looking at the end of chapter summary for the formulas. I average about 6/7 hours more comprehensible learning hours per chapter than most students. Which is a lot.

Remember you can’t play the piano (well) without learning the rules first "

This is a very arrogant response. I will leave it at that.

To answer the original question. If you need to watch video lectures to understand intro mechanics, then you are not ready for an easy EM book such as Griffiths. Buy an older edition. See if its doable. If not, you have your intro physics book on hand.

It does make sense, but at the end of the day if I feel like I have got a good grasp on the topic and can solve the problems then I don’t see why not. Once I am on classical mechanics my main focus will be the textbook same goes for all the more advanced topics. Bare in mind I started teaching my self maths and physics from absolutely scratch, I had no idea how to add two fractions. So the past 2 years i have had to digest a huge amount of material. From pre algebra to multi variable calculus.

I did not intent to come across as arrogant I actually thought the other poster was being a bit arrogant simply posting a quote with no context.