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Comment Lots to read! (Score 0) 276

A lot of people seem to be recommending the Feynmann lectures, but I'd recommend that you use those to supplement other reading rather than as your main text.

If you want to get up to speed quickly, try University Physics by Young and Freedman. It's a well written general physics textbook, contains plenty of exercises and diagrams (important!) and should get you up to a basic 2nd-year (UK) physics undergrad level.

After that, look towards the Manchester physics series. Electromagnetism (Grant and Phillips), Statistical Physics (Mandl) and Optics (Smith and Thomson) are all pretty good, and cover the bulk of classical physics. (University Physics covers dynamics well enough by itself.)

For quantum mechanics, I found the early chapters of Molecular Quantum Mechanics (Atkins) instructive. There are a few good relativity textbooks out there, but I can't remember the names of any...

For astrophysics textbooks, Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics (Zeilik and Gregory) covers the basics. For high energy astrophysics, Longair is the most comprehensive textbook I've found. For galactic astrophysics I read Combes et al., which I found quite average.

Good luck!

Space

Submission + - Jodrell Bank under closure threat

Anonymous Astronomer writes: MERLIN, the UK's only radio astronomy facility is facing closure following the results of a Programmatic Review carried out by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the results of which were announced on Monday 3rd March. The review placed MERLIN and the upgraded telescope e-MERLIN, due to go online later this year following an 8-million pound investment, in the low priority category under serious threat of funding cuts. The upgraded array of telescopes, situated accross the UK, will be 30-times more sensitive than the current array and will be a unique facility for observing distant objects and helping us understand the Universe. If these cuts go ahead however, not only MERLIN but the entire Observatory including the iconic Lovell telescope, based at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, will be under threat of closure. There is a detailed article on this in the Times today.
Programming

SimCity Source Code Is Now Open 360

Tolkien writes "Source code for SimCity has been released under the GPLv3. For legal reasons the open source version was renamed Micropolis, which was apparently the original working title. The OLPC will also be getting a SimCity branded version that has been QA'ed by Electronic Arts. Some very cool changes have been made by Don Hopkins, who updated and ported what is now Micropolis. (Here is an earlier Slashdot discussion kicked off by a submission Don made.) Among other things, it has been revamped from the original C to using C++ with Python. Here is the page linking all the various source code versions. Happy hacking!"
User Journal

Journal Journal: GNOME Usability Ideas

GNOME Usability (a list which I'm a very occaisional contributor to) has been particularly active with all sorts of Topaz-talk. Topaz (which for you unknowing/uncaring is GNOME Three-Point-Zero) is years off, but it's nice to be able to have some input at the very early stages & maybe get some decent features in there.

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