>>7479096
the ego and his own

Wikipedia
Grade 7 science textbooks
Math is required, prep anus

start with the Greeks

Get a university level general chemistry textbook to start. General chemistry by Linus Pauling is outdated but very cheap compared to modern textbooks. Chemistry: a molecular approach is what I used in first year. I've heard good things about chemistry: the central science as well.

Feynman's physics lectures are good textbooks for introductory physics, but again a standard first year text will do.

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The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose is exactly what you want OP. Most popular science books skip the math so their explanation become empty hand waving. This book starts from elementary level stuff like the Pythagorean Theorem and goes on to give conceptual overviews of calculus, linear algebra, abstract algebra and topology. Then it dives into physics and puts the full force of all that math to use. By the end, you'll know more advanced math and physics than most STEM undergrads and without having to slog through hundreds of pages of exercises.

>>7479161
This, actually. You'll never grasp theoretical physics or biology unless you understand the precedent the Greeks set with fourfold causality, phusis, and potentia.

>Tfw wanted to be a biotechnologyfag
>Make corn mutants everyday
>Roll in the dough because of high demand
>Get to university after getting mid 80s on all the sciences and 70s in grade 12 calculus (the only math I've ever enjoyed)
>A lot of my high school friends are in science at my university
>tfw you live at home and are never going anywhere
>Ha jk the only place to go is Toronto and Toronto is fucking gay
>2 weeks into science realize that I hate doing science
>realize that even if I liked science, I'm at a shit-tier school for it
>Change major to English
>Tfw school is also shit for English
>Keep bio and chem lectures because I like the profs and because I am a fool
>ihavemadeamistake.jpg
>spend all my time working on bio labs and chem assignments that my one English course starts lagging behind
>One English course
>A real degree
>Say fuck it, spend all my time doing classics and English
>tfw my Chem mark was still higher than my English mark
>tfw had to make a shit ton of new friends in the Humanities
>tfw the only friend I made in my first year English class was a cute neuroscience major
>tfw everyone in English doesn't try
>tfw science girls are way cuter
>tfw one of like 4 non-cringe dudes in English
>tfw useless degree from a subpar university

I don't even know, man. That was a lot of feels you brought up.

>>7480595
Not OP, but his looks super cool, thanks anon, I just ordered a copy. The history of mathematics is relevant though somewhat peripheral to my dissertation, so I've been working through calculus and linear algebra via conventional textbooks. Admittedly they're a bit more laborious than is necessary for the kind of understanding I'm going for. This book looks perfect.

>>7480595
Thanks for that, can you also recommend literature like that for biology, neuroscience?

>>7479126

The math is the fun part

>>7479096
>I know the common things like the atomic model and also the basic statements of stringtheory and theory of relativity, but pretty much only the explanations you would get on a mainstream TV-show, so I have no real deep theoretically knowledge about science, you could probably settle me in a sixth grade physic lesson and I would learn things I didn't know.

unless you need to make a career out of it you already know all you need to live a fulfilling life. science is actually weird among disciplines in that the more you know, the less interesting it becomes. with a little charisma you could really impress some people with pertinent applications of the knowledge you already have. and in fact, you may even know too much to remain interesting! so don't be afraid to completely make shit up when you realize that the truth is utterly inconsequential to anything a human being would ever give a shit about

>>7480595
Seriously? I mean, a great read, but definitely not the place to start. I found this shit hard, and I'm a physics masters student.

>>7480595
>By the end, you'll know more advanced math and physics than most STEM undergrads and without having to slog through hundreds of pages of exercises.
lol

Khan Academy

>>7483243
see >>7482840

keke.

>>7482013
..and chemistry, or does the "the road to reality" also includes chemistry?

Physics PhD student here. I'm almost done with classes, but will still have 3+ years of research.

I can't speak too intelligently about chemistry or biology, but I must say that I think any introductory text on chemistry will teach you what you need to know about that. Chemistry is just applied quantum mechanics done by physicists who suck at math. Perhaps some chemfag will come and tell me why I'm wrong, and I'd be just as interested in that answer as you.

Anyways, physics can be divided into 4 basic categories that are all intertwined:
Classical Mechanics (Class Mech)
Electricity and Magnetism (EM)
Quantum Mechanics (QM)
Statistical Mechanics (Stat Mech or Thermo)

Protip to immediately improve your standing among physicists: Don't call it quantum physics. The only people who call it quantum physics are people who have never taken a QM class and people who are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of people who have never taken a QM class, like Deepak Chopra.

OK, first you study basic physics, and then you read Modern Physics by Serway. You can skip the intro if you want, but it will be very difficult to do the problems in Serway without doing the introductory work first.

