Tuesday 26 March 2013

The Fitzpatrick Physics Files

There's a character in The Big Bang Theory who looks like a praying mantis. This character is of course Sheldon Cooper - a child prodigy from Texas. Texas has given us more scientists than just Sheldon, take Sandy from Spongebob for example. There is too much evidence for this to be a coincidence. It's something to do with Texas. I think the  University of Texas man, Richard Fitzpatrick, shares some of this responsibility, as he has written some pretty damn good physics notes on his website.

Now, he has actually covered a lot, and it's all at university level. Here's the full list of what is written on the website:
  • Plasma Physics
  • Quantum Mechanics
  • Classical Electromagnetism
  • Quantum Mechanics
  • Thermodynamics And Statistical Mechanics
  • Classical Electromagnetism
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Newtonian Dynamics
  • Computational Physics
  • Oscillations and Waves
  • Electromagnetism And Optics
  • Classical Mechanics
I can actually remember using the Newtonian Dynamics section to find answers to my homework, 4 years ago. One thing to be aware of is the dull appearance. There are no pretty pictures, the font is ancient and there isn't any colour! Fortunately, it is really well laid out.

Here's a screen shot of the computational section, to see what I mean:


Every thing that has been written has been written carefully and put in the right place. It's also downloadable as a PDF, so you can save it to read without an internet connection. Go crazy!

This is it:
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching.html

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