My Favourite Physics Problem-Solving Books

hey everyone welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is ray and i'm a second year cambridge students new physics and in this video i briefly want to talk about some of the physics problem-solving books that i found useful between the ages of 16 and 18 when i was preparing for admissions tests and generally getting better at physics as always timestamps and any links to buy these books will be in the description down below so do check those out during the video so

before talking about the books are a few points i want to mention the first is that some of these books are going to be a bit expensive and the way i like to think about this situation is that i've never once regretted spending like 15 pounds on a book um just because i've derived so much value from it over many weeks and months but i have regretted like spending i don't know 15 pounds on takeaway which wasn't particularly good um so it sort of depends on like considering how long of an impact this like thing you're spending your money is going to have on because some people don't really hesitate much when spending 15 pounds on takeaway but do when it comes to actually buying a book which will give them so much more value and this is why whenever i'm thinking buying a generally useful book i never really look at the price just because i know i'll get so much more value out of the book that it's like easily justifies the price as long as it's not worth say like a few hundred pounds or something crazy like that all that said if you generally don't have the money to buy these books then i would recommend asking your school library or some of your school teachers whether they can buy for you or like a local library uh just because they're usually more than happy to buy these books and for you to then rent them out or loan them out for a bit and whatnot and it can be especially easy to convince your teachers or your school library if you say that it's helping you improve your problem solving skills uh to get a better grade overall or for university applications and admission tests and stuff like that so the second point is about doing the books themselves don't feel the need to do the book cover to cover and for to do like one book and then the next and whatnot feel free to skip around in the books which and choose problems which generally interest you or on topics that you feel like you're struggling with and don't feel the need to do the whole book like you just may not need to do some topics because you find it more straightforward or some topics you may have not learned or some topics don't apply to your specification or something like that and don't feel the need to complete one book and then move on to the next book you can do multiple books side by side as well and i think this is one of the regrets i had when preparing i thought i had to complete one book and then kept putting off that book just because i didn't feel like doing some of the problems that day but i could have done problems from another book which had a few more fun problems on that topic or something like that so yeah it's perfectly fine for you to do parts of the book and two or three books in parallel or something and the final point is about how consistency over the long term is so much better some of these books are going to have some generally difficult problems and some of them you may have spent hours or even days thinking about and to get the most value out of these problems is to actually spend that time thinking about the problems rather than looking at the problem and seeing oh i don't get it and then giving about five minutes you have to try a few different things you have to think about where to get started maybe think for a few hours off and on not sitting down thinking for like four hours straight like if you can't get started then come back say like an hour's two later or when you're say waiting um for the train or like bus to school or something and if you've looked at the problem enough times and you should usually remember it or what you've done so far so you can spend that time thinking about it um and some days you may even come back and realize that some of your reasoning was wrong so you weren't getting anywhere with your solution there but basically what i'm suggesting is that you should strike a balance between not giving up on the problem too soon and not spending so long on the problem that you'll just get nowhere and you'll be wasting your time because there's so many other problems you can be doing which will genuinely be helpful but if you do give up and like look at the solution after spending i don't know a few days thinking about it because it was generally a difficult problem then try your best to understand the solution and make the best sense out of it and then try to come back to a problem say two or three weeks later and see if you can sort of you've actually learned from the solution rather than just memorizing it um so you have actually improved your skills of being able to now solve that

problem so anyway now that's out of the way i want to talk about my favorite physics problem book which is professor powy's perplexing problems which was written by a oxford professor of i think engineering or physics or something um who basically compiled like his favorite problems his favorite physics problems into this book and many of them have been using oxford physics interviews and are quite similar to problems you'd find in admission tests and stuff like that so generally in the book you have different levels of difficulties in these problems so you can see this one is a freestyle problem so they range from one star being the easiest to four stars being the hardest you have some good diagrams and solutions which go alongside the problems as well um if you could see that clearly on camera i have no idea um but my only problem with the book is that the solution appears right after the problem itself so sometimes when you turn the page and you want to move on to the next problem you may accidentally look at a part of the solution which just sort of ruins a problem for you so i would suggest keeping a spare piece of paper handy nearby so when you do turn the page you can sort of like cover the solution straight away uh so you don't look at it and you only look at the problem itself so out of all the books i'm going to be mentioning this one is by far the closest to what you'd be doing in as a level physics so yeah it's probably the most worth buying i think out of all of them so my next

