Learn Physics Fast

Key Takeaways

all right run it again wait I think I miscalculated no no no no no no hello world it's Suraj and there are three reasons why you should learn physics first understanding physics will enable you to understand computers better physics is crucial in computer engineering for example the principles of electromagnetism helped us design transistors for processing units and the laws of thermodynamics helped us manage system heat levels second it will help you innovate this totally random dude I googled named Elon Musk has said that he tends to approach things from a physics framework which helps with reasoning from first principles rather than by analogy a big part of his success as an entrepreneur and third the quantum computing revolution is coming quantum computing leverages quantum mechanics a subset of physics soon quantum algorithms will become a crucial part of the machine learning pipeline that means now is the time to invest in the prerequisite skills so I've condensed a four years bachelor's degree in physics into a free two month curriculum that anyone can take and I'm going to describe it to you in detail in this video to prepare for this curriculum the first step is to write down all the questions you have about physics these questions will help you form your learning goal learn with intent genuine curiosity is what fuels learning we're going to be practicing accelerated learning something that wasn't taught in traditional schools in particular we'll use three techniques the first and Wizards who have been following me now for a while know how much I love this one is speeding up videos with a chrome extension called video speed controller watch videos at 2x or 3x speed remember start slow and gradually increase it over time just like your muscles your brain will slowly adapt to parsing information at a faster speed over time second hand write notes as you watch even if your handwriting is sub-optimal studies show the mere process of using your motor cortex to translate some concept you've learned through one of your senses into handwriting is beneficial for retention and third practice rapid dependency parsing have two windows open on your monitor first is the learning material you are studying be it a lecture or study guide in the second have Google open as you come upon any new concept you don't understand immediately google it in the second window open at least three different sources as new tabs on that topic synthesize the information from each to form a generalized representation leverage the power of Google search AI to help you understand anything parsing dependencies of knowledge rapidly until you understand it then continue learning repeating the process for every new concept you come upon now on to my physics curriculum there are eight weeks we'll need to learn in order in math review week classical mechanics statistical mechanics electromagnetism particle physics general relativity quantum mechanics and quantum field theory I've already completed this curriculum myself and here's a 15-second summary I compiled physics is a toolset that helps us understand matter energy in the interactions between them modern physics revolves around four fundamental forces gravity the strong nuclear force the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism as well as 22 equations Newton's three laws of motion the four laws of thermodynamics Maxwell's four equations Einsteins ten field equations and Schrodinger's equation pretty much everything else is derived from these equations with exceptions now onto our first week math review it turns out that the same prerequisites for machine learning apply to physics to calculus linear algebra probability theory and statistics i've already compiled a list of cheat sheets for each of these essential math subjects they are the same ones that I used for my learn machine learning in three months video and students seem to respond really well to them additionally three blue one brown has an amazing playlist for both calculus and linear algebra and Khan Academy has a great course titled statistics and probability if you're familiar with machine learning then reviewing these four maths subjects in one week is totally doable if you're not familiar with machine learning it will probably take a little longer and that's okay take as long as you need these subjects are essential not just to physics but to pretty much every field of science and engineering math is a toolset that helps us innovate and make new discoveries once we're done with math review it's time for some physics starting with of course classical mechanics the field that revolved around Isaac Newton's three laws of motion I sampled several courses here but none of the instructors captivated me quite like Leonardo us candid he's a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and one of the fathers of string theory what I like most about his lectures were how dense they were in just 10 lectures he manages to cover quite a lot of material and you've got to love his dry sense of humor after finishing the lecture series go through this classical mechanics formula sheet that I found for the University of Liverpool it contains all the necessary formulas you'll need to know as well as the important concepts in classical mechanics starting from kinematics and moving up to Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism to concepts that are used pretty consistently across the rest of physics I've also attached a final exam as well take out a writing utensil and some paper and try to solve each problem as best you can it's ok if you only get 10% write the point of this is to put your analytical skills to practice learning is as much about actively doing as it is about taking information in passively once completed look at the solution sheet compare your answers and update your brains weight values this is the learning process on to week 3 classical mechanics studies the motion of macroscopic objects from projectiles all the way up to stars and planets and this helps us make precise predictions about them but consider a system of millions of objects say molecules in a test tube it isn't necessary or even theoretically yet possible to know exactly at a microscopic level the simultaneous positions and velocities of every single molecule while carrying out human scale processes I performing a chemical reaction that's where statistical mechanics comes in it uses probability to fill this disconnect between the laws of mechanics and the practical experience of incomplete knowledge it adds uncertainty about which state the system is in it shows how concepts from macroscopic observations like temperature and pressures are related to the description of microscopic states that fluctuates around an average state all of this