Getting started
Many prospective undergraduates ask us if there is anything they should be reading before joining us to start their studies in the autumn. Whilst it is not necessary to read anything in preparation, our teaching staff have put together this list of podcasts, videos and books that they enjoy and that they think will be of interest to you.
Book recommendations
Want to know what books our lecturers like? Here's a list of some of their favourites from mind-expanding reads on the science of physics and popular science page turners to accounts of the discoveries and events that changed our understanding of the world around us.
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Our physics favourites
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The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg
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The Quark And the Jaguar by Murray Gell-mann
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In Search Of Schrodingers Cat by John Gribbin
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Storm In A Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski
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Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
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The Wonders Of Physics by Andrey Varlamov and Lev Aslamazov
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Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe by Martin Rees
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Light And Colour In The Outdoors by Marcel Minnaert
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Soft Matter: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of by Roberto Piazza
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The New Cosmic Onion: Quarks And The Nature Of The Universe by Frank Close
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We Have No Idea: A Guide To The Unknown Universe by Cham and Whiteson
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Classical Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum by Hrabovsky and Susskind
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| Our science picks |
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Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air by David MacKay
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Superior: The Return Of Race Science by Angela Saini
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The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
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The AI Does Not Hate You by Tom Chivers
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Big Data: Does Size Matters? by Timandra Harkness
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Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous by Steven Strogatz
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Hello World: Being Human In The Age Of Algorithms by Hannah Fry
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What If by Randall Munroe
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Information Is Beautiful by David McCandless
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| The history of science |
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| Longitude by Dava Sobel |
| The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg |
| The Making Of The Atomic Bomb by Russell Rhodes |
| A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson |
| Code Girls: The Untold Story Of The American Women Code Breakers Of WWII by Mundy |
| Revealing The Universe: The Making of the Chandra X-ray Observatory by Wallace Tucker |
| Mission Moon 3-D: Reliving The Great Space Race by David Eicher and Brian May |
| Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Race by Brzezinski |
Practise your python
Learning some python will be useful throughout your degree, so why not get a head start?