I try to do this; but what I’ve found is that, when trying to self-study difficult material, I often get wedged early on with bits that I just can’t understand or match against my model. Perhaps that’s a sign that I should start simpler, but often it’s not clear what the simpler thing I should start with is.
(Some friends and I once did a reading group of Griffiths’ /Introduction to Elementary Particles/. We were, IIRC, a mixture of CS/Math/Physics, but no graduate-level physics, which is I think who the text is targeted at. We learned a lot, but also failed to grok a lot. It wasn’t really clear what simpler thing we should step back to.)
This is a book for undergraduates, and it’s a good thing that you didn’t grok much. It’s kind of like an intro chemistry book. If you really want to understand chemistry you need quantum mechanics, but it’s a bad idea to start (most) chemistry students off with Schrodinger’s equation. If you want to grok particle physics you need QFT, which is among the most difficult subjects. If a non-QFT person tells you that they read Griffiths’ particles book and understood it all then they don’t know what it means to understand something.
I try to do this; but what I’ve found is that, when trying to self-study difficult material, I often get wedged early on with bits that I just can’t understand or match against my model. Perhaps that’s a sign that I should start simpler, but often it’s not clear what the simpler thing I should start with is.
(Some friends and I once did a reading group of Griffiths’ /Introduction to Elementary Particles/. We were, IIRC, a mixture of CS/Math/Physics, but no graduate-level physics, which is I think who the text is targeted at. We learned a lot, but also failed to grok a lot. It wasn’t really clear what simpler thing we should step back to.)
This is a book for undergraduates, and it’s a good thing that you didn’t grok much. It’s kind of like an intro chemistry book. If you really want to understand chemistry you need quantum mechanics, but it’s a bad idea to start (most) chemistry students off with Schrodinger’s equation. If you want to grok particle physics you need QFT, which is among the most difficult subjects. If a non-QFT person tells you that they read Griffiths’ particles book and understood it all then they don’t know what it means to understand something.