Physics textbook

I’ve been meaning to learn me some physics since forever and I think I’ve finally found the right textbook in Motion Mountain: a beautiful, massive (1498 pages!), free book on physics.

The brainchild of one Christoph Schiller, after some 17 years it’s in its 21st edition (though still in progress!) and has been enriched by the suggestions and contributions of the web community. Elegantly type-set, full of multimedia (graphs, photos, animations, tables, videos), problems, experiments, and excellent quotations (in the original Latin, Greek, German or French), the book covers pretty much the whole of physics with a passionate, philosophical approach (there’s a whole subchapter on language and many a Wittgenstein quotation!). Forget condescending, dull textbooks, this is one man who thinks (and argues! see subchapter 39) that “exploring physics is more fun than making love” (“Sex is the physics urge sublimated.”).

Truly breathtaking. One of the best web finds in quite some time. Download the book and flip through it just to marvel at one’s man labor of love.