revolves around the four laws of thermodynamics for video lectures on this topic once again Leonardi is our go-to instructor there's a free stanford course on this topic that he teaches available on YouTube as a playlist I also just like his vibe check out this clip from lecture 1 the reason I teach it is not for you it's for me I love teaching it I love teaching it I teach it over and over and over again and in a sense my life is consisted of learning and forgetting and learning and forgetting and learning and forgetting statistical mechanics so here's my opportunity to learn it again inspiring stuff it just goes to show that learning is a lifelong process you're not expected to memorize every single equation and retain it for the rest of your life after watching the lecture videos go through the following very comprehensive lecture notes that I found from UCL performing dependency parsing as per necessary lastly take the practice final exam I found from University of Virginia then check your answers using the solutions notice how I'm piecing together totally disparate sources this is something to get accustomed to welcome to internet university as long as we set a high level learning path the resources themselves don't all have to come from the same place moving on to electromagnetism we're gonna absolutely need to understand this stuff to later understand Einstein's theory of relativity the electromagnetic force makes possible the advanced technology that forms much of the basis of our civilization that includes televisions computers smartphones microwave ovens and even the humble light bulb classical mechanics helped us understand one of the four fundamental forces now it's time for us to understand another this concept is described beautifully by Maxwell's four equations that he published in 1873 one of the triumphs of classical physics for video lectures it's time to give walter lewin a shot to his credit he is quite engaging and yes there are 37 lectures here but it's worth it he's constantly engaging his life classroom with all sorts of physical demonstrations of electromagnetism and it's helpful to see how his live students reacts to him and the types of questions they ask once completed we can look at this slide deck from Tsinghua University one of the best universities in China each of these slides gives in-depth coverage on electromagnetism subtopics and it's in English lastly take the final exam from MIT then check your solutions now for the remaining two known forces the strong and weak nuclear forces both of which are taught in particle physics this is the study of elementary particles that make up reality like protons neutrons and electrons those high-energy particle accelerators like the one at CERN in Geneva help create collisions that detect all sorts of particles the Higgs boson also known as the god particle was recently discovered there which we added to the standard model more on that in a second so we're better to learn particle physics and at the University of Geneva taught by CERN affiliates this is a free course on Coursera and I like that the lectures aren't super dry the professor talks with a slide deck next to him in different settings there's also videos of experiments skip the readings and quizzes just watch the videos once through with the videos skim through this guy's course notes I found from a Dutch University for subatomic physics then take the final exam from intro to particle physics from Berkeley now it's time for the big one Einstein's theory of relativity of which general and special relativity are a subset this is where Einstein transforms Newtonian physics with his ten field equations that he published as a paper from which we can derive the famous e equals mc-squared he introduces the concept of space-time as a continuum here Einstein showed that all objects with mass warp space-time and have their own gravity luckily Susskind has a free playlist on relativity on YouTube this will round out our understanding of the four fundamental forces by helping us better understand gravity I found the perfect lecture notes for this as well Sean Carroll a professor at Caltech published his lecture notes on relativity on archive as a paper great stuff then we'll complete the final from UC San Diego's general relativity course it's pretty short but very dense exactly the type of written content we're looking for now we get to the fun stuff quantum mechanics it's what's helped us define the standard model which describes the three fundamental forces and relativity helps describe the fourth gravity basically general relativity explains macroscopic interactions and quantum mechanics explains microscopic interactions for this we're gonna go straight to the og himself richard fineman who pretty much every physicist looks up to he's got a series of four free lectures on YouTube called the quantum mechanical view of reality then take the quantum mechanics free four-week course on EDX from Georgetown University quantum mechanics is universally acknowledged as being a bizarre and difficult subject to understand because at the atomic scale Matter doesn't interact in the way we're used to things aren't deterministic there is a randomness to reality we just don't find elsewhere after that go through these really great lecture notes on quantum mechanics from MIT short dense and lots of diagrams there are eight of them great stuff lastly take the final exam from Rutgers University now on to the last week quantum field theory the primary motivation behind QFT was to be able to merge quantum mechanics with special relativity to gain greater generality in our understanding of reality it succeeded and that's why we now have the standard model which describes all fundamental forces except for gravity it treats particles as excited states of an underlying physical field of which there are several dr. prasanta Tripathi at IIT Madras has the best course I could find for free it's all on YouTube the other playlist on this topic have a low video quality and are really long I've also attached a study guide on this after completing that Congrats we're now at a place where we can understand the cutting edge of modern physics the efforts to create a grand unified theory one that connects gravity to quantum mechanics string theory is the current leading candidate amongst physicists in that regard once you've completed this you'll be well prepared to immediately dive into quantum computing computer engineering or innovating with your newly learned first principles framework the link to my detailed curriculum is in the video description good luck wizards what topic in physics excites you the most let me know in the comment section and hit that red subscribe button to get notified of my new videos for now I've got to study quantum biology so thanks for watching