I haven’t been doing as much reading in math and science these days, but what I have found and listed here I thought interesting or worthwhile:
- I was trying to self educate on the principle of least action, and while doing so I came across the work of David Morin. I thought these were all good: On The Lagrangian Method, On The Hamiltonian method and an Introduction to quantum mechanics.
- Related to that, here’s a “History of Two Fundamental Principles of
Physics: Least Action and Conservation of Energy”. As far as intros go, this is good: String Theory and Quantum Physics – dummies. - As I started doing the reading, I got more interested in the history of physics. This is a treasure: A short history of physics : Buckley Harry Fawcett
- Speaking of history and physics, I found a lot of interesting pieces on 19th century physics, including this: On the discovery of the electron and nucleus. Here’s something on Rutherford’s famous experiment using alpha particles to better understand atomic composition. (Image above from that.)
- As I was reading all this material, I came across two “scandals”: Marie Curie’s scandalous affair and Heisenberg and his terrible PhD defense (hint: neither was really scandalous, though they may have felt so at the time)
- Here’s that piece on Sleeping spiders. Fascinating. Also fascinating: calculate pi using raindrops,
- I thought this was a good piece on data science.
- Visually, this is interesting: Visible math. As was this: The Physical World: An Inspirational Tour of Fundamental Physics.
- This is useful: MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials
- Finally, this is amusing: 50 Math Jokes That Are Equal Parts Nerdy And Hilarious