Physics Resource Hub

Govt. College Madappally

Are you standing at a juncture finishing your graduation/postgraduation and thinking about opting a career in scientific research? If yes, this moment demands thoughtful and informed decisions on the WHY, WHAT and HOW of preparing yourself for a successful career. Why should you be pursuing research is a question that needs to be answered by yourself based on your interest and a number of parameters which only you could weigh. Here, we are trying to help with the other two questions by accumulating a number of resources that we believe to be useful to you as well as guiding you towards a few active research areas and groups which you can explore. This website is a work in progress that would see more updates in the next few days. Meanwhile we welcome feedbacks and content suggestions. Before you start, you can watch a webinar (Malayalam) presented by two of our team members on how to prepare yourself towards pursuing a career in physics.

Online Resources

The following are some physics online courses that could be useful at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The video lectures would constitute only a small portion of a course. One should download tutorials, lecture notes, problem sets, and exam papers. Unfortunately, many universities in India do not cultivate this culture of seeking knowledge elsewhere.

These video lectures are so awesome that you can merely sit and listen to these lectures and grasp a great deal of things, but it will only be fruitful by doing related problems and exam papers as seriously as one would do in a course. Below, we have tried to organize them according to difficulty levels.

Text Books

Deep and clear understanding about a subject cannot be gulped down from that-one-book-mentioned-in-the-university-syllabus alone. As a matter of fact, text book revisions are Herculean tasks at most of the universities and may take decades. It is important to read good text books with updated information. Also, the students need to deconstruct the idea of having a single-book-of-study. For a better understanding of a concept, you would want to read different books on that topic. This methodology gives you greater insight towards the subject as well as helps you to approach the text books more objectively.

We have listed a few text books - based on the undergraduate & postgraduate syllabus, as well as given supplementary text books which will help the more curious ones among you to read beyond and above the syllabus.

Active Research Areas and Research Groups

In order to develop your taste and to recognize your true interests, it is important to become familiar with the current and active research areas. Furthermore, you should be familiar with the groups/institutes where these activities are taking place. Interested students can also use the information given in this section to directly approach these faculties/groups for summer projects or laboratory visits.

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”

- Niels Bohr