Six Ideas That Shaped Physics

Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

• Steuard · May 15, 2015 · Recommends

  …taught relativity quite a bit recently, and I much prefer to build intuition using "space-time diagrams" (or "Minkowski diagrams") showing coordinate systems for two different observers. Tom Moore's Six Ideas That Shaped Physics textbook (Unit R) does a very nice job of this. But here's a really bargain-basement handout that I made many years ago to explain the idea before I started using Moore's text for this. (I'd probably…

  on “If two objects approach at 75 percent the speed of light” ↗
• Steuard · Mar 30, 2015 · Recommends

  …review guide and all (though probably too terse for someone trying to learn the material for the first time), but what about it is catching peoples' attention? If I post about Tom Moore's fantastic "Six Ideas that Shaped Physics" textbook series (http://www.physics.pomona.edu/sixideas/), which is based on a career's worth of experience and many of the best ideas from the active field of Physics Education Research, is that also…

  on “No bullshit guide to math and physics” ↗
• Steuard · Jun 1, 2016 · Recommends

  …the state of those walls in any way. I don't see any manifestation of decoherence in the game.) In case you're interested, my current favorite intro level textbook on quantum mechanics is Tom Moore's "Six Ideas that Shaped Physics: Unit Q". It doesn't go as far as I'd like for a really thorough course (which is especially true in the recent 3rd edition, though the material that's still there is presented much more clearly), but…

  on “Please check my quantum physics browser game for accuracy” ↗
• Steuard · Feb 25, 2018 · Recommends

  …that discusses the true (relativistic) formula for momentum (etc.) very early on. I haven't taught out of it yet, but I've been very tempted. I'm currently teaching the intro course using Tom Moore's Six Ideas that Shaped Physics series. His approach is a little quirky at times, but usually for good reasons. I like it a lot. Those are both purely introductory texts (though both cover topics up through "modern" physics: relativity…

  on “Learn Physics by Programming in Haskell” ↗
• havercosine · Jul 14, 2026 · Recommends

  …and mental models. Roughly similar to Elon's idea that knowledge is a semantic tree and one should focus on trunk and big branches first. Thomas A Moore did this experimental syllabus / series called "six ideas that shaped Physics". Each textbook takes one idea like "conservation laws constrain interactions". It's an excellent series, each book is relatively short and has amazing explanation. Especially look out for 2nd edition…

  on “So you want to learn physics (second edition, 2021)” ↗
• Steuard · Apr 26, 2017 · Recommends

  Tom Moore's Six Ideas That Shaped Physics is one of my favorites. It upends the traditional order of topics in an intro physics class: it starts with conservation laws rather than F=ma, both because they're more fundamental (you're not going…

  on “States are moving to cut college costs by introducing open-source textbooks” ↗
• Steuard · Aug 2, 2018 · Recommends

  …books are listed in roughly my order of preference. This is far, far from being every book for each course or even every popular one, but it's a start. Intro Physics (Mechanics, E&M, waves, etc.): * Six Ideas That Shaped Physics, by Tom Moore: Conservation laws first, and a nice conceptual approach (and can incorporate "modern physics" along the way). * Matter and Interactions, by Chabay and Sherwood: Integrated VPython programming,…

  on “The Best Textbooks on Every Subject” ↗