0 The Guide to the Guide

The Philosophy Behind the Guide

This guide is for those brave souls who have a deep yearning to climb the cliff of modern physics. We intend the guide to be accessible to people at nearly any level of learning; giving a broad overview of the topics which are essential for engaging in a productive dialogue with the universe and its laws. In a typical undergraduate physics education, there is a very specific ordering in which topics are presented. Such an ordering is useful in so far as it provides students with a clear route up the cliff. Part of the art of climbing, however, is learning how to find one's own route up the cliff face, a skill not often learned in college. Indeed, finding new paths to familiar ideas is the skill which separates the good physicists from the mediocre. When extended, this skill allows one to free-climbing to new heights on the cliff face, the hallmark of an excellent physicist.

Here, we only intended to show you the cliff face while suggesting an admittedly vague path up the wall; it is nearly impossible to climb that which has not been seen. To this end, we will be following Robert Penrose's book The Road to Reality, whose chosen ordering of topics is sufficiently unorthodox as to preclude any attempts to skip the important step of learning to climb. Furthermore, it is the only book that I am aware of that contains nearly all the necessary concepts to deliver a student to the edge of that which is known. Due to the incredible breadth of subjects covered in the book, each chapter skips over a swath of ideas and does not fully expand upon the ideas presented. This collection of resources is intended to fill in these gaps and give direction to any sufficiently motivated autodidact staring longingly at the clouds. We call this method guided self-learning.

How to Use the Guide

First of all, let it be known that while the book is (necessarily) ordered linearly, you are by no means constrained to this ordering. Let your curiosity run wild! That being said, many of us like the structure that book provides, which each chapter coming after the next, so if you would like to read chapter by chapter, great, if you would like to skip around to what sounds interesting also great, but do not be surprised in either case if you run into many things that do not make sense upon a first read. This is where the guide comes in.

We have divided the guide into six sections:

• Community Explanations
  • These are summaries of the key points in the chapter written by our community contributors. A quick way to review the contents of a chapter or just read an additional take on a given topic.
• Preliminaries
  • Resources covering concepts that we recommend you have a firm grasp on before going into a chapter. Knowledge of concepts covered in previous chapters is assumed.
• Essential
  • Resources which we strongly believe will solidify the most important concepts presented within the chapter.
• Recommended
  • Resources which should be reviewed if a given concept in the chapter just didn't quite click.
• Further Reading
  • Resources, often textbooks, which constitute the next steps to understanding the topics presented in the chapter at a deeper level.
• Art