Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics
This is a great book but a bit dense first. At a high level it goes through physics with an optimization viewpoint, as in find the actions that minimize a system's energy to figure out how a system will evolve.I would strongly suggest you learn Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics from this book first [1] since it comes with many more illustrations and simple arguments that'll make reading SICM much easier. If you don't have time to read a whole book and want to get the main idea I've written a blog post about Lagragian mechanics myself [2] which has made it to the front page of Hacker News before. The great thing about SICM is that it's a physics textbook where the formulas are replaced by code [3] which you means you can play around with your assumptions to gain intuition for how everything works.IMO I believe in introductory physics we overemphasize formalism over intuition and playing around with simulators is a truer way to explore physics since most physical laws were derived via experimentation not derivation. Another book that really drives this point home is [4][1] https://www.amazon.com/Jakob-Schwichtenberg/dp/1096195380/re...[2] https://blog.usejournal.com/how-to-turn-physics-into-an-opti...[3] https://github.com/hnarayanan/sicm[4] https://natureofcode.com/