This is important, because if you want to have even a basic grasp of QM, you can't just read a pop-sci book. YOU HAVE TO DO THE MATH. I can't stress this enough. QM contains some extremely profound truths about the universe, but most of them are mathematical results. Further, most of the example problems that you will need to do to understand things will give you results that are completely counter-intuitive, and just reading a statement of the results will not give you any true level of understanding. The understanding is in the math. There is a lot of pop-science fags out there who think they understand Schrodinger's Cat because they read about it on wikipedia for 5 minutes. Then you ask them to explain it in their own words and it immediately becomes clear that they have no fucking clue what they are talking about.

So, here's how you are going to learn:
1. Buy an intro college physics textbook.
You can find many of the older ones available for dirt cheap, and these will serve your needs perfectly, because intro physics material hasn't really changed too much in the last 40 years. If money is not an issue, then I would get Serway and Jewett's 'Physics for Scientists and Engineers.' I learned from this textbook and really enjoyed it.

Don't worry, you're not going to read all infinity pages. You need to cover the first few chapters, which will go through Newtonian Mechanics. This will teach you about energy, momentum, and much more importantly, how to think of problems mathematically. DO SOME PRACTICE PROBLEMS. This is only way to truly learn the material. Give yourself homework and do it.

>>7484392
The hardest part of this section will be angular momentum and torque, but once you're done with this part, you will have a basic understanding of Class Mech. You could go on and find a more mature textbook and try to learn Lagrangian Mechanics to do some more complicated stuff, but I don't think that's in the scope of what you are trying to accomplish.

Congratulations, you have a basic understanding of Classical Mechanics.

From there you will continue on in the same textbook to study introductory EM material. This will teach you about charge and potential, which will be extremely important concepts as you move forward.

After that comes introductory thermo material. This will cover heat, phase changes and energy, etc.

These will give you some foundational understanding on EM and Stat Mech. It seems you're more interested in QM, so this is probably enough to teach you enough about these fields to study QM.

You won't have any real grasp of the material, but EM and Stat Mech are long, dark roads. Most of the problems you encounter in EM are fundamentally very simple, but mathematically complex. You may read a question that asks you to find the electric field above a plate that has a hole in the middle, and jump right in only to find yourself still crunching away after 5 pages of math.

Stat Mech on the other hand, was the hardest class I took as an undergrad. I don't recommend trying to learn that from a book all by yourself.

You mostly need a conceptual understanding of these topics to do QM, so this is probably sufficient.

2. By a book on calculus. If money is tight, just use Paul's Online Notes, available for free.

This will primarily be a reference book, but from here on out the math will start to get a bit more complicated, and you won't be able to get away without doing some integration and/or infinite sums.

>>7484399
OK, all of the above should take about a year of casual study. This may seem like a lot, but this will make the next part, the part you are interested in, much more doable, and it's going to be fucking awesome.

3. Buy Modern Physics, by Serway, Moses, and Moyer. Second edition is OK if money is tight.

Honestly, I wish everyone could read this book. It's one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, and a perfect text to give you a broad, top down look at physics. Unfortunately, it presupposes some knowledge about basic physics, which is why we had such a long intro section. Again, we could skip here if we wanted, but it won't be easy, and you'll likely still need the other books for reference.

Modern Physics gives a historical approach to teaching physics, which makes it extremely interesting in addition to being informing. At the end of the 19th century, physicists thought that they basically understood the universe, and that only technical details remained. Newtonian mechanics ruled the skies, and Maxwell's equations gave rise to EM and light.

We start with the Michaelson Morely experiment, one of the most important experiments in scientific history. It showed that the ether doesn't exist, and our understanding of light is somehow flawed. Enter relativity, and we learn one of the reasons why Einstein was such a big deal.

Then we go right into the ultraviolet catasrophe, which formed the basis for quantum mechanics and showed that there were some fundamental flaws with even topics as basic as Class Mech (but we will also need a little bit of thermo to make sense of it).

Then we start learning about The Bohr Model, which was the first model that made some sense of early experimental QM results, and then we're off the races with QM. We'll learn about matter waves, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and the first coherent interpretations of QM.

Then we get to the Schrodinger equation, which is the fundamental equation of all of QM, and we can do some really, really cool shit. We study the infinite square well to learn how to use the Schrodinger equation, and then we learn the finite square well and quantum tunnelling to get the first odd result of modern QM: a particle will penetrate into a potential wall that it doesn't have enough energy to overcome. That's like saying that if you roll a ball between two hills, and it doesn't have enough energy to get over either hill, instead of rolling back and forth for infinity, it will eventually roll straight THROUGH one of the hills to other side.

This is the most important problem in QM, and will teach you why QM is so weird, but also why it is so important.

>>7484409
Now you have a mathematical understanding of the basics of QM, which is the ONLY WAY TO UNDERSTAND QM. With this, you can pick up a lot of non-technical material on the subject get a lot out of it.

>>7480595
Haven't heard of this, but if it is math based, then perhaps it will be of some use.

>>7480613
Complete and utter bullshit. Only useful from a historical perspective, but even then it would be a quick 5 min intro so that you could start talking about Galileo and the real history of physics.

>>7480630
Should have gone to Toronto.