favorite book is called the chicken from minsk um and 99 other infuriatingly challenging brain teasers from the great russian traditions of maths and science that's a full name but just search the chicken from minsk and i really like it because it has some great cancer intensive problems and many of them don't require you to do much or pages upon on pages of algebra or something to get the solution and some of them just require you to have a clear head and think through the problem clearly um and have a more logical approach which is very helpful so this is a russian book but it's obviously not written in russian and you have hints which appear upside down so they're quite difficult to read so i would recommend starting with a problem and trying to avoid turning the book upside down to read the hints and only checking the hints after you've attempted a few stuff and you find yourself getting nowhere uh only then is a hint actually useful and then of course the it has solutions as well closer towards the end of each chapter um which is quite good but because it's a russian book you may see topics which you just haven't covered on your aes or a level physics course um which is completely fine because you can just skip those problems and like i said before you don't have to do all the problems just do whatever problems you feel like you are just outside your comfort zone and okay people are doing and as your comfort zone increases in size then you will be able to attempt more problems from this book as well so this book i think i bought second hand because it it's no longer really in print but you can find used copies on amazon and ebay for like really quite cheap um and just because like no one's really asking for this book or it's like not many people know about it despite it

being so good so the next book is called brain teaser physics um and i think i did less than 20 of the problems in that because some of them are really quite difficult um and yeah like i think they say the level 10 well the final problem in each chapter even challenges the abilities of the physics professor um and yeah so it does go quite difficult but some of the early problems are more straightforward well not straightforward real easy in comparison to later ones um and you can learn a whole lot by doing them so fortunately it's in a nicer format whereby you have uh the problems at the start of each chapter uh so like over here and then if you flick um go past all the problems then you have the solutions so you don't end up accidentally seeing the solutions uh which is quite good and the solutions are quite comprehensive and they often give you an additional problem to do so make sure you sort of understand the method of the solution

so now for a slightly easier book i quite enjoyed thinking physics i don't have a physical copy because i just found a pdf online by searching like thinking physics pdf and you should be able to as well on some dodgy website but don't download any viruses or something so the problems in a book are a lot shorter and many can be solved in under say a minute or even five minutes if you have the right approach and i think it's a really good book if you want to take a break from doing some of the more longer form problems or the more challenging problems in this in these books because some of these could take like uh 30 minutes or an hour or even many days for you to do or figure out and because once you have that small bit of insights then the wrestling problem becomes easier to manage whereas we're thinking physics and problems are much shorter and i think it's just so much nicer to do these like shorter problems in between some of these longer ones from some of these books and the final

book is called 200 puzzling physics problems which i also found online by searching for pdf copy and i think it's particularly good um because it has a hint section for all the problems as well which helps you get started many of them if you have no idea how to start straight away and also the solutions are quite comprehensive as well and you can learn quite a bit from them too but ultimately if you ask me to only recommend one book then i would say it would be professor poway's perplexing problems because you can do many of the problems with a solid grasp of the as physics content and knowing some content from a2 such as cyclone motion and stuff like that but

yeah that's basically for this video like i said you don't have to get all the books and reading all the problems from all of them and stuff like that um you can just do a couple problems or like 10 or 20 percent or say like 50 of the problems from professor powey's perplexing problems which i did um yeah so if you found it useful then do let me know if you know of any other useful physics problem-solving books then do leave that in comments down below and i would like to check more out and maybe recommend more in the future or something but for now i guess i'll see you next time bye