vEnhance
Is there a Napkin-like book for physics?
Hi thank you for the book, which is quite helpful and I enjoy reading it! I wonder whether there exists a Napkin-like book for physics in the world?
I'm not aware of anything out there right now. Perhaps others can chime in if they know of anything.
No, there isn't. Not like Evan has written the Napkin. There are survey books of physics, but most of them are old. One that springs to mind is Georg Joos' "Theoretical Physics" or the Feynman Lectures on Physics (covers first two years of undergrad). If you want something for the physics olympiad that'll also teach you the first 2-3 years of undergrad physics, then check out Kevin Zhou's handouts. No one has really written a big survey book on advanced physics afaik. I might write one over the coming years lol so maybe check my account in 2025 to see if I cooked something up.
Thank you for the information!
Btw I am learning https://theoreticalminimum.com/ currently (It is thicker than Napkin, but teaches quite well)
Is there a Napkin like book for any other sciences (biology, chemistry), or for other applied areas (such as statistics)?
Is there a Napkin like book for any other sciences (biology, chemistry), or for other applied areas (such as statistics)?
Hi zaaahir,
For chemistry, it probably depends on how you would like to approach the field. If you want a particular "napkin" that is concise (I mean <2000 pages) and has a clear logical narrative that is easy to remember, I'm afraid there's none (at least within my reach). Many subfields of chemistry are quite descriptive and inevitably involve massive fact-listing, and many of these facts cannot be effectively summarized into general rules; when you compress them into a concise introduction, you just lose these pieces of information. I would just suggest fetching one textbook for each of the following as a start (and skip any unimportant details you feel boring, especially for inorganic and biochem): inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, quantum chemistry, biochemistry. Other things like analytical chemistry basically only count when you are in the field.
Meanwhile, as an unrelated suggestion, whenever I read an introduction to a general field, I will forget almost everything after a year or two. I start to remember something in the general field only when I start to read the intro to its subfields.
For Physics, this it is An Introduction to the Meaning and Structure of Physics [Leon N Cooper] 1968 ISBN: 9780060413552
There actually is! The user "Chiral Anomaly" on PhysicsSE has a website where they post tons of clear, technical articles about neat physical ideas. It's not "the physics Napkin", per se, but it's the closest thing I've ever seen. Here is the website; enjoy!